“The land question, as it is posed academically in South Africa, is at the cutting edge of the development debate.
Should land held by poor peasants, often under some kind of communal tenure, be reorganised as private property and absorbed into the market economy? Should land reform
therefore target emerging commercial farmers? Or do communal forms of tenure and the subsistence-oriented modes of multiple
livelihoods in rural areas have their own development and change potentials that can be released with support from appropriate
infrastructure, despite the often dire and increasing poverty in such communities? The first ‘modern’ option assumes a massive movement of excluded people to the urban areas. The second option, unconditional support to subsistence livelihoods on
communally held lands, and increased integration into markets, can lead to development without such a massive movement. This paper asks how trust relations within the land state affect the power of the land state in the field of land reform.”
