369.8
Confronting ‘Betterment Planning’ of the Apartheid Regime in South Africa: Former Black Homelands and Land Reform Program for Social Justice and Sustainable Rural Development
Ikechukwu Umejesi[2]
Department of Sociology
University of Fort Hare
East London Campus
East London 5200
Email: iumejesi@ufh.ac.za
And
Nokonwaba May
Department of Sociology
University of Fort Hare
East London Campus
East London 5200
Email: 200801781@ufh.ac.za
Abstract
The apartheid South African government used a skewed land use policy, the Betterment Planning, to dispossess black South Africans of their land and create labour reserves to power the economy of a racially non-inclusive country. The social and economic consequences created by this policy and similar projects in the former black homelands led to mass impoverishment of communities, demographic displacements and confinement to unproductive lands. With the emergence of a democratic dispensation in 1994 came the need to redress historical injustices of the apartheid era. In order to promote social and economic empowerment and as well as mass poverty in different African communities, the post-apartheid state instituted several corrective measures. One of these measures is the Land Reform Programme (LRP) of the ANC government. This paper peers into the ongoing land reform programme of the post-apartheid state used as a tool for ‘corrective justice’. It explores how institutional dynamics and social factors influence sustainable development for the beneficiaries of the land reform program. The study focuses on three communities – Cata, Cwengcwe and Tyuty– in the former Ciskei homeland. It uses primary and secondary data collected from the study communities.