This paper assesses the impact of South Africa’s land reform program on land use change in rural areas of Limpopo Province. Land use change was examined on ?ve Communal Property Associations using remotely sensed images and quantitative and qualitative survey techniques. Land was abandoned or used less productively after redistribution. The primary reason for the lack of land use change to more productive states was that the land redistribution policy was not suf?ciently sensitive to the diversity of rural livelihoods. Other reasons include farm-level general disorganization, lack of capital and labor, gender inequities, and age distribution. Regional political diseconomies also hindered change, namely poor tenure relations and a persistent urban bias.