Conference Papers and Reports

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Browsing by Author "Cousins, Ben"

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
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    Access to land and rural poverty in South Africa
    (Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), 2012-09) Cousins, Ben
    The big picture: some history • Large-scale land dispossession from 1652 into the late 20th century • 1913 and 1936 Land Acts: African majority confined to 13% of country • Forced removals in apartheid years: 2.5 million people (1955 to 1990) • By 1994, 82 million ha of commercial farmland owned by 60,000 white farmers • 13 million black people were crowded into former ‘homelands’ • On private farms, 3 million workers and dependents – poorly paid, lacked basic facilities, no security of tenure • Commercial farming sector heavily subsidised by the state until the mid-1980s • Vibrant African
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    Commercial farming and agribusiness in South Africa and their changing roles in Africa’s agro-food system
    (Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), 2015) Hall, Ruth; Cousins, Ben
    Our paper is on commercial farming and agribusiness in South Africa and their changing roles in Africa’s agro-food system, as a response to debates and theoretical propositions about internal agrarian change in BRICS countries and their relations with other middle-income countries and the old hubs of capital. South Africa is of course an outlier among the BRICS group of countries, given its far smaller economy, and was included only in 2010, as the only candidate that could be seen as economically and politically dominant in Africa – though by last year, Nigeria had overtaken South Africa as the largest economy in Africa.
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    Directions for land reform – what might another Green Paper propose? Alternative options and their ideological underpinnings
    (2012) Cousins, Ben
    International and SA debates: 4 broad approaches & loose coalitions • “Modernist-conservative”/modernisation: support the existing structure of agriculture (capital intensive farming in large units) but deracialise LSCF sector to ease political tensions • “Neo-liberal”/efficiency & equity: remove economic distortions, liberalise markets, redistribute to efficient small farmers, acquire land throughmarket-based land reform • “Welfarist”/poverty alleviation: land and farming as a supplement to employment and grants • “Radical populist”/structural transformation: redistribute wealth & power to rural poor, support diverse land-based livelihoods, expropriate land without compensation
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    Livelihoods after land reform: The South African case
    (Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), 2012) Aliber, Michael; Maluleke, T; Manenzhe, T; Paradza, Gaynor; Cousins, Ben
    SA’s land reform regarded as a failure – economic objectives – the spectre of ‘failed projects’ – changing the racial pattern of land ownership – too slow • No consensus as to why, or what to do • Even so, ambitious if vague promises • Dominant ethos = modernisation “Another focus area [of the Department] will be skills transfer, to promote the transfer of skills from white commercial farmers to black subsistence farmers” (Joemat-Pettersson, 2010)
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    The Monster from the Green Lagoon Assessing the 2011 Green Paper on Land Reform
    (2011) Cousins, Ben
    Background • Consensus across the board that LR is in deep trouble and unlikely to meet targets • Some argue that food security is of rising concern, given rising food prices (here and globally) • Minister Nkwinti: “90% of LR projects have failed”; “30% of land reform farms sold by beneficiaries” • But no clear basis for these claims in available data – and they are damaging to LR as a national project ....
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    The political economy of global and regional agro-food system change
    (2015) Cousins, Ben; Borras, Jun
    Changes in the BRICS countries: What are key similarities/differences between the agrarian structures of Brazil, China and South Africa? What are the dynamics of change within these BRICS countries, in relation to the production, circulation and consumption of agricultural commodities?
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    Social differentiation and ‘accumulation from below’ in Msinga, KwaZulu-Natal
    (2014) Cousins, Ben
    South Africa has a highly unequal distribution of agricultural land > hence land reform BUT Who should be the primary beneficiaries of redistributive land reform? How can land redistribution address the structural dimensions of inequality and poverty ? Supporting smallholders... but what is a ‘smallholder’?
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    Why land invasions will happen here too .....
    (Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), 2000) Cousins, Ben
    Will Zimbabwean-style land invasions take place in South Africa at some point in the future? In my view – yes, it is likely that they will, despite the great differences between the political economies of the two countries. And as in Zimbabwe, land invasions organized by populist politicians will call attention to society’s failure to adequately address deepening rural poverty, and put a dramatic spotlight on the emotive issue of our highly unequal and racially skewed land distribution. This could result in land reform moving higher up the political agenda than it is at present.