Opening Address by the Honourable Minister Mzwanele Nyhontso of Land Reform and Rural Development, South Africa at the Land, Life and Society Conference, University of the Western Cape
Distinguished guests, Excellencies, friends, comrades, ladies and gentlemen,
It is with deep humility and great honour that I welcome you all to Cape Town and to the University of the Western Cape for this Land, Life, and Society Conference. I extend warm greetings to our international guests, who have travelled from across Africa, Latin America, Asia, Europe, and North America.
We are privileged to host here in South Africa representatives of governments, international organizations, rural social movements, scholars, activists, and policy makers, all gathered with one shared concern: how to confront the land and resource struggles of our era, and how to forge a path towards justice, sustainability, and dignity for rural and urban communities alike.
Allow me to recognize and thank our convenors – the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, or PLAAS, celebrating its 30th anniversary this year; the Land Deal Politics Initiative; the Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative; and many other partners. PLAAS has become a beacon of critical scholarship, not only in South Africa but across the continent and indeed the world. Its work has connected rural struggles with global debates and has provided government, civil society, and multilateral organizations with research and insight. We salute your commitment.
I also wish to acknowledge our friends from La Vía Campesina, the world’s most significant rural social movement, whose voice has been instrumental in keeping peasants, farm workers, fishers, indigenous peoples, and pastoralists at the heart of global agrarian reform debates. We welcome representatives from the Food and AgrO, UN experts, and scholars who continue to provide leadership in international governance. And I warmly greet Minister Martha Carvajalino Villegas of Colombia, who is leading preparations for ICARRD+20 in Cartagena next year.
South Africa’s Land Question: From Apartheid to the Present
For us here in South Africa, questions of land are deeply personal, political, and historical. We meet today on land that once belonged to the Khoi and the San, who were dispossessed through colonial conquest. We carry the legacy of centuries of forced removals, segregation, and apartheid, where land was not only an economic asset but also a tool of exclusion and domination.
Since 1994, democratic South Africa has embarked on a programme of land reform with three pillars: restitution, redistribution, and tenure reform.
Restitution has sought to restore land or provide compensation to those forcibly removed under apartheid laws. Redistribution has aimed to give land to the landless and land-poor, create opportunities for Black farmers, and address historical imbalances. Tenure reform has aimed to secure the rights of those living under insecure arrangements, whether farm dwellers, labour tenants, or residents of communal areas.
We have made progress – millions of hectares of land have been transferred, countless families have had their rights secured, and communities have seen the return of ancestral lands. Yet we know this is not enough. Land inequality remains stark: too much land remains concentrated in too few hands; women, youth, and farmworkers remain marginalized; rural poverty and food insecurity remain deep.
Our policies, too, have faced contradictions and tensions. We have debated markets versus the state, compensation versus expropriation, and production versus livelihoods. We have seen successes, such as in restitution cases like Richtersveld, where mineral rights and development models were recognized, and failures where redistribution has not translated into sustainable livelihoods. But through it all, we remain steadfast in our conviction: land reform is not optional. It is central to justice, democracy, and development in South Africa.
The Global Moment
Our conference today takes place in a world that is again at a crossroads. Twenty years ago, in 2006, the first International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD) was held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, under the leadership of President Lula da Silva. That moment was historic – it opened the doors of the FAO to civil society and social movements, and it produced a progressive agenda centred on redistribution, equality, and participation.
Today, as we prepare for ICARRD+20 in Cartagena, Colombia, in March 2026, we face an even more complex global terrain. We witness the rise of authoritarian populism in many parts of the world, sometimes even from movements that once called themselves progressive. We face the climate crisis, whose effects are most severe on those least responsible for it – small farmers, fisherfolk, women, and indigenous peoples. We see “green grabbing” and carbon markets threatening new forms of dispossession, as land, forests, and oceans are enclosed in the name of climate mitigation. We observe that corporations dominate global food systems, while hunger and malnutrition persist as widespread issues.
At the same time, we see resistance. We see women leading land occupations and seed sovereignty struggles. We see young people mobilizing for climate justice. We see indigenous and peasant communities defending commons and territories. We see academics, activists, and policy makers forging new alliances for justice.
This is why this conference matters. It is not only a scholarly meeting. It is a space where evidence meets struggle, where knowledge meets power, where we prepare together to influence Cartagena next year and beyond.
