Post-apartheid land reform fails Kat River Valley's Black farmers

A study of South Africa’s Kat River Valley finds decades of post-apartheid land reform have failed to break historical inequalities, leaving Black farmers like Ntombentsha Metula without secure tenure. Metula, a “new” settler under the Ciskeian scheme, farmed for nearly three decades but had no title deed; farm dwellers later evicted her. Another farmer, Solly Sikotile, survived through loans from white intermediaries and the IDC, but that model collapsed by 2019. The excerpt from Ayabonga Cawe's book “New’ Settler or ‘Old’ Tenant?” traces the origin-story of South African inequality, arguing the privatisation experiment under former Ciskei leaders still haunts land reform today.