Response Paper

Response Paper

[Name of the Writer]

[Name of the Institution]

Response Paper

Land Reform and Gender in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Introduction

Cherryl Walker talks about the policy framework of land reforms in Land Reform and Gender in Post-Apartheid South Africa. The articles talk about the lack of capacity in the government system and the structure of traditional power. It also reveals the fact that land reforms for women are absent in rural areas.

Discussion

The land reform market-driven program in post-apartheid South Africa has been designed to reduce the injustice driven by the previous land dispensation. Its aim is to reduce poverty, to improve the sustainability of land and to build up tenure security.

Moreover, Market-driven program that aimed to bring land reforms in post-apartheid South Africa is considered as very modest and very ambitious. It was measured with respect to popular needs and demands. The most important component of the program is policy commitment designed for gender equality. The program targets women and entitles them with various beneficiaries.

However, the department of land Affairs is not able to spend the funds allocated to it and this is in fact “lack of capacity” from the government side. There are various pending cases regarding land restitution. The system needs to be improved and all the pending cases should be tackled. Government employees are not competitive enough to develop the organization and to spread awareness regarding land reforms.

Methodology

The racial inequalities of the skewed land and the economic disparities in South Africa haven highly analyzed. South Africa has a history of the struggle for land reforms and it includes the black land right dispossession, soil depletion, non-investment in Black rural areas and migrant labor.

The decline in the production of the black peasant was not followed by the urbanization of the rural areas. The shift of South Africa from an agrarian society to industrialized society has shaped the repressive system of migrant labor. This system has a very intense effect on the social life and economy of the rural areas of South Africa.

The primary focus of people in the rural areas of South Africa is to get land security and to have insurance for unemployment in the household. Few people in the area want to have subsistence agriculture. In the same paper, Walker talks about the crucial difficulties to the people of rural areas and says that lack of time for intensive labor work, lack of skills and good infrastructures are the obstacles in the ways of development.

However, many developed countries like the United States have built up their economy with the help of slave labor. The country was never a place of nurture for the Black community but a destroyer. Late the black community-acquired human qualities that helped to develop a community and the development started accelerating after then.

South Africa has also been very infamous for its enormous inequalities the white parts of the community is highly prosperous and have access to opportunities for development. Household incomes are also distributed unevenly and wage inequality is strongly determined by the racial inequalities in the region. Public sector used to discriminate highly between white and black employees in South Africa.

However, the gender discrimination of black women was also deeply rooted in migrant labor practices. Walker says the in many cases these women are not even allowed to be rural producers and they can only access their lands with the help of the men attached to them. The fight for internal power in society is also a reason for the lack of security to women’s’ land. The rights of women in these areas depend on the level of organizations and their policy directions.

End Notes

ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"uncited":[],"omitted":[],"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY Coates, Ta-Nehisi. “‘The Case for Reparations.’ The Atlantic,” 2014, 54-71.

Nattrass, Nicoli, and Jeremy Seeking. “‘Two Nations’? Race and Economic Inequality in South Africa Today,” 2001.

Walker, Cherryl. “Land Reform and Gender in Post-Apartheid South Africa,” 1998.