Viewing Land Through a Social- Justice Lens: Why Land Reform is Imperative to Social Justice

Abstract

South Africa has aligned itself with the United Nations Global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which seek to reach certain goals by 2030. It is important to ask whether these goals are truly attainable, especially in the context of poverty and land inequality. In this article, the authors place poverty and land inequality in South Africa in the spotlight – under a social-justice lens. The article focuses on the extent to which land can, and should, play a role in reducing poverty levels. It is crucial to reflect on the land issue through the lens of social justice by specifically considering the land-reform project and its role in ensuring (or inhibiting) more equitable access to land. Land-reform programmes and policies still have major implementation issues and, in particular suffer a lack of political will, and blanket approaches to land reform that do not necessarily take into account the realities of those affected. It is thus clear that South Africa still has much progress to make to achieve the goals set out in the SDGs and to achieve social justice in the context of land reform.