Talk:Land reform in South Africa

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 21 January 2020 and 16 May 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): AmandaMiskell.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 23:53, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Suggestions for the page
This page's opening passages are contradictory: They state that 90% of the land "belongs to the government", but that "Of the 90%","70% "belong[s] to individuals [or] companies." --It is contradictory to say that 90% of the land belongs to the government but that, of the government's 90%, 70% belongs to individuals or companies. If land belongs to the government, per se it does not belong to individuals or companies. It cannot belong to both.

These alleged percentages are unreferenced, and are thus unverifiable.

The statement is ambiguous, in asserting that the estimate "of land" owned by whites "is 21%". --It is unclear if this estimated 21% is of all land in the country, or of the government's 90%, or of individuals' and conpanies' 70%.

The estimate similarly is unreferenced, and for that reason unverifiable.

It is ungrammatical to say that 70% "belong" to individuals or companies. The correct word is "belongs".

The statement says that 90% of the land belongs to the government "which they inherited from the apartheid years". This last passage likewise is unreferenced and is thus unverifiable.

The statement does not mention how the government inherited land from the apartheid years. Nor does it explain in what way apartheid is or was relevant to government landholdings. Nor does it mention when apartheid years ended.

It is ungrammatical to say that certain land belongs to the government, which "they" inherited. More accurate would be to say, which "it" inherited.

With the greatest respect to all contributors concerned, it is lamentable that a page on such an important and topical issue as land reform in South Africa is so inadequately presented.

Gazmoore2 (talk) 01:02, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

This page is hard to understand, it would benefit if it was broken down more in order for people to get a proper understanding.

NPOV and cleanup tags
I've just tagged the article, and especially its intro/lede section, for NPOV and cleanup.

As far as POV, it seems to assert that "land reform" is important, rather than simply reporting what others believe and why they believe that.

There's also just generally poor writing and a lack of coherence, particularly in the intro section, which makes it difficult to follow.

It seems clear that multiple people edited and added to this section, which of course is normal for Wikipedia, but it needs to be better integrated so as to read as one cohesive text rather than a bunch of stuff thrown together. -2003:CA:83CC:8600:9BF:834F:5736:B04 (talk) 13:25, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Urban Land claims and restitution
This, or another article needs to cover urban restitution in terms of areas seized as part of the Group Areas Act and other land claims.Park3r (talk) 08:24, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

Source potentially misinterpreted
The page currently states that "Around 50% of farms are said to be failing,..." with a reference to a blog post by The Economist. However, this blog post says that "By the government’s own account, at least 50% of land reform projects have failed." It is not clear in what way 50% of the land reform projects have failed. Nakuram (talk) 12:22, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

Where's the full story?
I came to this article, as an outsider, to read about the South African land reforms. I haven't learned very much apart from the feeling that it hasn't gone very well so far. I was expecting to read about the history of land ownership in SA over time and what has happened since 1913. There is no mention of how land reform came about, as this article has no history before year 2000. I would hope that the 1913 SA natives Land Act would get a mention and the statistics of land ownership over the last 100 years, what has been proposed since 1994, the 1997 White Paper, the 3 tenets of Redistribution, Restitution and Land tenure reform, the proposal to redistribute 30% of 80 million hectares - and so on. Perhaps this is documented elsewhere in more detail and this article could perhaps link to them and also describe some of the other issues and controversies such as South African farm attacks. Andrew ranfurly (talk) 14:33, 21 February 2022 (UTC)