The Effects of Land Restitution in South Africa: A Qualitative Study
Author: Bernadette Atuahene
Under the South African Restitution of Land Rights Act (LRA), only those dispossessed of a “right in land after 1913 as a result of a racially discriminatory law or practice” are eligible to receive compensation. During eight months in the field over 150 semi-structured interviews have been conducted with urban people who were evicted from their land by the Apartheid government and who were compensated by the new political dispensation through the LRA. South Africa has two populations that are valuable for this study—beneficiaries that received compensation in the form of “reparations” (compensation without choice) and “restoration” (compensation with choice). The recently collected interview data will be used to investigate the difference between reparations and restoration as well as other important hypotheses.