The Africa-Europe Cluster of Research Excellence in Sustainable Food Systems (CoRE-SFS), hosted by the University of Pretoria, recently held a webinar series tackling key themes shaping the future of agriculture.
Corrado Tornimbeni, associate professor in the department of political and social sciences at the University of Bologna, Italy, drew from research in Mozambique and Zimbabwe, where land reforms in the late 1990s and early 2000s were designed to protect community rights while integrating them into modern markets. Communities were given rights over land, forests, and even wildlife, but three key challenges quickly surfaced.
“The first was clarifying exactly what rights communities had. The second was delimiting boundaries and recognising traditional areas. The third the most difficult was defining who belonged to the community and could legitimately claim those rights,” Tornimbeni said.
According to Tornimbeni, this last issue proved the most divisive. Membership disputes not only created local conflicts but also reopened old wounds, reviving forms of exclusion that resembled colonial hierarchies.
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Lack of farmer training and power struggles
Tornimbeni stressed that groups seen as “secondary users” such as women, migrants, and younger farmers often suffered the most. Their rights depended on others’ recognition, leaving them vulnerable and unable to invest fully in farming.
“These reforms were meant to empower communities, but they often reproduced existing inequalities. The result was that some gained strong, secure rights, while others were pushed to the margins,” Corrado said.
For South Africa, this raises serious concerns. Tornimbeni noted that without carefully defining who has rights to redistributed land, the country risks deepening inequality and wasting valuable agricultural potential.
The experts agreed that South Africa’s land reform has often transferred land without preparing beneficiaries to farm it. Tornimbeni warned that when disputes over identity and authority are left unresolved particularly between traditional leaders and community property associations (CPAs) land risks lying idle.
“Restitution without clarity creates uncertainty and uncertainty discourages investment in agriculture, which directly affects food production,” Tornimbeni said.
Meanwhile Dr Charlotte Mafumbo, senior lecturer in the college of humanities and social sciences (CHUSS) at Makerere University, Uganda, pointed to East Africa’s system of certificates of customary ownership as a model that could help South Africa. These certificates demarcate land rights at the household or individual level within communal systems, providing clarity while still respecting tradition.
“No matter how much assistance, no matter how much money is put and given to women, it was not going to solve the problem of food inequality and food insecurity in that region, because the key issue was access to land,” Mafumbo said.
Although South Africa has progressive land reform laws, both Tornimbeni and Mafumbo emphasised that implementation remains the missing link. Policies may look good on paper, but without demarcation, farmer training, and conflict resolution, land reform risks worsening food insecurity instead of solving it.
“The way we govern land today will determine whether tomorrow’s food systems are just, resilient, and sustainable,” Tornimbeni said.
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