Philosophiae Doctor - PhD (Land and Agrarian Studies)

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Conundrums of food governance in South African metropoles
(University of the Western Cape, 2024) Kroll, Florian
This thesis reflects on the discourse and practice of urban food governance in the city of Cape Town, considered from the point of view of a Foucauldian analysis of deliberative statecraft. The focus is on the ways in which metropolitan governments have tried to make food systems visible and galvanise strategic intent to govern them. Food systems governance discourse (FSGD) lies at the heart of these efforts. It interprets food systems issues as a wicked problem requiring adaptive governance. How does food systems problematisation inform governmental institutions, policies and rationalities? What are the resulting limitations and affordances of FSGD? To explore these questions, it distils insights from five papers. The first paper, “Mapping obesogenic food environments in South Africa and Ghana: Correlations and Contradictions” (Kroll et al 2019), considers a spatial strategy to problematise food environments. This reveals that, in Khayelitsha, formal shopping centres present problematic food environments, while street traders make healthier options more accessible. Although the key role of poverty highlights the need for interventions beyond food systems, the paper argues that food environments are an appropriate target for governance. Legibilising foodscapes promotes coherent institutional agendas, enabling the state to apply spatial governance instruments to food issues. In the second paper, “Digital storytelling for policy impact: perspectives from co-producing knowledge for food system governance in South Africa” (Adelle, Black and Kroll 2022) the focus of problematization is on how vulnerable people unfold agency in adverse food environments. The paper recounts an intervention that includes actor perspectives in deliberative processes. We argue that participants’ stories impact governance actors’ subjectivities, deepening their understanding and supporting shared agenda-setting. “Agroecology and the metropolitan biopolitics of food in Cape Town and Johannesburg” (Kroll 2021) explores state capabilities to promote agro-ecological transitions. It finds poor alignment between the rationalities and institutions of government and ‘deep, just transition’. However, the presence of sympathetic officials presents opportunities for alliances to reorient instruments of government. The paper argues for persistent strategic engagement between officials and agro-ecological proponents.
Blue economy investments and injustices around marine protected areas: the case of Mtwara coast, Tanzania
(University of the Western Cape, 2024) Mtui, Rose Sallema; Isaacs, Moenieba
This thesis explores Blue Economy investments and injustices around marine protected areas. It examines whether fishing communities are gaining or losing from investments in the marine park areas; and unpacks the dilemmas that authorities face when they promote investments while protecting communities’ livelihoods at the same time. The study futher assesses the role of the state in supporting communities’ livelihoods. The thesis draws on the literature on the political ecology of natural resource governance and blue and green economies. It expands the scholarly debates around the logic behind blue economy, and its impacts on fishing communities’ livelihoods and the environment at large. It locates its discussion on Harvey’s theorisation of the accumulation by dispossession (AbD) and on Issa Shivji’s articulations of AbD and displacement. Several conceptual insights including governmentality, displacement, livelihood and vulnerability, local livelihoods (referring to Dorward’ aspirations), criminalisation of livelihood and ecological crisis are used to explain the logic behind blue economy in Mtwara, Tanzania and how investment activities impact communities’ livelihoods and the environment.
Land, livelihoods and belonging on redistributed land of former labour tenants in South Africa
(Universty of the Western Cape, 2024) Yeni, Sithandiwe
This thesis explores what happens to the lives of the ‘relative surplus population’ when they repossess land in the context of neoliberal capitalism characterised by the crisis of social reproduction. It explains how land repossession has shaped tenure arrangements, livelihoods, and notions of belonging among the former labour tenants and their descendants. It draws on Marxist and feminist political economy theories and applies the concepts of racial capitalism and belonging. The combination of these theories and concepts, such as primitive accumulation, relative surplus population, social reproduction, gendered labour, belonging and racism, helps to explain the history of land dispossession and its outcomes and the position of working-class women in the process. I use these theoretical tools and concepts to analyse contemporary processes of agrarian change under neoliberal capitalism. The research was conducted in Mhlopheni in KwaZulu-Natal province, using qualitative and quantitative research methods. This was done through a survey of 32 out of 41 households, 25 life histories, nine focus groups, and 56 in-depth interviews, mainly between 2021 and 2022. Additional telephonic interviews were conducted between 2023 and 2024. Respondents included people living in Mhlopheni, predominantly former labour tenants and their descendants, government officials, land activists and people who currently and previously worked at the land rights nongovernment organisation that supports former labour tenants in this region. This data was supplemented with the literature.