The Conference Agenda: Five Themes
This week, we will debate across five interconnected themes:
- Land and Agrarian Reform: exploring land redistribution, tenure security, labour politics, commoning, and governance frameworks. South Africa’s own experiences – our challenges with legal pluralism, our debates about expropriation without compensation, our struggles to secure farm dwellers’ rights – resonate with these global issues.
- Oceans and Water: recognizing that agrarian reform is not only about land but also about seas, rivers, and aquatic commons. Our small-scale fishing communities here in South Africa remind us of the struggles against industrial aquaculture, offshore oil and gas extraction, and exclusionary conservation models. Their voices will be heard.
- Climate and Environment: asking what just energy transitions look like, and how to resist new enclosures in the name of “green growth”. South Africa stands at the heart of this dilemma – as we move beyond coal, we must ensure that workers, communities, and ecosystems are protected, not sacrificed.
- Food: interrogating how global food systems are shaped by BRICS dynamics, corporate concentration, and financialization. Here in Africa, we confront the tension between industrial agriculture and agroecology, between export crops and food sovereignty. We are committed to supporting agroecology, seed diversity, and farmer-led innovation.
- Politics: recognizing that all these struggles are political. Authoritarian populism, rural violence, land occupations, and lawfare all shape the terrain of agrarian reform. South Africa knows too well the politics of dispossession and the politics of resistance. But we also know the politics of emancipation.
These themes converge in one question: how can we build inclusive, just, and sustainable futures for land and society?
South Africa’s Leadership
Our country has played a role in shaping the international agenda. When South Africa chaired the Committee on World Food Security, our ambassador Nosipho Jezile supported the call for ICARRD+20, insisting that redistribution and agrarian reform be placed back on the multilateral agenda. Our government has supported the Voluntary Guidelines on the Governance of Tenure (VGGT), the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants (UNDROP), and the African Union’s land policy frameworks.
As chair of the G20 this year, South Africa will also carry the outcomes of this conference into global debates. We face pressures from powerful nations, but we remain committed to progressive multilateralism – to voices from the Global South shaping the agenda, to civil society having a seat at the table, and to land reform as part of climate justice, food justice, and social justice.
The Role of PLAAS and Knowledge Communities
It is fitting that this conference is hosted at the University of the Western Cape, home to PLAAS. Over three decades, PLAAS has nurtured generations of scholars and activists. It has convened global debates through the Land Deal Politics Initiative and the Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative. It has supported evidence-based policymaking while standing alongside communities resisting dispossession.
Today we celebrate PLAAS not only as a research institute, but as a space of solidarity, critique, and hope. This conference is part of that legacy – a space where academics, policy makers, and activists co-produce knowledge and strategies.
Solidarity and Struggle
We cannot speak of land without speaking of the people who inhabit it. In this room, we are joined by farmworkers who demand both labour rights and land rights; by fisherfolk who demand access to oceans; by women who resist exclusion and demand equality; by youth who imagine futures beyond dispossession. Their struggles are not peripheral. They are central.
The first ICARRD in 2006 succeeded because it opened doors to civil society. ICARRD+20 will only succeed if movements are at the centre again. We must ensure Cartagena is not a closed gathering of states and agencies but a living dialogue with the people.
South Africa commits to bringing that spirit to Cartagena. We will carry the voices from this conference – the testimonies, the analyses, the demands – into the global stage.
A Call for Action
So, what is to be done?
We must ensure that land reform is not reduced to narrow market transfers but is about the redistribution of power, resources, and dignity.
We must secure tenure for those who live and work on the land, whether as farmworkers, labour tenants, or communal residents.
We must protect commons – whether pastures, forests, or fisheries – from enclosure and exploitation.
We must confront climate change with justice, ensuring that green transitions do not create new victims of environmental injustice.
We must build food systems rooted in sovereignty, agroecology, and nutrition. We must strengthen democracy, resist authoritarianism, and keep social justice at the centre of politics.
Ladies and gentlemen, comrades and friends,
We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children. The land question is not only about the past – it is about the future. It is about the kind of societies we want to build, the kind of economies we want to sustain, and the kind of relationships we wish between people and nature.
This conference is an opportunity to pause, reflect, connect, and strategize. It is also a moment of celebration – 30 years of PLAAS, the resilience of our movements, and the possibility of building bridges across continents.
On behalf of the Government of South Africa, I would like to welcome you all. May your discussions be bold, your debates be rigorous, and your solidarity be strong. May we leave here with renewed energy to shape Cartagena 2026, and to shape our own national and local struggles for justice.
Welcome to Cape Town. Welcome to South Africa. Let us begin.
Thank you.
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