Resource information
A key challenge facing South Africa’s economic development is overcoming the structural poverty created through the systematic dispossession of the majority of its citizens. Although radically marginalized during apartheid, there is poor public acknowledgement of the losses experienced by those families who, through the passing of various racially biased, land and labour laws, became farm labour on commercial farms.
The options for farm dweller families' active and sustainable participation in this structure of commercial agriculture and national food security strategies is unclear. It is an urgent dilemma district municipalities, tasked with development and guided by transformative land use principles, need to confront. The ability of farm dwellers to participate in and influence the establishment of norms and the outcomes of plans is what must be considered here.
Attempts by various stakeholders (both private and public) to introduce Agri-village concepts as settlement options that would bring service delivery and possible "development", has been met with fierce resistance from many farm dweller families (ADM Agric sector plan). There is mounting research and daily evidence of the lengths that families will go to remain on agricultural lands, in this post apartheid period (see cases in KZN from land legal cluster reports of disputes over land rights- KZN Land legal 2007).
