"Land reform is once again under the spotlight. Amidst calls by some politicians for confiscating land from white farmers without compensation, others claim that the land redistributed to black owners is not being productively farmed. The debate is dangerously polarised, the stakes high. At the same time new challenges confront policy-makers: climate change, threats to bio-diversity, urbanisation, high unemployment, food security, and global economic uncertainties. 2013 was the centenary of South Africa's notorious Natives Land Act, whose effects are still evident in the country's divided countryside and deeply racialised inequalities. 2014 is the deadline that the ANC government set for itself of redistributing 30 per cent of commercial agricultural land into black ownership. All agree that the target cannot be met, but there is little agreement on what is the best way forward. 2014 is also the twentieth anniversary of the founding of democracy. Building on the public debates generated by the centenary of the 1913 Land Act, this book presents a major opportunity to review the contemporary significance of land as a social, economic and natural resource in South Africa - to pose new questions and search for new answers. The book is illustrated with photographs from the acclaimed Iziko National Gallery exhibition "Umhlaba 1913-2013: Commemorating the 1913 Land Act", curated by David Goldblatt, Paul Weinberg, Bongi Dhlomo-Mautloa and Pam Warne." --Cover.

Land Reform Revisited engages with contemporary debates on land reform and agrarian transformation in South Africa. The volume offers insights into post-apartheid transformation dynamics through the lens of agency and state making. The chapters written by emerging scholars are based on extensive qualitative research and their analysis highlights the ways in which people negotiate and contest land reform realities and politics. By focusing on the diverse meanings of land and competing interpretations of what constitutes success and failure in land reform Brandt and Mkodzongi insist on looking beyond the productivity discourses guiding research and policy making in the field towards an informed view from below. Contributors are: Kezia Batisai, Femke Brandt, Sarah Bruchhausen, Nerhene Davis, Elene Cloete, Tariro Kamuti, Tarminder Kaur, Grasian Mkodzongi, Camalita Naicker, Fani Ncapayi, Mnqobi Ngubane, and Chizuko Sato.

In Resistance: Sol Plaatje and South Africa, Shane Moran studies Sol Plaatje, the founding secretary of what was to become the African National Congress (ANC), and his work within the context of colonial politics and resistance. Arguing for a return to the study of one of the founders of anti-racism, Moran explores issues of land reform, human rights, and the legacy of colonialism. Through an in-depth analysis of Plaatje’s resistance to racial domination, Moran examines the nature of the struggles that continue within and beyond South Africa today. In particular, Moran analyzes events from the beginning of the previous century that shaped post-1994 South Africa, such as the resolution of the ANC to expropriate land without compensation.

With growth stalling, joblessness at crisis levels, and governance unravelling, most South Africans cannot fathom why the ANC does not embark on meaningful reform. The answer lies in what is seldom raised: the ruling party's unwavering determination to take the country by incremental steps from capitalism to socialism. This transformation is being implemented via a Moscow-inspired 'national democratic revolution' (NDR) dating back many decades. Despite the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, the ANC/SACP alliance still sees the NDR as offering the 'most direct route' to socialism in South Africa – and hence as its bedrock strategy. The NDR has been implemented in many different spheres since 1994. By way of example, NDR interventions have already made millions of people unemployable and the mining sector largely 'uninvestable'. They now aim at land expropriation without compensation (EWC) and the effective nationalisation of private healthcare and pensions. The NDR is the key to understanding ANC rule over some 30 years – yet most South Africans have been kept in the dark on it. This book aims to fill that gap. Written in clear and simple language, it provides an indispensable primer on the NDR and its role in the countdown to socialism in South Africa.

Policy-makers are increasingly trying to assign economic values to areas such as ecologies, the atmosphere, even human lives. These new values, assigned to areas previously considered outside of economic systems, often act to qualify, alter or replace former non-pecuniary values. Valuing Development, Environment and Conservation looks to explore the complex interdependencies, contradictions and trade-offs that can take place between economic values and the social, environmental, political and ethical systems that inform non-monetary valuation processes. Using rich empirical material, the book explores the processes of valuation, their components, calculative technologies, and outcomes in different social, ecological and conservation domains. The book gives reasons for why economic calculation tends to dominate in practice, but also presents new insights on how the disobedient materiality of things and the ingenuity of human and non-human agencies can combine and frustrate the dominant economic models within calculative processes. This book highlights the tension between, on the one hand, a dominant model that emphasises technical and ‘universalising’ criteria, and on the other hand, valuation practice in specific local contexts which is more likely to negotiate criteria that are plural, incommensurable and political. This book is perfect for researchers and students within development studies, environment, geography, politics, sociology and anthropology who are looking for new insights into how processes of valuation take place in the 21st century, and with what consequential outcomes.

Biotraffic explores the complex world of biological resource trade. It takes readers inside the contemporary Ciskei region of South Africa, a once-notorious apartheid “homeland” turned extractive hub for wild medicinal plants. Drawing from in-depth ethnographic and archival research, Christopher Morris examines the region’s trade in Pelargonium sidoides, a plant once contested as a tuberculosis treatment in early twentieth-century Europe and now an internationally marketed remedy for the common cold. The story of this trade links past and present, encapsulating a larger tale about colonial legacies and their intersection with global environmental governance ambitions. It also teems with a diverse cast of actors, from plant harvesters and pharmaceutical companies to activist NGOs and the chiefs who have become business partners with multinational drug firms. The book’s analysis extends beyond considering merely the extraction and commercialization of plant resources and offers a critical examination of how demand for therapeutics intertwines with broader struggles over land and political power in South Africa. Biotraffic illuminates how a distance-defying trade is reshaping the sociopolitical landscape of a region—a region grappling with apartheid's afterlives and the challenges of environmental and economic justice.

This book provides a significant contribution to the literature on land reform in various African contexts. While the economic evidence is clear that secure property rights are a necessary condition for catalysing broad-based economic development, the governance process by which those rights are secured is less clear. This book details the historical complexity of land rights and the importance of understanding this history in the process of trying to improve tenure security. Through a combination of single country case studies, comparative case studies and regional comparisons, the book is unequivocal that good governance is paramount for improving the performance of land reform programmes. All attempts at moving towards more formal secure tenure require congruence with informal norms, beliefs and values, and a set of clear systems and processes to avoid corruption and unintended negative consequences.