Generational dynamics of commercial farming in highland Kenya
(University of the Western Cape, 2024) Hakizimana, Cyriaque
Debates on the role of commercial farming as a key driver for agrarian change are well established in the agrarian scholarly field. however, they tend to focus on the class and gender dimensions. generational aspects of commercial farming and their implications for rural livelihoods for young people are neglected in this vast literature. this dissertation seeks to fill this gap. it seeks to understand drivers that shape inclusion in and exclusion from commercial farming, outcomes for rural youth, their responses, and how they are gendered. the research presented in this dissertation was conducted in timau region of meru county in kenya. timau was one of the 237 settlement schemes that formed part of the kenyatta-era public schemes programme known as the “million-acre settlement scheme” that redistributed formerly european-owned large-scale capitalist farms to develop a smallholder agricultural sector in kenya. intersecting dynamics of generation, gender, and class determine who has access to agrarian resources, and who benefits from them. this dissertation argues that the limitation of young people’s access to agrarian resources is linked with generational dynamics in land acquisition within the household. the interplay of these factors creates processes of unequal gender and generational distribution of agrarian resources. the youth land scarcity identified in this dissertation, therefore, is proposed to be generationally manufactured to shield and protect the patriarchs’ own socio-economic benefits from commercial farming. generation, gender, and class social relations are important composite elements of the generationally manufactured land scarcity, and their intersection determines the form of young people’s inclusion in or exclusion from commercial farming.
Blue economy investments and injustices around marine protected areas: The case of Mtwara Coast, Tanzania
(University of the Western Cape, 2024) Mtui, Rose Sallema; Isaacs, Moenieba
This thesis explores Blue Economy investments and injustices around marine protected areas. It examines whether fishing communities are gaining or losing from investments in the marine park areas; and unpacks the dilemmas that authorities face when they promote investments while protecting communities’ livelihoods at the same time. The study futher assesses the role of the state in supporting communities’ livelihoods. The thesis draws on the literature on the political ecology of natural resource governance and blue and green economies. It expands the scholarly debates around the logic behind blue economy, and its impacts on fishing communities’ livelihoods and the environment at large. It locates its discussion on Harvey’s theorisation of the accumulation by dispossession (AbD) and on Issa Shivji’s articulations of AbD and displacement. Several conceptual insights including governmentality, displacement, livelihood and vulnerability, local livelihoods (referring to Dorward’ aspirations), criminalisation of livelihood and ecological crisis are used to explain the logic behind blue economy in Mtwara, Tanzania and how investment activities impact communities’ livelihoods and the environment. It highlights the current blue injustice work and debates on blue economy which are deeply embedded in neo-liberal policies that explain pathways of resource use and communities’ livelihoods.
The politics of inclusive business models in agricultural investments: The case of sugarcane production in Kilombero, Tanzania
(University of Western Cape, 2021) Sulle, Emmanuel; Hall, Ruth
In recent years, donors, policy makers, and non-governmental organisations working on land and agricultural issues have latched onto the catch phrase ‘inclusive business models’ as an alternative to large-scale land acquisitions. Development actors promote these inclusive models, such as contract farming or outgrowing schemes, to mitigate the often significant and adverse impacts of land grabs on rural people while still supporting foreign direct investments, particularly in agriculture in developing countries. The need to increase investments in agriculture in developing countries is clear, however, it is important to assess how such investments are implemented and who benefits from them and who loses.
Investigating socio-spatial trajectories of class formation: Accumulation from below and above on 'New Qwa Qwa farms' from the mid-1980s to 2016
(University of the Western Cape, 2020) Ngubane, Mnqobi Mthandeni; Cousins, Benjamin
This 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. The study adopted a mixed-methods survey, combining indepth qualitative and quantitative data, informed by critical realism and historical materialism within Marxist agrarian political economy. This methodology was retrospective, circumspective and prospective in unravelling agricultural households’ livelihood trajectories over time and space. The state’s targeting of classes of labour and fragments of the middle class as beneficiaries of land reform in the area of study has materialised into heterogeneous land reform outcomes centred on differentiated farming systems, farming scales, and farm labour requirements. Research findings suggest class differentiation of a sample of 62 cases of family farms into agricultural households engaged in social reproduction (50%), simple reproduction (26%), and accumulation (24%). The first two categories, constituting 76% of the sample, are essentially small-scale capitalist enterprises engaged in constrained and successful reproduction of capital – some of these households can be theorised as an impoverished landed property for their reliance on farm-rental income, combined with marginal farming, and precarious off-farm work for social reproduction. These are small-scale capitalist enterprises on the basis of the capital-wage relation. Their farm production rest upon small livestock herd reproduction and generalised renting out of arable and grazing land. A minority of these small-scale capitalist farms use solely family labour and can thus be defined as petty commodity producers on the basis of their embodiment of the capital-wage relation in one soul or family. The third category constitutes agricultural households on upward trajectories of capital accumulation from below and above, through expanded reproduction of mixed-farming systems, expressed in intensive farming of small but capitalised farms, as well as extensive farming expressed in livestock expansion/accumulation and renting in of additional grazing land, plus capital intensive crop expansion on non-irrigated land and renting in of additional arable land by some of the top 24% of the sample. These research findings illuminate heterogeneous land reform outcomes centred on improved access to land for widening the base of social reproduction for classes of labour, and attendant simple reproduction of small-scale capitalist farms. This heterogeneity also includes the function of land reform for accumulation of capital for the black middle class who can muster off-farm capital resources into expanded farm reproduction on their own and without accumulation from above, demonstrated by some accumulators in the area of study. Accumulation from above is taking place on some of the studied land reform farms, often through intersections with economic histories of accumulation from below, exposing the contradictions of capitalism and attendant compulsions of accumulators to accumulate capital by any means necessary. The downside of accumulation from above, however, through capture of public agricultural subsidy in the area of study, is that the collective 76% of the sample at the lower ends of social differentiation and those accumulators excluded from extraeconomic accumulation, are barred from accessing state subsidy that benefit a few politically-connected farmers. Whether class alliances across those excluded from accessing state subsidy will materialise into overt political action in demanding a share of public goods from the local ruling elite remains to be seen. These research findings contribute to a heterogeneous understanding of land reform which is sensitive to differentiated livelihood outcomes. Prospectively, this suggests much-needed government policy tailored to different classes of farmers in post land reform localities.
