According to Dianne Brock, general manager of this branch of the IEASA, some 100 members of the Western Cape Institute of Estate Agents of South Africa recently attended a talk by Professor Henk Delport , an expert on property legislation. "They were given a comprehensive but very balanced view of SA's land reform process as set out in the Green Paper now in the public arena for discussion".

"Professor Delport made it clear that although the vast majority of black people see the current land distribution as totally inequitable (87% of non-State owned South Africa is in white hands, only 13% under black ownership), the envisaged reform programme, which has as yet never really got into gear, should not be seen as a land grab.  Furthermore, although there are elements in the black community against it, the ANC is currently sticking to the willing buyer willing seller principle."

The land reform programme policy has, however, been very largely ineffectual:  by 2009 only 6,9% of South Africa's agricultural land had been transferred to black ownership even though buyers had State support.  (On the other hand, 79,6% of urban land claims had been successfully settled by 2009.)

Tracing the background to the current situation, Prof Delport, said Brock, had shown that after the Anglo-Boer War black ownership of rural land had increased markedly as whites whose homes and farms had been ruined by the British army's scorched earth policy, sold up and moved to the towns or became bywoners (impoverished tenants, usually with small landholdings) on more affluent farms.

Then, under the previous government, 3,5 million people, the vast majority black, had their properties taken from them by the Group Areas and similar acts and had been transferred to the new homelands.

This, said Prof Delport, had resulted in severe overcrowding of these all-black territories while the often despotic control by the local chiefs (who had the power to allocate land), usually resulted in women, who were and still are the majority of rural farmers, not becoming bona fide owners.  The lack of capital and farming methods had caused massive degradation (and soil erosion) in these formerly productive agricultural areas.

"Professor Delport," added Brock, "made it clear that this was a catastrophe for SA agriculture because only 3% of South Africa's farmland can be described as having high potential yields and almost half (on the western side) cannot support crop production.

"Today, 46% of the SA population live in these rural areas and 70% of these people are now living below the poverty line."

The land restitution process, said Brock, was shown by Delport to operate partially through legal land restitutions:  if you could prove that you or your ancestors lived there as owners, you could submit a claim.  Where the situation became tricky, said Delport, is where farm workers have often over many generations been allocated plots, fields and grazing rights on white farms.  Moreover, claims could take years to reach the courts and in that time it was usually impossible to raise loan capital on them.

Prof Delport, said Brock, also reported that where land, with the help of State, had been bought back from white farmers it had quite frequently not been productively farmed by the new owners who often moved off or sold it at a low price, sometimes to the white farmer from whom it had been taken.  Critics have blamed the new government for a lack of capital support and training in many of these cases.

"Although all these issues complicate the reform process it is highly unlikely that it will be dropped - the demand from the dispossessed communities is still far too strong to allow that.  Those interested in the future of rural property in SA will, therefore, have to keep a close eye on and become involved in the current land reform debate, the outcome of which is by no means known as yet, especially as some of the clauses in the Green Paper are ambiguously worded leaving room for a variety of interpretations."