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Annual report 2000
(Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), 2001) PLAAS
The Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) focuses on the land restitution and redistribution programmes initiated by the post-apartheid democratic state; land tenure reform; emerging regimes of natural resource management; rural livelihoods and farm-household production systems; chronic poverty and rural development; and processes of institutional restructuring and reorientation in support of land and agrarian reform in South Africa. The main activities of PLAAS are research, support to national policy development, training, post-graduate teaching, commissioned evaluation studies, and advisory and facilitation services. The university’s mission statement commits it to ‘responding in critical and creative ways to the needs of a society in transition’, and to ‘helping build an equitable and dynamic society’– commitments taken very seriously by staff at PLAAS. The year 2000 saw our researchers beginning to engage with policy on land and local government reform in a more public manner than in the past (when they tended to do so in ‘backroom’ and advisory roles), and to adopt a more adversarial stance towards government.
Annual report 2001
(Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), 2002) PLAAS
PLAAS continues to grow and to take on new projects and staff. This presents a number of challenges, not least of which is the sustainability of such growth. The year 2001 saw the completion of a twelve month-long ‘organisational change process’ which addressed key issues of institutional sustainability. This resulted in new governance and management structures, revised salary scales and conditions of service in line with those of the university, and staff contracts that offer a degree of security of tenure despite the vicissitudes of external donor funding. By the end of the year most of the new systems and procedures were in operation, bringing a sense of solid foundations and greater stability. One of our innovations was to cluster researchers and projects into ‘focus areas’ co-ordinated by senior researchers. We hope that this will facilitate more effective links between individual projects, encourage coherence in our research, training and policy engagement, and facilitate strategic planning. The five focus areas are: land reform; agro-food regimes; community-based natural resource management (CBNRM); rural governance; and chronic poverty and development policy. A major new focus for PLAAS in 2001 was the post-graduate teaching programme. Twelve students registered for the Post-Graduate Diploma in Land and Agrarian Studies, eleven completed the year, and three qualified to proceed to the MPhil. The teaching programme is carried out in collaboration with a number of other institutions and university teaching departments, giving it a truly multi-disciplinary character.
Annual report 2002
(Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), 2003) PLAAS
The year 2002 was an extremely busy one for PLAAS staff, and saw the initiation of many new projects and activities, some of them qualitatively different to anything undertaken before. These included an in-depth, national review of the land reform programme, and the release of several media briefings that summarise research findings on poverty in the Western Cape. Others were the co-hosting of a continent-wide networking programme on land and resource rights, and lobbying and advocacy in relation to a proposed new law, the Communal Land Rights Bill. These indicate that PLAAS is only just beginning to realise its potential to combine rigorous academic research, effective communication of research findings, highly-focused policy advocacy, and effective networking in support of African research and policy advocacy. Research highlights of the year include the initiation of a project to evaluate national land and agrarian reform policies and their impacts since 1994. Ruth Hall and Dr Peter Jacobs were recruited to undertake this research and made impressive progress in relation to this ambitious and challenging task. Other important new projects that began in 2002 included Dr Thembela Kepe’s research on HIV/AIDS and land-based livelihoods, and the multi-disciplinary and international KNOWFISH project on the informational needs and institutional structures for effective fisheries co-management, co-ordinated by Dr Mafa Hara.
Annual report 2003
(Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), 2004) PLAAS
Applied social science researchers generally want to see their research influence policy and practice; those of a more activist bent seek to ‘change the world, not simply to interpret it’.1 In its mission statement PLAAS envisages a strong connection between its research projects and processes of policy development and advocacy. To this end we are guided by clear values and a commitment to ‘social change that empowers the poor, builds democracy and enhances sustainable development… gender equity is integral to these goals’ (PLAAS mission statement). It is relatively easy to reach agreement on a general statement of this kind, but applying and realising this vision is less straightforward. The macro- and micro-politics of policy making and programme implementation are complicated and often highly contested. In addition, PLAAS researchers do not always agree with one other on the content of policy recommendations or on strategies of engagement. They do, however, seek to learn from each other through discussion and debate on a rich and varied range of experiences.