Investigating socio-spatial trajectories of class formation: Accumulation from below and above on 'New Qwa Qwa farms' from the mid-1980s to 2016
(University of Western Cape, 2020) Ngubane, Mnqobi Mthandeni; Cousins, Benjamin
This 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.
Ocean governance in South Africa: Policy and implementation
(University of the Western Cape, 2020) Naidoo, Ashley Desmond; Hara, Mafaniso
Ocean Governance in South Africa has gained momentum over the last decade with the publication of the Green and White Papers on the National Environmental Management of the Ocean in 2012 and 2014, and the promulgation of the Marine Spatial Planning Act in 2019. Parallel to this South Africa developed and implemented the Operation Phakisa Ocean Economy Development Programme and declared a network of twenty Marine Protected Areas. The timing of this study over the last five years allowed the opportunity to undertake a detailed study of the Ocean Governance Policy Development and Implementation as the formulation of the policy and its early implementation unfolded. The Study is primarily based on interpretation of the Green and White Papers as the primary and directed ocean governance policies produced by the Government of South African and the National Department of Environmental Affairs. It places these most recent specific ocean environmental policies in the context of the many other environmental policies that exits in the country.
Movement of Zimbabwean immigrants into, within and out of the farm labour market in Limpopo province South Africa
(University of the Western Cape, 2019) Kudejira, Denboy; Du Toit, Andries
This thesis presents findings from ethnographic research conducted over a period of 17 months in the Blouberg and Molemole local municipalities of Capricorn District in Limpopo province with the aim of exploring mobility patterns of Zimbabwean migrants into, within and out of the South African farm labour market, and understanding how these movements are linked to access to food and other livelihood opportunities. Limpopo serves both as a transit province for Zimbabweans who wish to proceed further south to other provinces of South Africa and a destination for irregular migrants who live and work on white-owned commercial farms. Although constrained mobility, which results from their illegality and remoteness of farms from public services, limit their access to sources of food, irregular Zimbabwean migrants in Blouberg-Molemole area perceive that moving into South African farm labour has improved their food security and livelihood statuses. The South Africa farm labour market provides opportunities to earn income, and enables them to make long term investments in their families back home above immediate individual food security needs. Horizontal and vertical social networks established among Zimbabwean migrants in the Blouberg-Molemole area do not only serve the purpose of facilitating information sharing, but are also forms of social capital on which individual members depend on for their food security and livelihood needs.
Agricultural investments in the communal areas of the Eastern Cape: The impacts of joint ventures on livelihoods and land rights
(University of the Western Cape, 2018) Bunce, Brittany; Cousin, Ben
A major and unresolved challenge facing South Africa’s post-apartheid government, is how best to overcome the historical injustices of land dispossession and the resultant poverty now found in the communal areas of the former 'homelands'. In line with the South African government’s hybrid of neo-liberal and social welfare approaches to development, one important strategy for addressing these challenges has so far been the promotion of inclusive business models such as joint ventures (JVs), especially in the context of land restitution claims, but also in communal areas. This study explores the impacts of the JV model on livelihoods and land rights and use, and engages with key debates regarding the dynamics of class formation in the former 'homelands' of South Africa. The study undertakes a comparative analysis of two Joint Venture (JV) dairy farms, involving the same agribusiness partner, Amadlelo Agri. The farms are located on irrigation schemes in the former Ciskei of South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province. The JVs involve residents from the rural settlements of Keiskammahoek and Shiloh, as both landowners and workers. The comparative case study presented here illustrates quite divergent outcomes when the same JV model is implemented in different rural settlements, most powerfully because of differences in the class structure of each settlement. Class analysis helps to explain the more intense intragroup conflicts that have emerged around the JV in Shiloh. Intragroup dynamics and conflicts, which have historical roots extending beyond the implementation of the JV intervention, are also critical to understanding divergent outcomes. A class-analytic approach assists in understanding the tensions that the JV model of capitalist farming generates in relation to household reproduction, in a class-differentiated manner. The sole focus in much of the literature on agricultural investments has been on relationships between agribusiness, and what are too often portrayed as homogenous 'communities’. However, this thesis illustrates that this approach is misleading when applied to analysis of the real politics on the ground. Struggles over jobs, dividends and land take place within highly differentiated communities. Investigating the inter- and intra-household distribution of JV benefits and risks is central to understanding the impacts of the JV on livelihoods and incomes, and also the emerging contentions and conflicts. To this end, I explore how class interacts with other aspects of social difference, particularly gender, kinship, ethnicity, race, generation and religious affiliation. A class-analytic approach is significant because it illuminates the emerging agrarian class structure that a JV-type intervention both reflects and in turn conditions, in dialectical fashion. It thus allows exploration of the implications of the JV model for wider processes of agrarian change in South Africa. Although there is evidence of livelihood benefits being derived by some households, as well as limited opportunities for accumulation, the JV model does not appear to stimulate the emergence of a class of productive black farmers. Significantly, the study could not identify any households as 'middle farmers', reliant on 'accumulation from below', which many authors consider to be a more progressive, dynamic and desirable pathway of agrarian reform. The JV model is at risk of equating ‘black emerging farmers’ with a group of customary landowners, who are in reality workers and 'passive recipients' of JV dividends and land rents.
