After 24 years, neither the private sector nor the government has been able to give a substantive figure on who owns the land, suggesting that even the ownership of the 139 farms the ANC says are in its crosshairs is unclear. But, if you put together the industry's Agri SA audit of land and the state's land audit last year, a picture of such complexity emerges that it's clear it will take years before expropriation without compensation can take place because the ANC has committed itself to first passing a proper record of deeds before passing the constitutional amendment to enable more muscular land expropriation without compensation. Both surveys use surnames as a proxy for race, which makes them statistically unsound, a fact acknowledged in both. Agri SA's audit of agricultural land, which it measures at 76.3% of total land, and the Agricultural Business Chamber find that about 26.7% of the land is owned by black people and the government, meaning about 70% of agricultural land is...
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