Workshop report draws on a larger research report examining the massively changed context for livestock policy following fast track land reform. Themes discussed were production, grazing, fodder and drought responses, marketing, livestock disease and veterinary services.

Includes modernisation and agricultural development in Southern Africa (South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia) past and present; framing viability: frameworks for assessing land and agrarian reform; viability in redistributive land reform in Southern Africa; rethinking viability in Southern African land reform.

A critical assessment of 22 years of land reform policies in South Africa. Concludes that land reform has been captured by elites. The most powerful voices are those of ‘emerging’ black capitalist farmers (often with non-farm incomes), traditional leaders, large-scale white commercial farmers and agribusiness corporates, who are all benefiting more than the poor.

Includes case studies: land market dynamics and land reform in Western Cape, Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, and Mpumalanga; current government programmes and policies; South Africa’s land market and land reform; private sector contributions to land reform; 3 agri-business sectors and land reform – fruit, timber, sugar; research conclusions: key challenges to land reform now; where are we now, and where are we heading?; getting back on track: CDE’s recommendations.

Focuses on tenure reform (as a necessary first step); securing rights for farmworkers and labour tenants; slow progress and key challenges in restitution; redistribution; what is to be done? Offers an overview of the key challenges facing land reform and suggests a number of ways in which the current reform programme can be accelerated to fight poverty and inequality. Argues there is urgent need for a comprehensive, transparent, participatory process and for widespread public debate, especially in the light of events in Zimbabwe.

Inclusive business models have attracted renewed interest as part of wider debates about growing agricultural investment in developing countries. Report discusses joint ventures in South Africa’s agricultural sector. The South African experience features major specificities linked to the country’s history and recent land reform programme. Land reform beneficiaries entered into a range of joint ventures with commercial partners.

Paper reviews the South African experience with land reform, and land redistribution in particular, up to the end of 2005. Looks at various aspects of market-based land reform – landowner veto on participation in land reform; payment of ‘market prices’ for land; self-selection of beneficiaries; focus on ‘commercial’ forms of production; prominent role for the private sector in provision of credit, extension, and other services.

Independent Kenya failed to recognize customary interests in land as possessing equal force as statutory derived rights. Issues related to land rights are perceived as  root causes of conflicts occurring in the 1990s and 2000s. The 2010 Constitution has embodied the fundaments of land reforms; it has acknowledged “communities” as legally entitled to hold land. Paper studies decision-making processes via a socio-anthropological approach showing how it contributes to understanding the issues at stake and the politics surrounding the design of new legislation around “community land”.

Includes land tenure systems in Rwanda, the Land Tenure Reform Programme (LTRP), summary of the land policy and the organic land law, registration of eight million parcels in three years: a realistic ambition?, land tenure regularisation and housing development in Kigali, conclusions and policy implications.

Ensuring gender equality with respect to land rights is hailed as a key element of the recent land reforms, but actual results are limited. Achieving gender equality requires a comprehensive focus on land, family and other laws, including customary, and on their implementation on the ground. Summarises the findings from a series of reports reviewing progress made and challenges remaining to achieve gender equality with respect to land rights.

A website link to a series of documents on the global political agreement one year on, land reform ‘success’ and ‘viability’ in Zimbabwe, myths and realities in Zimbabwe’s land reform, adding to the evidence base, policy dialogue – charting the way forward, a panel debate, photographs, interviews with beneficiaries.

On the basis of work in Masvingo Province since 2000, and as part of an ongoing regional project on Livelihoods after Land Reform in Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe, offers challenges to 5 oft-repeated myths, that: Zimbabwean land reform has been a total failure; the beneficiaries of Zimbabwean land reform have been largely political ‘cronies’; there is no investment in the new resettlements; agriculture is in complete ruins; the rural economy has collapsed.