Franelyn Rossouw was 21 when she moved onto the Goedgedacht farm outside Delmas, in South Africa’s Mpumalanga province, where she would spend the next three decades of her life. A white South African, she married her childhood sweetheart, Francois Hoffman, and together they built a life raising four children, tending the land and dreaming of the future.
But one day, their future shattered. After 28 years of marriage, Hoffman walked into the rows of maize and soy fields stretching in every direction and never came back. The weight of months of struggle, of money troubles that refused to go away after a failed Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) deal, had become too much. Alone in the vast stretch of farmland that he and his wife once nurtured together, Francois took his own life on Sept. 1, 2021.
BEE is a South African government policy designed to help Black people play a bigger role in the economy. A form of affirmative action meant to address the inequalities left behind by apartheid, it was designed to increase Black ownership in businesses and ensure that Blacks could have access to opportunities in industries long dominated by white South Africans. While it was meant to correct the injustices of the past, it also created challenges for some white farmers like Hoffman, who entered into a bad deal with a Black South African that cost him tens of thousands of dollars.
Hoffman had begun a BEE partnership with a Black farmer through AFGRI, a company that provides financing to farmers to grow their businesses and regain markets. But by the second year, his partner fell behind on payments, forcing Hoffman to take on the debt. In a final attempt to save the farm, Hoffman had AFGRI transfer the financial burden back to him and Rossouw — a decision that pushed them to the brink. “I lost my husband due to this transaction, and I have paid a deep price for it,” Rossouw told New Lines. “The partnership we entered was disastrous, and now Francois is gone.”
Hoffman’s death is one of many tragedies playing out amid South Africa’s unresolved land issues — a fight often seen as a battle between three groups: older Black South Africans still waiting for the land they lost and were promised, older white landowners determined to hold on to what they have and the younger, more radical Black activists demanding change. But what about the generation that came in between? Generation X South Africans, both Black and white, who are now in their 40s and 50s, came of age in the transition from apartheid to democracy, believing that land reform would bring about a fairer future. Instead, they have spent the last 31 years caught between broken promises and growing uncertainty.
For Black Gen Xers, the land that their families lost remains largely out of reach, tied up in the bureaucracy and corruption of a system that has failed to deliver real change. Meanwhile, for their white peers, the land that they inherited is no longer a guarantee of stability, as economic shifts, policies like BEE and political uncertainty reshape the farming industry. Theirs is a generation caught between history and an uncertain future, overshadowed by a younger generation unwilling to wait any longer.
This sense of uncertainty goes back to the early days of South African democracy, when promises of land reform were made but never fully kept. In 1994, after apartheid ended, President Nelson Mandela’s government promised to transfer 30% of South Africa’s 198 million acres of arable land to Black citizens by 1999. That never happened. The ultimate goal was to undo the 1913 Natives Land Act, which had restricted Black landownership to just 7% of the country’s territory (later expanded to 13% in 1936). The law forced Black South Africans off their ancestral lands into overcrowded “reserves” and underdeveloped areas — later known as Bantustans — where they couldn’t buy or rent land. The apartheid government, in the meantime, poured huge amounts of money into assistance programs for white farmers.
In 1994, the government introduced the Restitution of Land Rights Act, meant to help marginalized groups reclaim land. But many of the programs covered by this act require financial contributions from beneficiaries who cannot afford them, while others suffer from corruption and mismanagement.
Despite decades of reform efforts, the numbers tell a stark story. According to the most recent assessment, the 2017 landownership audit, 72% of South Africa’s farm and agricultural land is still owned by white farmers, while Black ownership stands at 4% — with South Africa’s other races taking up the remaining 24%. This means Black ownership is actually lower today than it was under apartheid in the 1980s, when it stood at 13%, much of it in Bantustans.
These figures show how far the land issue is from being resolved. With pressure mounting, the government has signed a new law in an attempt to fix what decades of reform have failed to change. On Jan. 23, 2025, President Cyril Ramaphosa signed the Expropriation Act. It outlines when and how the government can take private land for public use — such as for schools, hospitals or infrastructure — but only with the landowner’s agreement. In some extreme cases, however, no compensation will be paid.
