Debates about land redistribution from white farm owners to black hands tend to be silent on the question of farm dwellers. This is despite the fact that over two million black people are estimated to be living on commercial farms. Many residents have lived on commercial farms for generations, and they are arguing that their plight should be at the centre of land debates, and that redistribution of commercial farmlands must deliver primarily to them. By SITHANDIWE YENI. 

Following South Sudanese independence in 2011, land reform became a major aspect of state building, partly to address historical injustices and partly to avoid future conflicts around land. In the process, land became a trigger for conflicts, sometimes between communities with no histories of “ethnic conflict.” Drawing on cases in two rural areas in Yei River County in South Sudan, this paper shows that contradictions in the existing legal frameworks on land are mainly to blame for those conflicts.

In the recent explosion of attention given to the land grabbing phenomenon, contract farming has been identified as a potentially inclusive alternative for smallholders to outright acquisition of farm land by agri-business capital. This paper responds to these claims by resituating contract farming as an equally important form of land control. The focus of the paper is a case study of potato contract farming in Maharashtra

The Chairperson went through the A-List and verified that the amendments had been effected in the Agrément South Africa Bill [B3B-2015]. Members moved to adopt the Bill, and it was adopted.

The Committee was briefed by the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (DRDLR) on its Annual Performance Plan for 2015/16, with the Minister and Deputy Minister in attendance. Due to the complexity of the agrarian transformation space, the DRDLR had developed a rural economy transformation model which would be implemented through the Agrarian Transformation System.

The preservation, development and sustainable use of agricultural land are of vital importance to ensure longterm food security in South Africa. These principles of food security as well as an integrated, inclusive rural economy underpin the core focus areas of the National Development Plan, Vision 2030 (NDP).

This paper addresses the disjuncture between women’s formal land rights and their attaining these in practice, examining the four agrarian reforms carried out by progressive governments after 2000 in Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Venezuela. It finds that while all four strengthened women’s formal land rights, only the reforms in Bolivia and Brazil resulted in a significant share and number of female beneficiaries.

The paper investigates whether farm dwellers in the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province of South Africa are subject to a “double exposure”: vulnerable both to the impacts of post-apartheid agrarian dynamics and to the risks of climate change. The evidence is drawn from a 2017 survey that was undertaken by the Association for Rural Advancement (AFRA), which is a land rights Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), of 843 farm dweller households. Data on the current living conditions and livelihoods was collected on 15.3% of the farm dweller population in the area.

Contains women’s rights and state-led agrarian and market based land reforms; reinstating the state; engendering customary tenure; rights of indigenous people and marginalised groups; human rights violations; HIV/AIDS; the ‘feminisation of agriculture’. Calls for a new agrarian reform agenda in which the state plays a central role, ensuring that land is established as a common public good, and that its benefits are enjoyed equitably by women and men, regardless of race, class or ethnicity.

Introduction to a new book, At the Crossroads: Land and Agrarian Reform in South Africa into the 21st Century, based on a PLAAS/NLC conference of July 1999. In addressing whether land and agrarian reform has a future in South Africa and who might benefit, the book’s editor discusses the political context of the conference; integrated rural development; the new policy directions announced in February 2000; and the structure and contents of the book

Includes ’small-holder’ farmers as potential beneficiaries of agrarian reform in South Africa, a class-analytic approach to small-scale farming, accumulation ’from above’ and ’from below’, policy implications.