Question

Which of the following phrases best describes Mandela’s efforts at land reform?

A. Land reform was a valiant attempt to fix a historic injustice, but it has ultimately had little success because of complications in implementation.


B. Land reform was a necessary program that successfully redistributed most of the land the was stolen by black landowners.


C. Land reform was a failed attempt to rectify an old crime because none of the lands was returned to its rightful owners and proper restitution was denied.


D. Land reform was ultimately unsuccessful because the white government in Pretoria refused to accept any of the redistributions of land.

Answer 1

The phrase that best describes Mandela's efforts at land reform is 'A.' The land reform advocated by Mandela was intended as way to right a wrong: apartheid. One important way to straighten things up was the redistribution of land, this is, the return of lands to the ancestral inhabitants of South Africa, which came to be known as 'the liberation bargain.' The constitution promulgated in 1994 granted the valid right of whites to keep the lands acquired under previous regimes, which virtually left not much land for the Africans.

Mandela meant well, but from the beginning it was clear that white people, in control of 87% of the land even though they stand for less than 10% of the population, would find ways to protect their interests and keep their losses to a minimum, for only 8% out of the 30% of the lands allocated for redistribution were handed over to African owners.