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The High-Level Panel on Key Legislation recommended as far back as 2017 that a National Land Reform Framework Bill was required to provide coherence between redistribution, restitution and tenure and provide a clear framework for redistribution. The panel went as far as drafting a proposed Bill. The Presidential Advisory Panel on Land Reform and Agriculture supported this recommendation and proposed that the Bill should be gazetted and debated in Parliament urgently.

The draft Bill contained in the High-Level Panel report, which was then called the National Land Reform Framework Bill contained several land redistribution principles. These include things such as:

The proposed Bill also dealt with target groups, prioritisation and beneficiary selection. It proposes a focus on women and the very poor. It requires that beneficiary selection happen transparently and should consider the demand for land. A land demand register should be developed. The selection of beneficiaries must be informed by the outcomes of substantial public and broad community engagement. The Bill further proposes that the state must develop a land reform implementation framework for every district municipality, which framework must, amongst other things, reflect the needs for land, the socio-economic profile of people expressing a need for land, an assessment of competing needs and demands for land. Land demand shall guide the acquisition of land. Such land can then be purchased or expropriated. 

Towards the end of 2024, the Nelson Mandela Foundation launched a court application out of the Western Cape High Court to challenge the State on its failure to comply with Section 25(5) of the Constitution which deals with equitable access to land and provides that: “The state must take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to foster conditions which enable citizens to gain access to land on an equitable basis”.

a) declaring that the State has failed to discharge, diligently and without delay, its obligation under section 25(5) of the Constitution;

b) directing the State to:

On 19 February 2025, the Minister of Land Reform and Rural Development and senior officials from the Department briefed the portfolio committee on the proposed Equitable Access to Land Bill, the Redistribution Bill by a new name. 

Redistribution is one of the three pillars of land reform in South Africa. Lately, the Department of Agriculture, Rural Development and Land Reform has added a fourth pillar, namely land development. Section 25(5) of the Constitution gives the mandate for redistribution. The section provides that “The state must take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to foster conditions which enable citizens to gain access to land on an equitable basis.” 

Although redistribution is only one of the pillars of land reform, which is the broader concept, there are also redistributive elements in the tenure reform programme. The Labour Tenants Act, Upgrading of Land Tenure Rights Act (ULTRA) and the Extension of Security of Tenure Act (ESTA) are aimed at tenure security and provide permanent solutions that are redistributive.

The 1997 White Paper on South African Land Policy provided, with regard to redistribution: “The purpose of the Land Redistribution Programme is to provide the poor with land for residential and productive purposes in order to improve their livelihoods.”

It is clear that the Bill is still being drafted.  No draft was presented to the portfolio committee. The timeline for the Bill proposed by the Department of Land Reform and Rural Development is the following: The Bill to be submitted for Cabinet approval in March this year and published for public comment between April and May. The Department expected Cabinet approval in June and final certification by the Office of Chief State Law Adviser in July. The Bill would go to NEDLAC for deliberation in August and be tabled in Parliament in October 2025. This means that there will be ample opportunity to comment on the Bill.  It is also positive that there will be a NEDLAC engagement on the Bill.  Agbiz will participate in all of these processes in order to address any concerns that the farming sector may have with the Bill.

In the briefing to the portfolio committee the Department indicated that the Bill will deal with the following subject matter:

Most of these concepts are not new and were included in the 2013 Green Paper on Land Reform.