LAND INEQUALITY IN DEMOCRATIC SOUTH AFRICA

Abstract

One of the intractable problems in all democracies is how to deal with the paradox of political equality alongside economic inequality. All democracies uphold political and civil equality, yet they all maintain material inequality. A host of constitutional rights and liberties makes everybody in a democracy equal in a formal-legal way. Simultaneously, all democracies protect private property. Since property is always unequally distributed it follows that constitutional guarantees of property rights may undermine efforts to ensure material equality. If, as in South Africa, land was acquired by settlers through colonialism, then constitutional protection of property rights provides a legal sanction for colonial land theft.

Citation

Hendricks, F.T. (2003), "LAND INEQUALITY IN DEMOCRATIC SOUTH AFRICA", Bell, M.M. and Hendricks, F. (Ed.) Walking Towards Justice: Democratization in Rural Life (Research in Rural Sociology and Development, Vol. 9), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 185-202. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1057-1922(03)09011-5