The main argument of this paper is that the experiences of the CBRLDP are unlikely to provide valuable
lessons to aid the scale up of the model across the country because of the critical disjuncture between the
neoliberal drive guiding the reforms and the popular perception of how land redistribution should actually
proceed in communities with excess land. They favour restitution as a means of rectifying land tenure
inequities perpetrated by both the colonial and postcolonial regimes contrary to the CBRLDP initiative
which unequivocally advocates a market-based land redistribution on a willing-buyer and -seller basis.
Moreover, the government’s commitment to address the question of land once and for all remains at the
level of rhetoric despite the consensus that land is a primary productive resource in the country and one
which holds the key to poverty reduction. The outcomes, successes and failures of the CBRLDP have been
further driven, influenced and shaped by political processes resulting from the interaction and contestation
of diverse stakeholders involved with the CBRLDP and endowed with differing forms and varying degrees
of power, authority and influence. The major lesson from the CBRLDP implementation experiences is that
the design, reform and implementation of pro-poor institutional arrangements are not merely a technical
or managerial matter, but a profoundly political exercise. This is underlined by the sheer determination of
stakeholders engaged with the CBRLDP to shift the burden of the reforms elsewhere as they jostle to get
the most of the evolving institutional arrangements governing land ownership and use.