Annual report 2004
(Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), 2005) PLAAS
The wider context of our research and training, and the ultimate rationale for establishing and maintaining a centre such as PLAAS, is the key challenge of deeply entrenched poverty, as well as the inequality to which it is inextricably linked. A majority of citizens in South Africa, as in the wider southern African region, are subject to an on-going crisis of livelihood vulnerability, exacerbated by a raging HIV/Aids pandemic. These realities tend to empty formal democracy of substantive content. Poverty and vulnerability are deepest in rural areas where the majority of the region’s population still lives. The greatest concentrations of such poverty are in those areas previously designated exclusively for African settlement, the former ‘native reserves’, but poverty is also widespread in the commercial farming sector. This sector has always paid extremely low wages, but has been shedding jobs steadily for the past decade, and what jobs survive are largely casual or seasonal in character. Poverty in both contexts has its origins in colonial policies of land acquisition, settlement and economic development that dispossessed the indigenous majority of their land and created dual and highly unequal political, social, legal and economic regimes. A similar legacy is found in coastal communities in relation to unequal access to marine and coastal resources.
Annual report 2006-2007
(Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), 2008) PLAAS
Over the past two years the contradictions inherent in South Africa’s post-apartheid growth and development path have become increasingly evident. Growth has not managed to reduce very high levels of unemployment to a significant degree, and large numbers of people remain trapped in structural poverty. The emergence of a growing black middle class has helped reduce inter-racial inequality, but this is small consolation to those with insufficient and insecure incomes who scrape a living in low-wage jobs (sometimes called ‘the working poor’), engage in survivalist micro-enterprises in informal settlements and densely settled rural areas, or depend in large part on social grants. A key question for South Africa is thus: what policies can ensure more inclusive and poverty-reducing forms of economic development?
Annual report 2012
(Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), 2013) PLAAS
In much of the global South the instability in global financial systems continued to have dire effects – and there were many worrying signs that the serious food price inflation the world experienced in 2008 would return. In sub-Saharan Africa, policy-makers and investors continued to emphasise that agriculture is central to inclusive economic growth in the region. While this was accompanied by much optimistic talk about the supposed benefits of a ‘green revolution’ in Africa, it is unclear whether many of the projected investments will materialise. In the absence of an understanding of the complex political economy of inequality and hunger in the region, it is unlikely that technical fixes alone will reduce poverty. In South Africa, there was modest progress in the management of poverty but no success in addressing the root causes of massive structural unemployment and inequality. Land, agrarian and rural development policy continued to languish in the doldrums. There was little clarity about the status of the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform’s disappointing 2011 Green Paper; there were significant doubts about the long-term implementability and scalability of the Comprehensive Rural Development Plan, and controversial proposals embodied in the Traditional Courts Bill caused widespread concern.
PLAAS annual report 2013
(Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), 2014) PLAAS
This Act is most commonly associated with the consolidation of the colonial ‘land grab’, which had gathered force during the previous 200 years, and with helping to create the framework for the infamous ‘Black Spot dispossessions’ of the Apartheid regime. But the Natives Land Act was about much more than land. Most importantly it played a key role in territorially and politically entrenching racial segregation into the very political structure of South African society, relegating the majority of its population into ‘reserves’ and ‘homelands’ under the control of undemocratically appointed and imposed chiefs and puppet rulers. A century later, the legacy of this Act still shapes the lives of South Africans, in town as well as in the countryside. The inequitable distribution of land continues to plague the present-day agro-food system, so that millions spend their lives in poverty while only a small number of powerful agri-businesses and individuals benefit. The glaring racial inequality in land ownership – and the inability of nearly 20 years of land reform to do much about it – continues to be a politically toxic legacy for the country as a whole, and threatens to undermine the project of national reconciliation. Even more crucially, the colonial land grab and its Apartheid-era consolidation has brought about an enormous level of inequality in wealth and income in the economy as a whole.
PLAAS Annual Report 2020
(Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), 2021) PLAAS
In our previous Annual Report, I remarked that 2019 seemed to be a year of the gathering storm. Little did we know what was coming. As we looked forward to 2020, we knew that it was going to be a significant year. For one thing, PLAAS was entering its 25th year – a marker of organisational resilience and maturity. For another, Ben Cousins, who had founded PLAAS and who had continued to play a key part in its direction and leadership – even after he stepped down as Director and took up the South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI) Chair in Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies – was due to retire. Prof Ruth Hall, who had until then led our work on land reform in South Africa and “land grabs” elsewhere on the continent, was getting ready to step into his shoes. Ursula Arends, who had ably held the administrative reins, was stepping down after almost 20 years, as was our financial manager, Trevor Reddy: their roles were to be taken over by a single Finance and Operations Manager. So, change was afoot.

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