Land reform and participation in South Africa

Since coming to power in 1994, the African National Congress (ANC) has been implementing a land reform programme, which includes land tenure reform, land restitution and land redistribution. The Department of Agriculture however, has no methodology for supporting land reform groups in the process of developing and implementing land management plans. To address this FARM-Africa has developed and piloted a participatory land use planning methodology with eight land reform groups: this paper describes the experiences of implementing this new approach with these groups, many of whom had little experience of farming. With the help of diagrams and examples it runs through the steps of developing a participatory land use plan which are: identifying project stakeholders; understanding the situation; sharing and making use of the information; training the planning sub-committee and approving the plan, and implementing the management plan. Finally it concludes that the participatory process offers the chance to learn new skills, to understand the institutional and organisational environment and to improve day-to-day effectiveness. Access to agricultural knowledge is important but must be inclusive, and importantly this planning method should be initiated much earlier the land reform process.