Backward Capitalism in Rural South Africa: Prospects for Accelerating Accumulation in the Eastern Cape

The forces of production in rural South Africa and the performance of the agricultural sector form the central theme of this paper. It shows that the long‐term lack of dynamism of capitalist development in South Africa as a whole is reflected in and is responsible for failures of rural development. These failures have resulted in acute suffering, not least in Eastern Cape province, where barriers to dynamic capitalist growth remain very high. The paper concludes with proposals for promoting more rapid wage employment growth and capitalist development and for protecting vulnerable rural residents from the worst consequences of such development. The proposals are contrasted with the conventional wisdom in South Africa, especially the rural development strategies proposed by the current government.     

Trading-off: Rural food security and land rights in South Africa

In light of the high percentage of poor people in rural areas of South Africa, the post-apartheid government has, among other things, prioritized food security in their policy processes. However, these food security policies stop short of workable strategies for the most difficult situations, particularly in the former reserves (Bantustans). A case study of the Eastern Cape Province reveals that food security managed by government agencies experience difficulties at implementation stage due to land issues. At the heart of the problem is the poor understanding of rural people's land use plans and multiple livelihood strategies. The paper concludes that food security projects in the former Bantustans will continue to suffer unless food security policies are efficiently integrated to those of land reform.     

A methodology for class analysis: Agricultural investments and agrarian change in South Africa

This paper presents a class-analytic approach, which combines a “labour exploitation criterion” with class typologies developed for the South African context and the author's additions. The labour exploitation criterion distinguishes between rural classes based on the degree to which one employs others, works for others, or works for oneself. I combine the principal indicator of “labour exploitation” with the income contributions of social grants, ownership of farming assets and livestock, and the contribution of agricultural production to simple or expanded reproduction. Debates around class formation are explored in the context of a comparative analysis of two joint venture (JV) dairy farms, located in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, which involve residents as both landowners and workers. A class-analytic approach illuminates the emerging agrarian class structure that a JV-type intervention both reflects and in turn conditions, in dialectical fashion, with important implications for debates around agrarian change in South Africa.     

Low-cost housing developments in South Africa miss the opportunities for household level urban greening

Most developing countries of the world are experiencing large-scale migration from rural to urban areas. Many new migrants end up in low-cost or informal areas and slums with attendant environmental concerns. One dimension of improved urban sustainability is the provision of green spaces and trees. Whilst many countries have urban greening programmes for public spaces and streets, few have considered the status and potential contribution of trees from resident's own gardens. This paper reports firstly on the policy environment for urban forestry and greening in South Africa and secondly on the maintenance, use and appreciation of trees on private homesteads of residents of new and older low-income suburbs as well as informal housing areas from three small towns in South Africa. In particular we examine if the most recent centrally planned and built low-income housing schemes (called RDP suburbs in South Africa) have considered and incorporated plans or spaces for urban greenery in peoples’ homesteads. We found that broad environmental and sustainability concerns and statements are common in urban development and housing policies, but specific guidelines for implementation are generally absent. More specifically, urban forestry and tree planting are rarely mentioned in the broader land use and environmental policies other than the national forest act and subsequent regulations, but even there it is relatively superficial. In the study towns the prevalence, density and number of species of trees was lowest in the new RDP suburbs relative to the township and informal areas. Consequently, the contribution of tree products to local livelihoods was also lower in the RDP areas. Yet there were no differences in the level of appreciation of the value and intangible benefits of trees between residents from the three different suburbs. This shows that the failure to plan for and accommodate trees in new low-cost housing developments is missing an opportunity to improve overall urban sustainability and liveability and constraining the potential flows of tangible and intangible benefits to urban residents. Making opportunities for such in older suburbs is challenging because of space limitations and cost implications of retrospective provisions, but incorporation into plans for new low-cost housing development should be possible.     