Urban land tenure, tenancy and water and sanitation services delivery in South Africa
(University of the Western Cape) Sibanda, Darlington; Isaacs, M.
The aim of the study was to develop a clear understanding of the relationship between land tenure, tenancy and water and sanitation services development planning and delivery in the context of rapid urbanisation in post-apartheid South Africa. The study revolved around mismatches which exist due the largely binary polarisation of urban land tenure in the form of the 'formal' and 'informal' view by municipalities which rely on technocratic approaches on one hand, and fragmented, sectorial interventions, to basic services delivery on the other. In addressing the problem for the research, emphasis was on lower-income working class neighbourhoods in the Western Cape Province, City of Cape Town in particular. Using a mixed methods approach where both quantitative and qualitative methods were used, data was collected from the following study sites: Nkanini (Khayelitsha), Mshini Wam (Joe Slovo Park, Milnerton), Langa (Old Hostels) and Kensington. These study sites were carefully selected for contrast and comparison, as the initial research in the area has revealed various prior tenure arrangements.
Agrarian change and the fate of farmworkers : trajectories of strategic partnership and farm labour in Levubu Valley, South Africa
(University of the Western Cape, 2015) Manenzhe, Tshililo Justice; Cousins, Ben
This thesis examines the trajectories of agrarian change on community-owned commercial farms in the Levubu Valley in the northern part of Limpopo Province, South Africa. Levubu is a locality where fertile land was developed and made highly productive after state-led dispossession of African communities. White farmers were initially resettled on a state-run irrigation scheme, but later became independent large-scale commercial farmers linked to global agro-food markets. The thesis focusses on four Communal Property Associations (CPAs) that acquired ownership of farms in Levubu. Government’s post-apartheid land restitution programme required the CPAs to enter into ‘strategic partnership’ agreements with agribusiness companies. Resettlement of beneficiaries on these farms was ruled out in an attempt to sustain existing production systems and levels of employment. After these partnerships collapsed, CPAs have attempted to run the farms themselves, through operating companies employing professional farm managers. Using key concepts from agrarian political economy, the thesis seeks to understand the dynamics of production and social reproduction on the farms and the political tensions that have arisen since restitution occurred. It also explores how this form of land restitution has impacted on the livelihoods of farmworkers. The study combines intensive (or qualitative) research methods, involving indepth interviews, focus groups and direct observations, and extensive (or quantitative) approaches, mainly in the form of a farmworker household survey undertaken in two communities. This research design has allowed for ‘retrospective’ analysis of changes over time to be complemented by ‘circumspective’ analysis of the relations and dynamics of property, production and power on community-owned farms in Levubu. The main findings of the study are that neither joint venture companies nor community-owned farming enterprises have been able to distribute dividend payments to claimant community members as yet. Rather, when profits have been realised they have largely been invested back into productive enterprises. Few other benefits have been received either, other than the preferential employment of some claimant farmworkers on the farms, a small number as managers or supervisors. Although additional jobs were created in the initial stages of restitution, these enterprises have struggled to maintain employment levels. Poor management decisions have meant that increased labour costs have not been accompanied by increases in productivity and output. Severe tensions and conflicts have arisen within CPAs, manifested in different forms of identity politics and competing ‘modes of belonging’. Tensions in communityowned large-scale farming enterprises are explained by the contradictory unity of capital and labour within community-owned enterprises, with difficult choices to be made between enhancing social reproduction or ensuring accumulation and profitability. These combine with complex processes of identification in socio-political struggles around access to and control of key resources. These findings suggest that policy makers should re-examine assumptions in relation to community-owned farming enterprises and explore mechanisms through which individual beneficiary households can realise more significant benefits. One policy option might be to seek the complementarity of large-scale commercial farming and smallholder farming systems, both on land restored to CPAs through restitution and in communal areas.
