The land affairs portfolio existed in the
apartheid-era cabinet, and a minister of land affairs,
Derek Hanekom, was appointed in President
Nelson Mandela's
cabinet in May 1994. However, in a cabinet reshuffle in May 1996, Mandela announced that the portfolio would be subsumed under the
Ministry of Agriculture; Hanekom thereby became the
minister of agriculture and land affairs. When President
Jacob Zuma announced
his first cabinet on 10 May 2009, he reversed Mandela's merger. The agriculture portfolio was conjoined with forestry and fisheries under the
minister of agriculture, forestry and fisheries, and the independent land affairs portfolio was re-launched as the Ministry of Rural Development and Land Reform. The name change reflected an overt focus on
rural development and
land reform in South Africa, which Zuma counted among his policy priorities. Appointing
his own second cabinet on 29 May 2019, President
Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the land affairs portfolio would be merged with the agriculture portfolio, as it had been before Zuma's tenure. The
Ministry of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development was inaugurated under Minister
Gugile Nkwinti, also with two deputy ministers. However, when he announced
his third cabinet on 30 June 2024, Ramaphosa reversed the merger, appointing an independent minister of land reform and rural development to serve alongside a minister of agriculture. == List of ministers ==