Lerato Mbele speaks to Nomfundo Ntloko, the Chief Land Claims Commissioner at the Commission on Restitution of Land Rights and Dr Malcolm Keswell, the Lead-Principal Investigator on SALDRU's Land Restitution Evaluation Study.
Earlier this week, the Minister of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development Thoko Didiza presented the research findings on the evaluation of the country’s land restitution programme. An estimated 2.3 million people have benefitted from restitution, with R25bn spent on the purchase and transfer of 3.9 million hectares of land. These findings are from a study by the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development in partnership with the Southern African Labour and Development Research Unit at the University of Cape Town as well as the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation which started in 2018 to evaluate the socio-economic impact of the restitution programme which was meant to bring land justice and to break the cycle of poverty among the dispossessed.