“It’s not a law that allows confiscation because confiscation is where a state simply takes away your land. Expropriation is a process through which states around the world assert their right of eminent domain to acquire property for public purposes,” professor Ruth Hall, acting director of the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies at the University of Western Cape, told Newzroom Afrika.
But even with this latest attempt, land reform has been very slow, and the problem is not just about laws, according to Siyabonga Sithole, a land rights activist at the Association for Rural Advancement. “The history of forced removals and land dispossession left many Black families without legal documentation to prove their claims, making the whole process difficult,” Sithole told New Lines. “On commercial farms, Black workers were often paid with land use instead of wages, allowing them to live, farm and raise livestock, but even these rights were later stripped away.” According to Sithole, the government lacks the resources to fully support land redistribution, making it difficult for land claimants to access the necessary tools, training and capital to farm successfully.
Professor Richard Levin, the special master for labor tenants at South Africa’s Land Claims Court, has seen firsthand the legal obstacles slowing down land restitution. According to Levin, one of the biggest challenges is the lack of legal support for farm dwellers and land claimants, many of whom can’t afford lawyers, while white landowners have wealthy legal teams that drag cases out for years. Even when cases make it to court, the process is painfully slow, buried in red tape and endless appeals that can take decades to resolve. For many Black South Africans, proving land claims is another battle — without official documents, it’s nearly impossible to reclaim land their families once owned.
Despite constitutional promises and laws like the Labor Tenant Act, he believes protections for claimants are weak, leaving many at risk of eviction and landlessness. The Labour Tenant Act is a 1996 South African law that protects farmworkers who lived and worked on farms in exchange for labor instead of wages during apartheid. It gives them the right to stay on the land they were living on as of June 2, 1995, and in some cases, to apply for legal ownership. The law was meant to prevent unfair evictions and help farmworkers gain land rights.
Levin told New Lines that even when laws exist to protect farm dwellers, enforcement is poor and many of those affected struggle to access legal help. Meanwhile, landowners often have powerful lawyers who can delay cases for years. “Despite the importance of these cases, I am disappointed with how they are being handled,” Levin said. “There are delays, a lack of resources and various barriers in the legal process. I’m nervous and concerned that these cases may not bring the justice or outcomes that the affected communities desperately need.”
This failure of the legal system to deliver justice has only added to the frustration. As land claimants continue to face delays and obstacles, the passage of the Expropriation Act has reignited discussions about land, fairness and the loss many Black South Africans have faced. For many, it’s a reminder of the land that was taken and promises that haven’t been kept.
If land reform continues at this pace, there are fears that discontent could turn into something much worse. Across South Africa, people are growing impatient. Some Black South Africans have spent decades filing land claims with no results. Others, fed up with waiting, have taken matters into their own hands — occupying land, refusing to leave and clashing with authorities. For their part, white farmers fear that one day the government will come for their land without warning. Some have already sold off parts of their farms, hoping to avoid future battles. Others are digging in their heels, unwilling to surrender land that has been in their families for generations.
When Amandla Mkhize was a child, his grandmother would tell him stories about the fertile land their family once owned in KwaZulu-Natal. “It had banana trees so heavy with fruit that we didn’t know what to do with them,” she would say. “Then, one day, they came with papers that stripped us of everything, and we had to leave.” Now in his mid-40s, Mkhize works as a bank manager in Johannesburg, far from the land his family lost. He filed a land claim in 2001, but more than two decades later, it remains unresolved. “We are always told to be patient,” he told New Lines. “But I wonder if patience is just another way to make us forget.”
Like Mkhize, Nini Myeza carries the weight of lost land and broken promises. But while Mkhize’s struggle is stuck in legal issues, Myeza wages a daily fight to farm without the support or resources that could help her succeed. For Myeza, who lives in Nqaza near Pietermaritzburg in KwaZulu-Natal, land is more than soil — it’s a link to her ancestors, a stolen way of life and an uncertain future. At 59, she has seen land reform promises come and go, yet little has changed in the country. Growing up in the shadow of forced removals, Myeza had hoped that post-1994 reforms would make things right, but that hope has faded. “They aren’t paying attention to our struggle,” she told New Lines, speaking Zulu through an interpreter.