Accumulation and differentiation: the dynamics of change in the large-scale commercial farming sector of South Africa
(University of the Western Cape, 2015) Genis, Amelia Jasmine; Cousins, Ben
The general image of large-scale commercial farming in South Africa is one of technological dynamism and international competitiveness. However, such a generalisation obscures considerable differentiation in terms of size, scale, capital reproduction strategies and future directions of change between and within farming regions. My study on reproduction, accumulation and differentiation in the large-scale commercial farming sector makes a small contribution towards explaining this substantive diversity, as well as the underlying processes at work, in three different agro-ecological regions of the country. A framework to analyse the strategies of large-scale commercial farmers was derived from volume 1 of Marx’s Capital and interpretations thereof by Marxist scholars, e.g. Ernest Mandel, Henry Bernstein, David Harvey, Ben Fine and Alfredo Saad-Filho. The four strategies or processes are broadly identified as a) expanding the scale or scope of production, in other words, to increase the capital intensity of production and/or geographic size, and/or the number of products, b) expanding the scale or scope of the business by expanding into new enterprises either up or down the value chain, c) increasing economic efficiency, which can be achieved by means of lowering the cost of commodity production, increasing productivity in terms of yield per hectare or per animal through technical and biological efficiency, or by organising workers and tasks to make workers as productive as possible, and d) taking part in political action in order to reduce uncertainties and/or establish preferential access to and control over key resources, markets or policy processes. Data from a questionnaire survey conducted with 141 large-scale commercial farmers in Limpopo, the Western Cape and Northern Cape provinces, as well as semi-structured interviews with 32 farmers in these regions were analysed to determine the most prevalent strategies and assess their outcomes. The outcomes of these strategies varied between and within regions and resulted in the differentiation of capitalist farmers into “accumulators”, “successful reproducers”, “struggling reproducers” and “simple commodity producers”. This approach helps to uncover processes and patterns of agrarian change, and provides a richer, more detailed, understanding of the dynamics of change in the large-scale farming sector of South Africa which can help inform debates on policy optionsfor the sector and for land reform.
The livelihood impacts of commercialization in emerging small-scale irrigation schemes in the Olifants catchment area of South Africa.
(University of the Western Cape, 2012) Tapela, Barbara Nompumelelo; Cousins, Benjamin
This thesis examines livelihoods in the wake of agricultural commercialization under the Revitalization of Smallholder Irrigation Schemes (RESIS) Programme and similar revitalization initiatives within the Olifants River Basin in Limpopo Province. The focus is on contractual joint ventures and strategic partnerships implemented within selected smallholder irrigation schemes. The thesis is based primarily on in-depth empirical studies conducted between October 2003 and March 2009 in three sites located in two Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Programme (ISRDP) poverty nodes namely, Greater Sekhukhune and Vhembe Districts. To a lesser extent, the thesis draws on findings from rapid appraisals of five additional study sites in Greater Sekhukhune District. Research findings showed that the performance of joint ventures and strategic partnerships had so far largely fallen short of expectations. With the exception of a minority of smallholders involved in RESIS-Recharge strategic partnerships, the promise of higher incomes and improved livelihoods had often remained elusive, while debts and potential losses of often meagre household assets loomed large, threatening to erode existing livelihoods and undermine government interventions. This was mainly because ‘viability’ in both the RESIS and RESIS-Recharge phases was narrowly seen in economic and technical terms, such that reduction of transaction costs often entailed the divesting of responsibilities to address issues of rural poverty and inequality. Subsistence production had largely given way to commercially-orientated farming, and weak monitoring of contract formulation and implementation meant that voices of marginalized poor and vulnerable people, particularly women and the elderly, were not being heard. Research findings further revealed that while RESIS-Recharge strategic partnerships increased incomes for a minority of smallholders, such arrangements did not meaningfully improve the productive, managerial and marketing skills of smallholders to ensure their effective participation in agriculture. Rather, strategic partnerships were creating a small class of black ‘arm-chair’ farmers, who played little or no active role and obtained few or no skills in commercial farming but perpetually depended upon and drew incomes from agribusiness initiatives run by externally-based agents. Adjunct to questions of sustainability for these farmers’ ability to participate in commercial farming, the thesis raises the question: What is the rationale for joint ventures and strategic partnerships in the context of South Africa’s Agricultural Sector Strategy objectives for support to black farmers? Contracts lacked mechanisms for equitable distribution of costs and benefits between contracted private partners and targeted smallholders, on the one hand, and the rest of members of local communities, on the other hand. Contracts also lacked provisions for postproject recapitalization of infrastructure and rehabilitation of degraded land. This raised questions about the longer term sustainability of productivity, natural resource base and livelihood security in smallholder irrigation schemes. The conclusion of this thesis is that the challenge of reducing rural poverty and inequality in smallholder irrigation schemes might not be resolved through existing institutional approaches to agricultural commercialization.