Land and contract farming: Changes in the distribution and meanings of land in Kilombero,Tanzania

In the context of contract farming of sugarcane in an outgrower scheme in Tanzania, this paper explores how the scheme has fundamentally altered people's relationships with the land over the last 50 years, in particular, since 1999, when, after three decades, the sugar parastatal was privatized. The paper reviews the literature on the mutual relationship between contract farming and land ownership and examines the scheme with a focus on long-term changes in the forms of land acquisitions and land use. We argue that the meaning and importance of landownership in contract farming schemes needs to be reassessed if participation in contract farming entails a departure from previous forms of acquiring land, generates new spatial patterns of agricultural production, and necessitates additional economic and social resources in order to transform land into an economic asset.     

The Land Crisis in Zimbabwe Viewed from South of the Limpopo

Farm invasions in Zimbabwe have highlighted the pressing need for land reform throughout the southern African region. In South Africa, where the racial disparities in land holding are most severe, the events in Zimbabwe have raised the temperature of the land debate and led to calls for land invasions by some rural groups. The ANC-led government, facing criticism from both right and left for the slow pace of reform, has veered between strident defence of private property rights and threats to expropriate white farms. White farming interests have reacted differentially, with some progressive voices joining the calls for an accelerated reform programme. Current land reform policy in South Africa seems set to advance the interests of emerging black commercial farmers and tribal chiefs at the expense of the rural poor and landless.     

The direct use value of municipal commonage goods and services to urban households in the Eastern Cape, South Africa

To redress past racial discrepancies in ownership and tenure, the ANC government of South Africa initiated programmes to make land accessible to the previously disadvantaged. A key component of the national land reform programme was the provision of commonage lands to urban municipalities for use by the urban poor. However, there has been no assessment of the contribution that urban commonage makes to previously disadvantaged households. This study assessed the economic benefits of the commonage programme to local households, through an in-depth survey of 90 households across three small towns in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. We examined the marketed and non-marketed consumptive direct-use values of land-based livelihoods on commonage, calculated via the ‘own reported values’ approach. The results indicate that a proportion of South Africa's urban population rely to some degree on municipal commonage for part of their livelihoods. Commonage contributions to total livelihood incomes ranged between 14 and 20%. If the contributions from commonage were excluded, the incomes of over 10% of households in each study town would drop below the poverty line. Overall, the value of harvests from commonage was worth over R1 000 (US$ 142) per hectare per year and over R4.7 million (US$ 0.68 million) per commonage per year. However, the extent and nature of use and reliance was not uniform among households, so that we developed a typology of commonage users, with four types being identified. However, rapidly growing urban populations and high levels of poverty potentially threaten the sustainability of commonage resource use. Yet the national land reform programme focuses largely on the transfer of land to municipalities and not on sustainable management. Municipalities, in turn, invest relatively little in commonage management, and the little they do is focussed on livestock production. Non-timber forest products are not considered at all, even though this study shows that they are a vital resource for the urban poor, notably for energy and construction materials.     

贵州省乡村旅游开发中农耕文化的发展研究

贵州省作为我国的农业大省之一,农耕文化内涵深厚,种类多样,深入挖掘农耕文化能够为其乡村旅游带来新的发展契机。文章对当前贵州省乡村旅游发展现状进行分析,发现贵州省乡村旅游和农耕文化资源丰富,乡村旅游发展状况较为良好;但同时也存在着农耕文化挖掘不够深入、制约乡村旅游发展,城市化进程加快、乡村旅游中的农耕文化呈现出退化之势,耕地资源减少和环境污染严重、农耕文化旅游产业发展遇到瓶颈等问题。由此提出深入挖掘农耕文化、搭建"无景点"乡村旅游平台,加强农耕文化保护、加大农耕文化宣传力度,保护乡村生态环境,发展生态友好型农耕旅游产业的对策建议,以助力农耕文化与乡村旅游的有机融合,保障贵州省乡村旅游的稳定可持续发展。     

