Making cities a home: achieving urban land reform

“South Africans have fought wars with each other over land. Bitter feuds have raged. People have died for it. In this regard, South Africa is no different from most countries in the world. But in our country the dispossession of land was also part of the oppressive apartheid system that set us one against the other. By making most South Africans landless in the country of our birth, that system produced inequality, division and poverty.”
– Nelson Mandela, 1998

This dialogue will also officially launch three papers on urban land reform which the Nelson Mandela Foundation has commissioned with the Development Action Group and the Socio-Economic Rights Institute. The aim of these papers is to stimulate informed discussion and debate on different models for urban land reform in South Africa. The commissioned papers cover the following topics:
Urban tenure security: A proposed approach to urban land tenure reform
Urban land redistribution: A proposed approach to equitable access to urban land
An urban land reform model: Unlocking well-located publicly-owned land to deliver affordable rental housing in South African urban areas