Billionaire Johann Rupert has helped give 24,000 South Africans the title deeds to their own homes through a quiet land reform programme

While South Africa's land debate has consumed politicians, lawyers and newspaper columnists for decades, Johann Rupert has been quietly funding a land reform programme that has transferred more than 24,000 freehold title deeds to underprivileged South Africans, turning council tenants into legal homeowners with assets they can improve, sell, inherit and borrow against.

The programme is called Khaya Lam, Zulu for "My Home." It was founded in 2010 by the Free Market Foundation, a South African think tank, with a mandate to help residents of apartheid-era township housing convert their municipal leasehold titles into private freehold ownership. The legal framework enabling the conversion has existed for years. The barrier has been the cost of processing the title transfer, approximately R3,750 per property, which is beyond the reach of most township residents who are elderly, unemployed or living on government grants. Khaya Lam raises private sponsorship to cover that cost entirely, in partnership with municipalities and conveyancing attorneys who process the transfers at discounted rates.

Rupert is the programme's single biggest donor. A significant donation he made to Khaya Lam in 2019 enabled the bulk of transfers that have happened since then. The Rupert family has focused its Khaya Lam sponsorship on properties in the Western Cape, including Stellenbosch and Graaff-Reinet, alongside contributions to projects in the Free State. The first 100 title deeds were transferred in 2013 in the Ngwathe area of the Free State. By October 2023, the programme had transferred 10,000 titles. The total has since grown to more than 24,000 as of July 2026, with more than half of all transfers completed since early 2023.

The practical impact of a title deed on a household that did not previously have one is not abstract. Without title, the house cannot be used as collateral for a business loan, cannot be registered in a will, and cannot be sold on the open market. With title, it becomes what economist Hernando de Soto described as the foundational building block of capitalist wealth creation: dead capital transformed into live capital. At a conservative replacement value of R150,000 per property, the 24,000 transfers Khaya Lam has completed represent R3.6 billion in formerly dormant wealth activated for South African households.

The Free Market Foundation estimates there are between 5 and 7 million council-owned properties across South Africa whose residents have never received title. Khaya Lam's 24,000 transfers are a fraction of that total, but the programme has demonstrated that the process works, that it can be scaled with private sponsorship, and that municipalities are willing to participate when a credible organisation handles the administrative load.

Rupert, South Africa's second wealthiest individual with a net worth of approximately $10.2 billion, rarely speaks publicly about his Khaya Lam involvement. The programme does not feature prominently in Remgro's public communications. He has not sought public credit for the contribution. The donation and its impact became publicly known largely because the Free Market Foundation disclosed his support at programme milestone events and in its public fundraising communications, and because journalists covering South African land reform and philanthropy have connected the dots over time.

At a ceremony in Klapmuts, near Stellenbosch in the Western Cape, the Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town praised the programme for doing something that government had failed to do at scale: giving poor South Africans legal ownership of the homes they had lived in for decades without security of title.