The livelihood impacts of commercialization in emerging small scale irrigation schemes in the Olifants catchment area of South Africa
(University of the Western Cape, 2012) Tapela, Barbara Nompumelelo; Cousins, Benjamin
This thesis examines livelihoods in the wake of agricultural commercialization under the Revitalization of Smallholder Irrigation Schemes (RESIS) Programme and similar revitalization initiatives within the Olifants River Basin in Limpopo Province. The focus is on contractual joint ventures and strategic partnerships implemented within selected smallholder irrigation schemes. The thesis is based primarily on in-depth empirical studies conducted between October 2003 and March 2009 in three sites located in two Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Programme (ISRDP) poverty nodes namely, Greater Sekhukhune and Vhembe Districts. To a lesser extent, the thesis draws on findings from rapid appraisals of five additional study sites in Greater Sekhukhune District. Research findings showed that the performance of joint ventures and strategic partnerships had so far largely fallen short of expectations. With the exception of a minority of small holders involved in RESIS-Recharge strategic partnerships, the promise of higher incomes and improved livelihoods had often remained elusive, while debts and potential losses of often meagre household assets loomed large, threatening to erode existing livelihoods and undermine government interventions. This was mainly because ‘viability’ in both the RESIS and RESIS-Recharge phases was narrowly seen in economic and technical terms, such that reduction of transaction costs often entailed the divesting of responsibilities to address issues of rural poverty and inequality. Subsistence production had largely given way to commercially-orientated farming, and weak monitoring of contract formulation and implementation meant that voices of marginalized poor and vulnerable people, particularly women and the elderly, were not being heard. Research findings further revealed that while RESIS-Recharge strategic partnerships increased incomes for a minority of smallholders, such arrangements did not meaningfully improve the productive, managerial and marketing skills of smallholders to ensure their effective participation in agriculture. Rather, strategic partnerships were creating a small class of black ‘arm-chair’ farmers, who played little or no active role and obtained few or no skills in commercial farming but perpetually depended upon and drew incomes from agribusiness initiatives run by externally-based agents. Adjunct to questions of sustainability for these farmers’ ability to participate in commercial farming, the thesis raises the question: What is the rationale for joint ventures and strategic partnerships in the context of South Africa’s Agricultural Sector Strategy objectives for support to black farmers? Contracts lacked mechanisms for equitable distribution of costs and benefits between contracted private partners and targeted smallholders, on the one hand, and the rest of members of local communities, on the other hand. Contracts also lacked provisions for post project recapitalization of infrastructure and rehabilitation of degraded land. This raised questions about the longer term sustainability of productivity, natural resource base and livelihood security in smallholder irrigation schemes. The conclusion of this thesis is that the challenge of reducing rural poverty and inequality in smallholder irrigation schemes might not be resolved through existing institutional approaches to agricultural commercialization.
Governing the intertidal subsistence fisheries in Mozambique: vulnerability, marginalization and policy mismatches case study of the district of Palma (The Province of Cabo Delgado)
(University of the Western Cape, 2014) Gervásio, Horácio Francisco; Isaacs, Moenieba
Since the earlier 1970s the government of Mozambique has been carrying out legal, political, economic and institutional reforms which are culminating in the establishment of the current fisheries governance systems. An important achievement of these reforms is the political recognition the government has given to the importance of subsistence fishing and its incorporation into policy instruments such as the Fisheries Master Plan II (2014-2019) and the Artisanal Fisheries Development Strategy (2009-2015). In these policy documents, fisheries authorities put subsistence fisheries on top of priorities. However, the practice in Mozambique’s fisheries is indicating that, despite this recognition, subsistence fishers remain amongst the most vulnerable groups, particularly at district and village levels. The objective of this study is to understand the patterns of inclusion and exclusion of subsistence fishers from the fisheries governance spaces in Mozambique with particular emphasis on Palma district (Cabo Delgado province). The study uses the concept of Action Spaces to situate the nature of opportunities that are being created under these reforms. A critical finding of this study is that, the institutions for fisheries governance being created by the government at district and community levels are not creating a functional mechanism for subsistence fishers to participate, access opportunities, and bring their voices into decision-making systems. As a result, subsistence fishers are creating their own spaces which are based on informal structures and relations to sustain their livelihoods. The study resorts to the institutional governance insights to understand the factors that may determine the interactions between the formal and informal action spaces while improving the contribution of subsistence fisheries to the livelihoods and food security of the vulnerable groups.
