The Bridge Building Land Summit held last week was a platform for farmers, agricultural students, legal experts and representatives from various organisations to discuss important questions on land reform.

Smallholder farming has been neglected over the past 25 years of South Africa’s attempt to redistribute land taken away from black people during the apartheid era.

The Minister of Public Works has called for public comment on the controversial Draft Expropriation Bill published on Friday 21 December 2018.

It is significant to mention, as the presence of the two Gs – God and Government – were a constant during the day’s well-attended proceedings – which were translated into three languages: Xhosa, Afrikaans and English.

This is the first of a two-part review of the Presidential Advisory Panel on Land Reform and Agriculture Report submitted to the president and the public on 11 June 2019.

The report of the Presidential Advisory Panel (PAP) on land reform and agriculture, completed in May 2019, was released in July. While we agree with the view that it is a helpful intervention, we are sceptical that it can or should carry the weight of expectation that has been placed upon it.

The chair of parliament’s ad hoc committee redrafting the property clause of the constitution has rubbished suggestions that SA’s drive to address skewed land ownership echoes Zimbabwe’s land grabs of two decades ago.

What can South Africa learn about land reforms from wider global and historical experiences in the 20th century?

A constitution, former Chief Justice Ismail Mahomed once wrote, reflects the soul of a nation. In the case of South Africa, he added, the Constitution records our collective vision, aspirations and reminds us never to repeat the past. If we accept this, we should accept the Constitution’s dynamism to meet the evolving society.

The Government is forging ahead to change the Constitution to allow for land expropriation without compensation.

The challenges of climate change "may merit the development of a new agrarian reform vision" for South Africa, Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development Minister Thoko Didiza said .

THE Monetary Policy Committee of the Reserve Bank projected South African economy to grow by half percent. There are fundamental policies which constraint growth. I will deal with three.

Warnings that proposals to amend South Africa’s Constitution to facilitate land expropriation and transfer wealth to the have-nots will damage the country have fallen on deaf ears.

Since expropriation without compensation (EWC), regained prominence in government rhetoric, there has been much public concern over the potential implications of nil compensation.

With 2013 being the centenary of the Land Act (No 27 of 1913), and with 2014 marking two decades since the end of apartheid, it is appropriate to assess the extent to which a legacy of discrimination that started generations ago has been addressed in the democratic era.

At the moment, the current draft amendment to Section 25 of the Constitution says that the value of the land being expropriated will be determined by a court (the value of that land, or transaction itself, can be deemed as “nil” which would then become expropriation without compensation).

The Parliamentary Ad Hoc Committee to Initiate and Introduce Legislation amending Section 25 of Constitution gazetted the 18th Constitutional amendment in December.

Effective land reform is still required, but the Draft Constitution Eighteenth Amendment Bill of 2019 (the Draft Bill) will needlessly undermine the property rights of all South Africans: from the 1 million whites with home ownership to the 8.5 million black, ‘coloured’ and Indian families who own houses too.

There can be no arguing that the pace of land reform in South Africa needs to be speeded up.

February 11, 1990, was the day millions of black South Africans had been waiting decades for.