The central concern of this paper is to analyse the dynamics of the land reform policy- making process in South Africa and Kenya. In this paper, land reform policy is viewed as a political and economic process that is geared to effect a sustainable transition to democracy. However, it will be argued that certain key imperatives such as national and global capital interests, political stability, nation building and reconciliation have come to undermine the historical impetus to have a radical and wide ranging land reform programme in post-colonial Kenya and post-apartheid South Africa. It will be shown that both policies were essentially elite-driven, top-down in character and the participatory approaches they alluded to were merely strategies of legitimisation used to rubber stamp the imperatives of reconciliation in both countries. The comparative discussion used in this paper, attempts to locate the similarities and differences that characterise the land reform policy process in these two countries.