Despite her love for farming, Myeza knows that without financing and government support, expanding her farm remains impossible. She believes that the system still favors white commercial farmers. “There are times when I see an opportunity to expand, but without financial backing, or even the chance to lease more land, my plans amount to nothing, while white farmers on the other hand get support because both banks and the system work in their favor,” Myeza said.
Now, patience is running out. Across South Africa, frustration over land is boiling over. Young activists are demanding expropriation without compensation, arguing that endless negotiations have only protected the privileged. Such demands add to fears among white landowners that the government may take their property at short notice. Gen Xers like Mkhize and Myeza are stuck in the middle — watching promises crumble while anger rises around them.
This isn’t just talk anymore. In some parts of the country, land occupations are happening. In Limpopo province, Black communities are taking over unused plots, saying they can’t wait any longer for the government to act. Some white farmers, feeling abandoned, have hired private security. Others are taking up arms. The government, balancing its constitutional commitments with economic challenges, is taking a measured approach — one that some see as too slow in addressing long-standing grievances and others view as a threat to their land rights.
Myeza sees it all and, with anger in his voice, says, “We fought for democracy but democracy is not feeding our people. So what must we do?”
While many Black South Africans struggle to reclaim what was taken, there is another side to this story — one filled with fear, loss and a deep sense of betrayal. Many white, Afrikaner Gen X farmers see land as more than just property — it is tied to their history, identity and survival. The Great Trek of the 1830s, when their ancestors moved inland to escape British rule, and the Anglo-Boer War at the turn of the 20th century, when they lost land to the British, are deeply ingrained in their collective memory. These events shaped a belief that land must be defended at all costs because history has shown them that it can be taken away. Today, with talk of expropriation and redistribution, many Afrikaners see echoes of the past and fear they are once again being pushed off the land their families fought to keep.
One Afrikaner who feels this connection to land deeply is Henrich van der Westhuizen, a Pretoria native who takes great pride in his heritage and traditions. Though not a farmer himself, he is closely connected to the farming community through friends and family. “Our ancestors bled for this land,” he told New Lines. “Losing land would mean losing everything — our history, our culture, our right to exist as a people.”
Pieter van Zyl, a farmer in the Free State province, comes from a long line of landowners. His family has worked the same soil for four generations, passing it down from father to son. For him, farming isn’t just a profession — it’s who he is. He grew up hearing stories of struggle and resilience, of droughts that nearly broke them and seasons that barely yielded enough to survive.
Like many white farmers, Pieter believes landownership is simple. “Whoever has the deed, owns the land,” he told New Lines. It’s the principle his family has lived by for over a century. But now, that belief feels shaky. With land reform policies and growing pressure on white farm ownership, he worries about the future. He isn’t blind to the injustices of the past, but he also sees what’s happening now as unfair. “We built our lives here. We worked for this. Why should we lose everything?” he asks.
This fear is not just about losing land — it’s about losing a way of life. For generations, the Afrikaner identity has been tied to self-sufficiency, to the idea that the land is both a source of survival and a testament to resilience. The government’s push for redistribution, coupled with economic struggles and rising farm attacks, has deepened Afrikaners’ sense of uncertainty. Some South Africans see it as long-overdue justice, while others view it as history repeating itself in reverse. The tension runs deep: While Black South Africans wait for land that was promised but never delivered, many white farmers feel they are being made to pay for the past.
South Africa’s land debate is still stuck between the past and the future, between justice and uncertainty. For Gen Xers like Mkhize and Myeza, who have spent decades waiting for justice, and Rossouw, who lost everything, the promises of land reform feel distant, something they were told to believe in but never saw happen. They are the generation that trusted democracy to make things right, but now they are stuck — too young to have shaped the past, too old to wait any longer for change. As frustration grows and patience wears thin, one question remains: Will the land be returned through negotiation, or will people take matters into their own hands?
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