Land Reform and Sustainable Development in South Africa's Eastern Cape Province

"This paper focuses on one area of government policy – land reform – looking at the institutional forms that have been developed as part of that policy, the strategies being applied to implement it, the linkages between it and other areas of policy, and the achievements of the policy to date. In doing so, it seeks to understand the impact of land reform policy on the livelihood opportunities of the rural poor. This is done through a detailed study of land reform policy in the Eastern Cape province, with a particular emphasis on the former ‘homeland’ areas of Ciskei and Transkei.The study begins by looking at the importance of small-scale land-based activities – principally cropping, livestock and gathering of wild resources – to rural livelihoods in the Eastern Cape. It then looks at the policies that have been put in place by the state to improve access to land, and the rights people enjoy over land, particularly in terms of the Land Reform Programme of the Department of Land Affairs. In the final section, a six-part framework developed by Goldman is used to assess the land reform policy in the Eastern Cape from a sustainable livelihoods perspective."