Understanding the adoption of climate change adaptation strategies among smallholder farmers: Evidence from land reform beneficiaries in South Africa

Climatic change has a negative impact on people’s livelihoods, agriculture, freshwater supply and other natural resources that are important for human survival. Therefore, understanding how rural smallholder farmers perceive climate change, climate variability, and factors that influence their choices would facilitate a better understanding of how these farmers adapt to the negative impacts of climate change. A Zero-inflated double hurdle model was employed to estimate the factors influencing farmers’ adoption of adaptation strategies and intensity of adoption at the household level in South Africa. Different socioeconomic factors such as gender, age, and experience in crop farming, institutional factors like access to extension services, and access to climate change information significantly influenced the adoption of climate change adaptation strategies among beneficiaries of land reform in South Africa. Concerning intensity of adoption, age, educational level, farming experience, on-farm training, off-farm income, access to information through ICT and locational variables are the significant determinants of intensity of adaptation strategies. Thus, education attainment, non-farm employment, farming experience are significant incentives to enhance smallholder farmers' adaptive capacity through the adoption of many adaptation approaches. This study therefore concluded that farm-level policy efforts that aim to improve rural development should focus on farmers’ education, on-farm demonstration and non-farm employment opportunities that seek to engage the farmers, particularly during the off-cropping season. The income from non-farm employment can be plough-back into farm operations such as the adoption of soil and water conservation, use of improved planting varieties, insurance, among others to mitigate climate variability and subsequently increase productivity. Policies and investment strategies of the government should be geared towards supporting education, providing on-farm demonstration trainings, and disseminating information about climate change adaptation strategies, particularly for smallholder farmers in the country. Thus, the government, stakeholders, and donor agencies must provide capacity-building innovations around the agricultural extension system and education on climate change using information and communication technologies.     

Perennial grain crops in the West Soudanian Savanna of Mali: perspectives from agroecology and gendered spaces

Perennial grain crops may play an important role in environmentally sound and socially just food systems for Africa. We study the future possibility of integrating perennial grains into Malian farming systems from the perspective of agroecology, and more specifically using a gendered space approach. We interviewed 72 farmers across the sorghum-growing region of Mali. We found that perennial grains offer a vision for transforming human relations with nature that mirrors the resource sharing of customary land tenure, including patterns of extensive and intensive land use in time and space. Women interviewees identified a broad set of potential advantages and challenges to perennial grain production. Advantages include reduced labour, saving seed, and improving food security. Women farmers were concerned about livestock, water access, and resource limitations. We argue that perennial grains may increase access to land and natural resources for women farmers. Perennial grains may improve soil quality, reduce labour early in the rainy season, and provision more resources from fallow lands. Pastoralists stand to benefit from improved pastures in the dry season. We conclude that investments are needed to develop viable crop types in consideration of the complexity of West African farming systems and the local needs of women farmers and pastoralists.     

Land registration effectiveness in a state-subsidised housing project in Mbekweni,South Africa

As part of a programme examining the effectiveness of land tenure forms − tenure administration system combinations, the paper examines how and why beneficiaries use land registration in Project 2, a state subsidised housing project in Mbekweni, South Africa. The ownership − registration combination can have a number of negative consequences when policy makers focus on economics alone, rather than the complete set of factors that are critical for registered ownership to work in poor urban communities. South Africa’s state-subsidised housing programme has created up to 3.7 million housing opportunities. Off-register secondary transactions constitute a major problem when the properties registered in ownership. Building on a series of related case studies, an evaluative schema classifying an ownership − registration combination as strong, semi-strong, semi-weak or weak is presented, along with the main findings from three previously reported case studies where the combination was classified as semi-strong. The beneficiaries in Project 2 were predominantly in-migrants from a rural customary area, and based on earlier work and the literature, a weak or semi-weak classification was expected. However, the case was classified as semi-strong. Ongoing, visible administration is possibly a major factor underlying this classification.     

