Investigating socio-spatial trajectories of class formation: Accumulation from below and above on 'New Qwa Qwa farms' from the mid-1980s to 2016

Philosophiae Doctor - PhDThis thesis investigates socio-spatial trajectories of class formation and processes of accumulation from below and above on redistributed farmland, the ‘New Qwaqwa Farms’ in the Eastern Free State province of South Africa, from the mid-1980s to 2016. Class formation trajectories of the studied land beneficiaries are traced across localised historical geographies and political contexts, from apartheid to the current democratic dispensation, that is, from the land beneficiaries’ recent ancestral history as labour tenants on white-owned farmland, and subsequent systematic expulsions from farmland, to their Bantustan labour reserve resuscitations as mainly nonagricultural petty commodity producers, and later targeting for land reform, as one measure of redistribution

Supporting smallholders into commercial agriculture: The role of private sector partnerships

• SSCA is a research project started by the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) and the South Africa Food Lab (SAFL). • Commenced in April 2012 with a specific focus on private sector support to smallholders. • What is a smallholder? Problematic...itself a research finding. • Three research interns: Adetola Okunlola, Mnqobi Ngubane, Davison Chikazunga to undertake a scan of such initiatives in South Africa, write up results in a report, further investigate selected case studies at a PhD level

Challenging the stereotypes: small-scale black farmers and private sector support programmes in South Africa

This report represents one of the outputs of a research and social dialogue project undertaken over 18 months. It explores a number of private sector partnerships and projects launched in support of black farmers – some of them highly innovative, others of dubious merit. Hardly a week passes by without news of some new initiative to ‘train’, ‘help’, ‘empower’ or otherwise assist ‘small-scale black farmers’. The findings of this research suggest that many of the current programmes of support on offer from the private sector are built on somewhat shaky foundations. These are often based on problematic assumptions and normative ideas about what constitutes desirable agricultural development, most of them deeply (if not consciously) informed by the experience of fostering a successful large farm sector in South Africa in the past. The problems that many small-scale black farmers experience in their attempts to enter the competitive world of formal value chains suggests that a fundamental re-think is now required

Land beneficiaries as game farmers: conservation, land reform and the invention of the 'community game farm' in KwaZulu-Natal

Scholarship on post-apartheid land reform includes research on land claims made to formal protected areas, such as national parks and state game reserves. Little attention has however, been paid to the question of land restitution claims on private lands, on which a range of nominally ‘conservation-friendly’ land-uses (including commercial hunting) have taken place. This article traces the emergence of the ‘community game farm’ as a product of land reform processes affecting freehold land in the midlands of KwaZulu-Natal province, South Africa. Two groups of land beneficiaries who were granted title to former privately owned game farms used for leisure hunting are studied in detail. The article shows that a range of state and private actors, as well as traditional authorities, have worked to ensure the continuation of the land under conservation or game farming after transfer. The central argument is that in this process, a generic narrative is imposed which works to conflate or deny the distinct historical identities of the beneficiary groups. The article raises questions about the real efficacy of land restitution in this context, as well as the appropriateness of a community-based conservation narrative when applied in the context of small farms such as those considered here.International Bibliography of Social Science