This research report examines the changing role and function of civil society in South Africa pre and post-1994, and its changing relations with the state through successive presidencies. It presents a four quadrant typology of civil society organisations
Civil society formations in Africa have historically played an important part in the establishment of organising people in the pursuit of common goals. The majority of Africa’s people reside in rural areas where they derive their livelihoods from land, and for this majority secure access to land is the foundation of any efforts to alleviate poverty. Land reforms in Africa are at various stages of development in a number of countries, partly in response to pressures for liberalisation and privatisation from the World Bank and other like-minded institutions.
Includes modernisation and agricultural development in Southern Africa (South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia) past and present; framing viability: frameworks for assessing land and agrarian reform; viability in redistributive land reform in Southern Africa; rethinking viability in Southern African land reform.
This reviews the literature on decentralised land governance in Southern Africa, highlighting key issues and challenges of ‘land governance from below’.
Includes a history of contested ownership; land use and the law before independence; land reform after independence; communal land enclosures; illegal fencing in Omusati Region; recommendations; conclusion. Argues that government must immediately take action against illegal fencers.
Includes land reform: perpetuating patriarchal land policies?; Fast Track Land Reform: decentralisation or recentralisation?; women’s access to land in the land reform process; constraints faced by women in accessing land; who is pushing the agenda for better access to and utilisation of land for women?; conclusion: women beneficiaries of land reform; recommendations.
Focuses on women’s perceptions of land rights in the communal areas of Namaqualand in the Northern Cape. Explores the links between patriarchal social systems and women’s conservative attitudes towards holding land and shows how current policy processes and legislation allow local customs to continue to entrench gender discriminatory practices. Findings indicate that women are disadvantaged by historical norms, values and attitudes, which afford them only secondary rights to land.
Inclusive business models have attracted renewed interest as part of wider debates about growing agricultural investment in developing countries. Report discusses joint ventures in South Africa’s agricultural sector. The South African experience features major specificities linked to the country’s history and recent land reform programme. Land reform beneficiaries entered into a range of joint ventures with commercial partners.
Asks what convincing rationales exist for land reform in the 21st century and for land policies and programmes that have poverty reduction as their key objective? Argues that the economic bases of pro-poor land reform need reformulating in the rapidly changing conditions of the contemporary world. The unequal structures of international agricultural trade regimes need to be made integral to thinking about agrarian reform. Includes a table with arguments for land reform.
The author looks at the past 22 years of land reform in South Africa. What is going wrong in South Africa’s post-apartheid land reform programme, and how can its failings be addressed? 22 years after the transition to democracy and the commencement of land reform, there is a great deal of lived experience to reflect upon and a rich literature to draw on. He offers a diagnosis of failures, suggest a new narrative for land reform, and offers some provocations around alternative policies.
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