An assessment of the effectiveness of the mentorship programme in land reform : the case of Ba Bina Noko Community Property Association, Sekhukhune District, Limpopo Province, South Africa

Abstract

The South African land reform programme is implemented to redress land ownership patterns that resulted from Apartheid discriminatory laws. Whites expropriated land from Africans and, by so doing, usurped their livelihoods. The majority ANC government has been attempting to return not only the land, but also to restore the livelihoods from land ownership. The programme has been very slow to return land to the black majority, but some land has been returned. The programme has dismally failed to restore the livelihoods from land ownership, as most of the projects have failed to continue producing at all or at levels achieved by previous white landowners. The mentorship programme was created in order to increase the success of the land reform programme in delivering a livelihoods impact. We use a qualitative approach to evaluate the impact of this programme. Although beneficiaries of the mentorship programme perceived the programme positively, production on the projects is still low. Even with the failure of the projects to deliver livelihoods impacts, the government is proposing expropriation without compensation to accelerate land reform. We propose a land reform process that incorporates the mentorship programme, averts expropriation without compensation, but achieves both political and economic imperatives of land reform.