Labour reserves and surplus populations: Northern Ghana and the Eastern Cape of South Africa

This article is focused on the political economy of two of Africa's “labour reserve” regions, northern Ghana and the Eastern Cape of South Africa. The majority of residents in these regions are taken as paradigmatic examples of “surplus populations.” They exemplify a main feature that has been used to theorize the concept of surplus populations today, namely, that their labour is surplus to the needs of capital accumulation. We follow the method of Arrighi and Piselli, tracing the political economic transformations of these regions from the turn of the 20th century until the present in order to ground the concept of surplus population in a specific historical context. We argue that it is limiting to think about these populations' utility or uselessness only in relation to capital. To understand the political implications of “surplus populations,” we must think about the interrelation between the political and economic roles that they play and how these developed within specific historical contexts.     

Developing an appropriate land use methodology to promote spatially just,formal retail areas in developing countries: The case of the City of Cape Town,South Africa

South African scholars have increasingly recognized that the prevailing management system for land use is one not relevant to the current spatial needs of the country's settlements. These include, in particular, the need to create sustainable, spatially just and resilient settlements and to develop land in a manner that promotes efficient urban development. The debate in the South African literature on land use management has, with a few notable exceptions, yet to venture into the specific mechanics of how to fix this system, ways the system can be used to create a spatially just urban form, or its applicability in formal retail areas.This paper addresses these questions within the context of formal retail areas and the zoning category that these are typically found in, namely that of the General Business zone. This paper initially investigates the current exclusionary nature of formal retail areas in the context of South Africa and within Cape Town and how this is linked to the more macro patterns of spatial exclusion within Cape Town. It is argued that within the context of Cape Town there is a need to focus on both commercial, particularly formal retail, as well as residential, areas with regard to the project of creating a more spatially just city. It is subsequently demonstrated, firstly, how zoning scheme provisions could be used as a mechanism to address these patterns of exclusion in formal retail areas, specifically exploring provisions that would encourage inclusion of informal and microenterprises within shopping malls. Secondly, it is demonstrated how provisions can be included that create a safer and more inviting environment for public transport users and poorer employees and consumers, in formal retail areas.The contribution of this paper is to initiate a long overdue conversation regarding the relationship between land use management and social justice within a developing world context, and in formal retail areas, and aims to set out ways in which land use management can be made more relevant; both for South African cities and cities in other developing countries.     

Livelihood roles of cattle and prospects for alternative land uses at the wildlife/livestock interface in South Africa

The emergence of wildlife ranching as an alternative land use option to agriculture, in Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs), has cast renewed interest on the role of cattle farming in rural livelihoods in areas close to wildlife parks. This study analysed the contribution of cattle to livelihoods and relationships between cattle and potential wildlife land uses in rural areas near Kruger National Park. Data were collected through household surveys, key informant interviews and community workshops. About 11% of households studied owned cattle, and cattle income constituted 29% of total household income. Benefits from cattle were also derived by households without cattle. About 71% of households had at least three sources of income, reflecting diversity of livelihoods. Wildlife related land uses were perceived by some households as threatening cattle production, whilst others viewed them as opportunities for alternative livelihoods. We conclude that cattle production has important livelihood roles, but is not sufficient as a driver of economic development in these areas. Incentives to encourage diversification of livelihoods at the wildlife/livestock interface, with possibilities for rural communities to explore wildlife based land uses should be put in place. In addition, land use policy and planning in such areas should focus on creating institutional mechanisms through which programmes integrating conservation and rural development goals can benefit rural communities.     

Semi‐Subsistence Farming: An Elusive Concept Posing Thorny Policy Questions

The massive expansion of semi‐subsistence farming in the European Union after the Eastern enlargements poses a real challenge to rural development. The problems of semi‐subsistence farms are low cash incomes and incidence of poverty, sub‐optimal use of land and labour, a lack of capital and poor contribution to rural growth. However, they play an important welfare function in some rural areas in Europe; they manage more than 11 million ha of agricultural land and deliver ecosystem services. The Common Agricultural Policy will have to accommodate this now widespread production system, through existing or new policy packages. Particularly important is support for commercialisation to incentivise and smooth the transition to commercial agriculture, and agri‐environmental payments to compensate the semi‐subsistence farmers for the provision of ecosystem services.     

