South Africa Resistance Mounts Against Land Expropriation as Election Day Looms

A farmer walks in a soya bean field toward the combine harvester near Bothaville, South Africa, on May 16, 2018. Wikis De Wet/AFP/Getty Images

JOHANNESBURG—She stumbled across the plains, gripping the hands of her frightened young daughters, her helper dragging panels of warped wood and sheets of rusted corrugated iron behind them through the red dust.

It was a chilly August morning in 2018, and 34-year-old Cynthia Maluleke (not her real name) was forging toward what she thought would be a “better life.”