Tagged: land reform

1. 01 The trade · 12 Jul 2026 The Farmer Who Bought Back the Farm He Worked for Wages Jacobus Koopman used a government land-reform loan to buy the Suid Bokkeveld farm where he had worked for wages. He and thirteen neighbours turned that into Heiveld, an organic rooibos co-operative that later had to defend its independence from its own government.
2. 02 The trade The trade · 20 May 2026 The Board That Owned Rooibos for Forty Years From 1954 to 1993, one government board was the only legal buyer and the only legal seller of rooibos in South Africa, and it built that monopoly on a rule that quietly shut coloured growers out. Here is how that came to be, and what it left behind.
3. 03 The place The Sustainability of Rooibos Sustainability in rooibos is four subjects rather than one: the fynbos the crop is planted on, the wild plant that still grows unfarmed above it, the certification marks that each promise something different, and the question of who owns the land and who receives the money. This is the canonical account of all four, with the figures each of them rests on.