Implications of incomplete restorative justice in South African land restitution : lessons from the Moletele case

Abstract

Since 2005, South Africa’s post-apartheid state has opted to impose inclusive business model arrangements between land claimant communities and private sector partners to ensure the “successful” resolution of claims involving prime agricultural land. This approach was deemed compatible to achieve both restorative justice imperatives and capacitation or entrepreneurial objectives. Using the settlement of the Moletele restitution case as reference, this paper argues that these types of arrangements tend to entrench the hegemony of the state’s belief in the productivist, large-scale farming model as the most viable approach to rural restitution. These initiatives also calibrate the role of the state, private sector and restitution beneficiaries into configurations that fail to facilitate genuine levels of restorative justice or capacitation, thus fuelling the calls towards more retributive forms of land redistribution.