Livelihoods after land reform in South Africa

Over the past few decades, Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa have pursued redistributive land reform as a means to address rural poverty. The Livelihoods after Land Reform (LaLR) study was carried out between 2007 and 2009, to understand the livelihood and poverty reduction outcomes of land reform in each of the three countries. The South African component focused on Limpopo province, and investigated land reform processes, trajectories of change and outcomes in thirteen detailed case studies. This paper summarizes some of the main findings from the South African study, and briefly compares them with findings from Namibia and Zimbabwe. The paper argues that a fundamental problem affecting land reform in both South Africa and Namibia is the uncritical application of the Large-Scale Commercial Farming (LSCF) model, which has led to unworkable project design and/or projects that are irrelevant to the circumstances of the rural poor. Nevertheless, some ‘beneficiaries’ have experienced modest improvements in their livelihoods, often through abandoning or amending official project plans.Web of Scienc

Uncertainty and Institutional Design

Summaries Emerging perspectives on institutions and uncertainty in natural resource management contexts include consideration of legal pluralism and multiple institutional domains, formal and informal structures and processes, and a focus on practice and process rather than rules. This article examines recent proposals for tenure reform in the former ‘homelands’ (or Bantustans) of South Africa in the light of the mixed experience of tenure reform in other African countries, in both the colonial and the post?colonial periods. It explores the issue of whether or not it is possible to legislate land rights and design administrative systems that take into account the realities of African landholding systems as complex, variable, and inherently negotiable – and characterised by a degree of uncertainty. The most innovative elements of the proposals are those which provide for a range of arenas and institutional settings, with state support and resources, for processes of claiming, negotiating, bargaining and conflict resolution over the content of rights, the boundaries of jurisdictional areas, authority in land management systems, and the distribution of the benefits of land?based livelihoods and development schemes

ICTs in development-who benefits? Use of geographic information systems on the Cato Manor Development project, South Africa

The focus on the digital divide raises important questions with regards to the global impact of information technology. Technical inequalities are, however, often embedded in the development project where access to technological knowledge becomes a determining factor in the development process. This paper aims to uncover the use of geographic information systems (GIS) on the Cato Manor Development Project in Durban, South Africa. The focus will be on an instant where the legitimacy of the project was challenged by former residents, removed from the area during the Apartheid era, and the role of information technology in resolving that conflict. The paper will show that GIS is not necessarily a value-free tool, but can influence development decisions contrary to the expectations of those affected by it. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.