This Introduction has three objectives. The first is to situate this volume within the current phase of South Africa’s difficult engagement with land reform in particular and transformative constitutionalism in general. For this purpose, we characterise the recent debate on ‘Expropriation Without Compensation’ (EWC) and the political developments leading to the tabling, and failure, of the Constitution Eighteenth Amendment Bill. In section two, we begin with an account of the research project and conference that led to this volume and then review the book’s three-part structure and its individual chapters in relation to each other. While there are important points of convergence with regard to the contested assemblage of law, land reform and redistributive justice, there are also divergent views for probing further. In the third section, we respond to this challenge by addressing three interlinked issues that emerge from a transversal reading of the chapters, which we regard as central for the future of redistributive justice in South Africa. These are, first, the respective roles of the state, popular politics and the private sector in driving this project; second, the relative importance to be attached to productive and redistributive measures as building blocks of change; and third, the scale of the structural changes that are needed.

This chapter explores land reform and redistributive justice from the vantage point of the Karoo, a large, sparsely populated and marginalised area that constitutes some 40 per cent of South Africa’s commercial farmland, where major land-use changes are recalibrating the significance of this land both locally and nationally. Underpinning the discussion is a concern with the narrow framing of contemporary land debates in terms of land as redistributive justice, rather than one plank in a larger framework for social justice. The argument is not that the Karoo is typical of the country as a whole, or that the time for land reform is past. Rather, thinking through social–ecological changes here pushes one to scale down expectations of land reform while foregrounding other issues of concern. Five cross-cutting themes are highlighted: the scale of the Karoo; its challenging environment; current land-use changes; the small-town character of the region; and its multi-layered history. The chapter draws on recent research on land-use change and sustainable development in the region, concluding with a case study of land restitution and renewable energy in the small town of Loeriesfontein.