South Africa is to release about 2.5 million hectares of state-owned agricultural land, with title deeds, to black farmers, President Cyril Ramaphosa said in his weekly newsletter on Monday. The government presents the move as a means of widening black participation in commercial farming and strengthening food security. The land was acquired over time through the Proactive Land Acquisition Strategy and has largely been let to emerging farmers on short-term leases rather than transferred to them outright.
The announcement builds on earlier commitments. Mr Ramaphosa told parliament in July 2024 that the state would prioritise the transfer of state land, and in his June 2026 budget vote he said the Minister of Land Reform and Rural Development would outline a programme to convert agricultural leases into title deeds. In 2021 he presented title deeds to 30 farmers at Tafelkop in Limpopo, noting that 529,000 hectares of state land had been earmarked for agriculture the previous year.
The president framed the policy against an uneven picture. South Africa’s agricultural exports reached a record of about $15.1bn in 2025, up 10 per cent on 2024, according to the Agricultural Business Chamber, with Africa the largest market in the final quarter. Yet commercial farming remains dominated by white-owned farms, and the newsletter, as reported by Xinhua, puts black farmers’ share of commercial output at around 10 per cent.
Mr Ramaphosa stressed that land alone would not suffice. Emerging farmers, he said, are too often kept at subsistence level because they cannot obtain finance for inputs, infrastructure and additional land, and the Land Bank and the Department of Agriculture have introduced a blended finance scheme combining grants with loans. Agricultural economists have long argued that secure tenure makes such finance workable. After meeting farmers in the Karoo, Agbiz’s Wandile Sihlobo wrote in 2024 that insecure access and short leases hinder expansion. The opposition Democratic Alliance has separately alleged that some successful black farmers were removed from state land through corrupt practices in the land reform department, a claim that bears directly on how the new programme is administered.
The significance lies in a history that long predates the present. The Natives Land Act of 1913 limited African land ownership to 7 per cent of the country, a share later set at 13 per cent by the 1936 Native Trust and Land Act, and the legislation was not repealed until 1991. The government itself acknowledges that dispossession began well before 1913. After the 1994 elections the state pledged to transfer 30 per cent of agricultural land, some 24.5 million hectares, to black South Africans by 2014. By 2013 about three million hectares had been redistributed, a small fraction of that goal. By 2021 the president reported that more than five million hectares had been redistributed across some 5,500 farms to over 300,000 beneficiaries.
Redress has also taken different forms. Land claims were for many years settled mostly through cash compensation, and redistributed farms frequently came with leases rather than ownership. That helps explain why tenure, rather than acreage alone, now sits at the centre of the debate.
South Africa’s choices will be read across the continent. Land and agriculture underpin livelihoods in many African economies, and about half of South Africa’s farm exports go to the African continent, largely within the southern African region. Zimbabwe’s experience since 2000, when land was redistributed at scale but many beneficiaries have held permits and leases rather than transferable title, shows why the form of tenure is debated as vigorously as the quantity of land.
Supporters, including the Agricultural Business Chamber, regard the release of titled land as a precondition for inclusive growth and rural jobs. Others will judge the programme by delivery: how beneficiaries are selected, how swiftly leases become title, and whether finance and training follow. Mr Ramaphosa himself said secure land must be accompanied by affordable finance, training, mentorship and access to technology. Whether the 2.5 million hectares become productive farms and livelihoods, rather than a transfer on paper, will shape how the policy is judged.
