Abstract:
Anecdotal evidence as well as selected studies on the performance and progress of South Africa’s
land reform programme generally present mixed to rather negative results. Few longitudinal studies
exist on the progress of redistributed farms, resulting in an incomplete picture of the performance
and progress of land reform projects. In this paper, we report on the progress and performance of a
group of land reform projects in the North West Province of South Africa over five years. As part of a
comprehensive audit of land reform projects in the North West Province, 43 farms were studied in
2005 to assess their performance, based on their production status. Five years later, in 2010, 37 of
these farms were visited again to review their progress. The results indicate that the production
status (and thus performance) of land reform projects is not static. Although some projects either
improved or maintained their initial production status, the overall trend shows deterioration in
performance. Numerous factors are responsible for the decline, including group characteristics
where farms are owned by groups of beneficiaries. The paper is thus the first to use two surveys of a
group of land reform projects to show the true status of farms in their post-transfer phase in South
Africa.