Searching for a Weapon of Mass Production in Rural Africa: Unconvincing Arguments for Land Reform

Many recent arguments for land reform share a central proposition concerning the relative efficiency of small farm production. This article argues that the theoretical reasoning underlying this proposition is not coherent, and furthermore the empirical support for this size–efficiency relationship in Africa is astonishingly weak. Given the evidence, the continued focus on the efficient, egalitarian family farm can only be ideologically driven. The poorest rural people are unlikely to benefit and will probably be harmed by the policies based on these arguments for land reform. To illustrate this point, the article considers data from land redistribution programmes, particularly in South Africa, that suggest not only that the poorest did not acquire land, but also that they suffered declines in rural wage earning opportunities that are crucial for their survival.     

The fragmented politics of sugarcane contract farming in Uganda

In the last decade, contract farming has regained momentum among policymakers and global development agencies as a tool to promote inclusive rural development and responsible investments. Integrating smallholders within global, regional and national agricultural value chains, we are told, represents the sine qua non for alleviating rural poverty. In Uganda, under the label of out-grower schemes, contract farming is currently undergoing massive expansion, driven especially by the boom in sugarcane cultivation. Drawing from three case studies of sugarcane contract farming in Uganda, the paper re-politicizes the debate around contract farming by looking at the power relations within which these schemes are embedded. We argue, what is seen in Uganda's expansion is a political dynamic derived both from the major dislocations and dispossessions required to establish the plantation estate and its work force, as well as from the effort to bring many smallholders using unimproved methods on land with sometimes unclear tenure arrangements into contracted arrangements for supplying sugarcane. The result has been highly contentious politics around sugar's expansion, where struggles over land dispossession merge with those around exploitative wage labour, around the loss and transformation of livelihoods, and around debt, power inequalities and environmental harm, a matrix in which state violence and co-optation are ever-present.     

Pen to the tiller: Land reform and social mobility across the 1979 Iranian revolution

Giovanni Arrighi joined together questions of agrarian political economy with questions concerning the livelihoods of rural migrants and the fate of peasant communities as they dissipated. In this article, we apply Arrighi's concerns to the case of Iran to examine how processes of agrarian transformation link with trends in social stratification and upward mobility. First, we argue that land reform implemented during the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi contributed to a heterogenous social differentiation of the Iranian peasantry. Second, we claim that the widening of access to credentials fostered by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's Islamic Republic laid the tracks by which peasants and rural households could convert landholding assets into newly accessible forms of cultural capital. The benefits of these transformational processes, however, fell disproportionately to the rural middle strata created under the Pahlavi monarchy. Through the use of a new survey dataset, we show how pre‐1979 land reform in Iran favoured segments of the peasantry, not for those who remained in rural agricultural production, but instead for those who utilized landholdings as a means to transfer status and opportunities to their children after the 1979 Iranian revolution.     

Traditional agricultural land use and some changing trends in Maridi district, southern Sudan

This article looks at the differences in land use management in Maridi District, southern Sudan, and asserts that these reflect not only varying socioecological and environmental circumstances, but also factors such as population pressure, sociocultural and traditional beliefs and values, economic and resource factors, opportunities and accessibility and historical trends. The article concludes that policy makers and socioeconomic development planners of the rural areas of southern Sudan should identify constraints to increases in food production. This is only possible through appropriate knowledge about the different enterprise patterns and crops grown, including information on socioecological factors, environmental resource use and farmers' perceptions and production techniques. It should be possible to offer alternative methods of analysis essential for effective rural and agricultural land use development planning in similar socioecological and environmental situations in the southern Sudan and other areas of tropical Africa.