Cattle, commercialisation and land reform: dynamics of social reproduction and accumulation in Besters, KwaZulu-Natal
(University of the Western Cape, 2014) Hornby, Angela Donovan; Cousins, Ben
The thesis examines the processes of social differentiation amongst households living on farms transferred through South African land reform, and the degree to which the ‘commercialisation’ of the cattle economy accounts for these processes. The evidence is drawn from six farms owned by Communal Property Associations (CPAs), which are part of the Besters Land Reform Project in the Besters District of KwaZulu-Natal. Drawing on the scholarship of critical political economists, the thesis shows that social differentiation is a dynamic process that both underlies and exacerbates conflicts over the commercial production of collectively owned cattle. This finding is derived from examining the articulation of three analytically distinct processes. These are the diversification of livelihoods in response to diminishing opportunities for regular wage employment; the social stratifications arising partly from the unequal ownership of cattle; and the differential claims on and extractions made from CPA land and cattle production. The thesis shows that some households are able to accumulate agricultural capital and expand their cattle herds by securing and synchronising a range of livelihoods, including wage employment, social grants and subsidies from CPA farm production. Others, unable to synchronise livelihoods arising from social processes that often run counter to one another, find their cattle herds depleted as they draw on them to survive. When their agricultural production declines, their capacity to generate a livelihood sufficiently robust to withstand shocks is put at risk. This places the collectively owned land, income and assets of the CPAs at the centre of a politics defined by the contradiction between meeting the needs of social reproduction on the one hand, and accumulating farm capital, on the other. This is evidenced in the dynamic nature of the hybridised farm systems in which cattle farming for multiple purposes co-exists with the production of cattle as commodities. Reflecting this materiality, the politics of the CPA draws on older relationships of kinship, underpinned by ceremonial uses of cattle that both reflect and generate broader socio-economic inequalities. The outcome of this fluid and complex ‘politics of the farm’ determines whether land reform produces a small number of ‘winners’ or a greater number of households involved in agricultural petty commodity production. Social differentiation is exacerbated on farms that disband collective production, while households are both more likely to continue farming or to re-enter agricultural petty commodity production where CPA production provides capital and labour inputs. The implications of these findings are that the problems of production on many land reform farms cannot be explained simply in terms of CPAs as troubled institutions. Rather, the dynamics of differentiation constitute CPAs and their enterprises as sites of struggle that render collectively owned production unstable under current land and agrarian policy frameworks. Policy priorities that take cognizance of this politics and support farm level adjudications of member’s rights to land, capital and cash, and support agricultural capital accumulators to exit communal property arrangements could result in limited transformations of the agrarian structure.
Policy agenda-setting and the use of analytical agenda-setting models for school sport and physical education in South Africa
(University of the Western Cape, 2011) Desai, Anver; de Coning, Christo
This study focused on policy agenda-setting models for school sport and physical education in South Africa. The primary objective was to assess and propose options for improved agenda-setting by focussing on the use of agenda-setting models and by applying it to physical education and school sport and the policy agenda of the national government. The study has shown that pertinent school sport and physical education policy issues, as supported by key role-players and principal actors, were initially not placed on the formal policy agenda of government during the research investigation period (2005-2009). However, during 2010 and 2011 the issue of school sport and physical education received prominent attention by authorities and these developments were subsequently included in the study. The study aimed at contributing to existing policy agenda-setting models and by recommending changes to the Generic Process Model.The study also made a contribution by informing various role-players and stakeholders in education and school sport on the opportunities in policy agenda-setting. The study showed that policy agenda-setting is a vital step in the Generic Policy Process Model. Policy agendasetting in South Africa is critical, as it is important to place new and emerging policy issues on the policy agenda and as a participative public policy process is relatively new in this young democracy. The reader should not confuse the study as one dealing with school sport and physical education primarily, but rather as a research investigation dealing with policy agenda-setting models as applied to school sport and physical education.The secondary objectives of the study included the development of a historical perspective on trends and tendencies in education and sport in South Africa. A second objective was to provide theoretical perspectives on public policy and specifically on policy agenda-setting.From these theoretical perspectives, the Generic Policy Process Model was selected to use as a model that provided guidance on the overall policy process normally followed in South Africa. The Issue Attention Cycle and Principal Actor Models on Agenda-Setting were selected to apply to the case study to specifically ascertain important factors related to policy agenda-setting such as the identification of key role players as well as key policy issues. The Generic Policy Process Model provided for both a comprehensive set of phases as well as specific requirements and key issues to be addressed during each phase of the policy process.In terms of findings the study found that a number of specific agenda-setting elements or phases needed to be added to the Generic Policy Process Model, which includes a problem stage, triggers, initiator, issue creation and actors or policy stakeholders.The Principal Actor Model to agenda-setting was selected for application to the case as different actors have different levels of success at each policy stage. In the South African experience it is important to look at who sets the policy agenda and why, who can initiate agenda-setting and the role played by these principal actors in the agenda-setting process.Issue emergence often places policy issues on the policy agenda. The public is initially involved in issues, but in the long term public interest declines. The government realizes the significant costs involved in placing policy issues back on the agenda. This leads to a decline in issue attention by policy-makers and the public. The Issue Attention