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    Hopeful Squatters, Angry Owners, A Murder: South Africa's Land Reform

    South Africa's president made a promise to redistribute white-owned land to blacks. But it's a tense and controversial process.
    by Daniella Cheslow Jul 03, 2019 6 minutes
    Ayanda stands in the doorway of a shack that he put up on illegally on privately owned farmland in Stellenbosch wine country. He says he grew tired of waiting for housing while living in Kayamandi township.

    Last October, Ayanda erected a prefabricated shack made of corrugated zinc sheets nailed to a wooden frame on a hillside in South African wine country outside the town of Stellenbosch. The "bungalow," as he calls it, cost him about $335. The 29-year-old father of a 3-year-old son, he had been living with his extended family in the crowded Kayamandi township down the hill. But he wanted his own space.

    So he put up his shack just outside the township.

    On land that he did not own.

    (Ayanda asked that his last name not be used because of concern that his living situation could harm his job prospects.)

    Ayanda's shack is one of some 1,400 illegally built homes on the Watergang property, a wine farm. It belongs to a trust held by members of the Smit family, which has owned farmland in the area for generations. The squatters are part of a growing attempt to force land reform in South Africa, where black citizens were barred from owning land in

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