Land Matters cover art

Land Matters

South Africa’s Failed Land Reforms and the Road Ahead

Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends December 16, 2025 11:59pm GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Land Matters

By: Tembeka Ngcukaitobi
Narrated by: Lungile Lallie
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends December 16, 2025 11:59pm GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Only £0.99 a month for the first 3 months. Pay £0.99 for the first 3 months, and £8.99/month thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Start my membership

About this listen

Why has land reform been such a failure in South Africa? Will expropriation without compensation solve the problem? What can be done to get the land programme back on track?

In his new book, Tembeka Ngcukaitobi tackles these questions and more. Going back in history, he shows how Africans’ communal land ownership was used by colonial rulers to deny that Africans owned the land at all. He explores the effect of the Land Acts, Bantustans and forced removals. And he considers the ANC’s policies on land throughout the 20th century, during the negotiations of the 1990s, and in government.

Land Matters unpacks developments in land redistribution, restitution and tenure reform, and makes suggestions for what needs to be done in future. The book also considers the power of chiefs, the tension between communal land ownership and the desire for private title, the failure of the willing-buyer, willing-seller approach, women and land reform, the role of banks, and the debates around amending the Constitution.

Thoughtful and provocative, Land Matters sheds light on one of the most complex questions in South Africa today.

©2021 Tembeka Ngcukaitobi (P)2021 Penguin Random House South Africa
Africa Corruption & Misconduct Politics & Government Sociology Urban Capitalism

Listeners also enjoyed...

Uncommon Wealth cover art
Democracy and Delusion cover art
Nothing but Freedom cover art
Libertarianism cover art
Liberty Amendments cover art
The Rothbard Reader cover art
The Responsible Globalist cover art
Private Government cover art
Democracy May Not Exist, but We'll Miss It When It's Gone cover art
Brexit Briefly cover art
Essays on Two Federal Empires cover art
A New Textbook of Americanism cover art
Democracy: The God That Failed cover art
The Color of Money cover art
From Aristocracy to Monarchy to Democracy cover art
A Short History of Brexit cover art
All stars
Most relevant
Very eye opening accounts from the distant and not-so-distant and recent past as it relates to colonial and Apartheid rule, and provides useful frames for rectifying past wrongs.

Extremely clearly and thoughtfully written.

Performance by narrator was superb.

My only disappointment is that it doesn't very clearly illustrate why land matters (the title of the book) more (or less) than other areas that SA could focus on, e.g. job creation through other sectors, education, etc.

Really illuminating

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.