PROPERTY & INVESTMENT
18 P R O P E R T Y N E W S
How does South African
politics
SHAPE REAL ESTATE ?
Can developers and government agree ?
It ’ s hard to think of a time when politics didn ’ t influence land and how people lived on it in South Africa . People were forced to travel around the country to find adequate grazing land , or they moved around to find safety from aggression .
Land in South Africa has been mined , farmed , fought over , made more secure , and laws have been created to remove people from land that was rightfully theirs to begin with .
Now land is still a focus in politics as the government makes attempts to set past wrongs right again . However , land reform and land redistribution is an emotive and politically fraught subject . There ’ s no lack of motivation or initiatives to try and set things right , but despite many attempts to do so , the South African government has yet to make land reform a success .
But strife about land has not always been between individuals and the government . Developers and the