Through the process of land redistribution, the government seeks to address the legacy of racial inequality in accessing land and creating opportunities for development. It is meant to provide historically marginalised South Africans with access to land for residential and commercial purposes to improve their livelihoods. Tenure reform seeks to ensure land tenure security for people living on commercial farms and for those living in communal areas, largely in the former apartheid-created ‘Bantustans’14. With regard to security of tenure for people living on farms, the main achievement has been legislation that regulates occupation and eviction of people from land. However, despite this legislative framework, incidents of farm evictions and the abuse of farm workers and farm dwellers is still continuing. Communal land rights were also restored with the purpose of giving secure land tenure rights to persons and communities who occupy and use land that was taken away in terms of the 1913 Land Act. Further efforts aimed at accelerating the process of land reform in South Africa include: the establishment of a dedicated Department of Rural Development and Land Reform, mentioned under the theme Democracy and Governance, to deal with issues of rural development and land affairs in order to ensure sustainability of land reform programmes; and the tabling of the Expropriation Bill before Parliament with the object of empowering government to pay a fair price for land. Government has also developed alternative approaches relating to the restitution and redistribution programme. The following principles underpin the new approach towards sustainable land reform: • De-racialisation of the rural economy for shared and sustainable growth; • Democratic and equitable land allocation and use across gender, race and class and; • Strict production discipline for guaranteed national food security. It is against this background that government has introduced a new programme called the Recapitalisation and Development Programme. The objectives of the Programme are to increase production, to guarantee food security, to graduate small farmers into commercial farmers and to create employment opportunities within the agricultural sector. The core principles of the programme are mentorship, co-management and share equity. 8.2 Violence against Women and Children Eradicating violence against women and children remains central to South African programmes on social transformation. Violence against women, according to the UN Civil Society Plenary Session15, is increasingly acknowledged as both a consequence and a cause of poverty among women and children. One study has estimated that incidents of violence can result in loss of household income equivalent to 25-30 percent of the monthly income 14 ‘Bantustan refers to a tribal reserve for black inhabitants in South Africa. The term was extensively used to justify the relocation of black people in terms of the Land Act of 1913. Bantustans were also created to provide an Apartheid South Africa version of self-government and pseudo independent for black people in areas designated for black inhabitants based on ethnicity. 15 UN Civil Society Plenary Session, 14-15 June 2010 49