Cycle Model of agenda setting was used to analyse this phenomenon in South African Education policy.The study provides a case assessment of the South African experience. From the research findings, a set of conclusions and recommendations were developed for improved policy agenda-setting models and implications for school sport and physical education, as well as tools to place it on the national policy agenda were identified. The research findings suggest that pertinent school sport and physical education policy issues, as supported by key roleplayers,stakeholders and principal actors were not placed on the formal policy agenda of the government as a vital step in the policy process between 2005 and 2009. Ever since, principal policy actors, civil society NGOs, and government officials placed sufficient pressure on the Minister of Basic Education to place Physical Education on the agenda. Subsequently,Minister Angie Motshega has placed physical education in the school Curriculum under the subject Life Orientation and Lifeskills. It has become evident from the research that agendasetting is both necessary to, and a complex phase in, the policy-making process.This study has shown that major policy issues such as physical education and school sport were neglected during the period 2005 and 2009 despite reformed and advanced policy cycles in government. It has also shown that the role of policy agenda-setting in the overall policymaking process was revisited by government in the subsequent period 2010/2011 and placed on the policy agenda. Specific lessons of experience emanated from this process.The study recommends that the triggers of the agenda-setting phases be added to the Generic Policy Process Model, which should include the problem stage, triggers, initiators, issue creation, actors and policy stakeholders. Principal actors in the agenda-setting model in South Africa want the issue of physical education and school sport to be part of the school curriculum, and therefore be placed back on the policy agenda by the Government on its institutional agenda. Furthermore, the study showed that actors wanted it to be compulsory in all phases of the school (Foundation, Intermediate, Senior, GET, FET) and that it should have the same legal status as other subjects.The important findings include that:Comprehensive policy process models such as that of Dunn, Wissink and the Generic Process model may need to be reviewed to incorporate more fully the policy-agenda setting stages of the overall process; Current policy agenda setting models in use are relevant and valuable in identifying key role players as well as key issues and considerations regarding the policy process; Institutional arrangements to strengthen the role of NGOs and lower level institutions,such as schools to participate in policy agenda setting are important; and the study has shown that a number of key factors have been identified that had a key influence on policy agenda-setting in the case of physical education and school sport in South Africa. These included the influence of changing political leadership, the competency of policy capacities in government, the profile of issues in the media etc.The key findings of the study have shown that further potential exists to improve monitoring and evaluation and policy analysis.The study made a set of recommendations to principal actors such as the Minister of Education, Minister of Sport and Recreation, non-governmental organisations, interest groups, department officials and pressure groups. A set of research topics was also identified for future research.
Framing biodiversity conservation discourses in South Africa: emerging realities and conflicting agendas within the Great Limpopo transfrontier conservation area
(University of the Western Cape, 2009) Whande, Webster; Matose, Frank; Bollig, Michael; School of Government; Faculty of Economics and Management Sciences
This dissertation explores local people's framing of externally driven biodiversity conservation approaches in the context of transfrontier conservation initiatives. It uses data from the Madimbo corridor, a specific locality within the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area, situated to the northeast of South Africa along the South Africa-Zimbabwe boundary. It shows that livelihoods, historical experiences with external interventions and exclusion from policy-making processes and programme implementation influence local strategies for engaging with external interventions. Thus, an analysis of framing of external interventions at a local level should establish the following: the role of natural resources in sustaining local livelihoods; local historical experiences with an external intervention; iii) the nature of multi-level actor interactions from local resource dependent people, to national, regional and global actors involved in or affected by an intervention. The study uses a detailed case study of Bennde Mutale village to trace local people's ideas, ways of speaking and actions in response to the implementation of a large-scale transfrontier conservation initiative. The study finds that local livelihoods play a central role in local responses to the changes that transfrontier conservation bring upon people's lives. Many see further exclusion, while some also see and hope for a restoration of the socio-cultural border region. The globally significant biodiversity - to be conserved for 'future generations' - at the same time constitutes the natural resources that sustain local people's livelihoods. Further, local livelihoods are more diverse than is commonly acknowledged in literature advocating for transfrontier conservation. This lack of acknowledgement of local diversification contributes to the main observation made in this study: that current processes of transfrontier conservation end up replicating and re-inventing the multiple forms of exclusion that have characterised state conservation practices for over a century. While transfrontier conservation enables the freer movement of wildlife, it in fact further constrains the movements of people whose mobility within less closely controlled border regions remains centrally important to survival. At the same time, state actors come into the area with contradicting and conflicting demands ranging from the beneficial advocacy role for land rights to the enforcement of conservation through fences and game rangers, experienced as a direct infringement on livelihood possibilities. The study concludes that there is a need to rethink transfrontier conservation interventions. The diversity of local livelihood approaches needs to be considered more centrally and clearer understanding needs to be developed of how the promises of opportunities, betterment of lives and increased human mobility actually unfold in practice. In order to succeed and deliver on site - not only to high-class tourists seeking to view unique biodiversity but to local people - transfrontier conservation efforts need to engage multiple actors directly from the ground up and throughout the process of policy-making, programme conceptualisation and implementation.

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