Performance of land reform projects in the North West province of South Africa: Changes over time and possible causes

Anecdotal evidence as well as selected studies on the performance and progress of South Africa’s reform programme generally present mixed to rather negative results. Few longitudinal studies on the progress of redistributed farms, resulting in an incomplete picture of the performance progress of land reform projects. In this paper, we report on the progress and performance of a of land reform projects in the North West Province of South Africa over five years. As part of a audit of land reform projects in the North West Province, 43 farms were studied in 2005 to assess their performance, based on their production status. Five years later, in 2010, 37 of farms were visited again to review their progress. The results indicate that the production (and thus performance) of land reform projects is not static. Although some projects either or maintained their initial production status, the overall trend shows deterioration in . Numerous factors are responsible for the decline, including group characteristics farms are owned by groups of beneficiaries. The paper is thus the first to use two surveys of a of land reform projects to show the true status of farms in their post-transfer phase in South .