Focussing on the past history and present day life of the people in two villages in the central Eastern Cape, South Africa, the book provides a vivid but detailed and insightful account of the transformation of rural society and economy since colonisation.

Gaining Ground? Rights and Property in South African Land Reform examines how land reform policy and practice in post-apartheid South Africa have been produced and contested. Set in the province of Mpumalanga, the book gives an ethnographic account of local initiatives and conflicts, showing how the poorest sectors of the landless have defied the South African state's attempts to privatize land holdings and create a new class of African farmers. They insist that the 'rights-based' rather than the 'market-driven' version of land reform should prevail and that land restitution was intended to benefit all Africans. However their attempts to gain land access often backfire. Despite state assurances that land reform would benefit all, illegal land selling and 'brokering' are pervasive, representing one of the only feasible routes to land access by the poor. This book shows how human rights lawyers, NGOs and the state, in interaction with local communities, have tried to square these symbolic and economic claims on land. Winner of the inaugural Elliott P. Skinner Book Award of the Association of Africanist Anthropology, 2008

This book explores the debates surrounding land and agrarian reform in South Africa and explores how these reforms, and particular those that make access easier, have created new options for and broadened the use of land and natural resources.

Questions of land tenure and land reform, and their impact on poor and vulnerable communities, are of vital importance throughout Southern and Eastern Africa. From the vast literature on the subject, Robin Palmer has selected and summarized more than 300 recent books, articles, academic theses, and reports of conferences and workshops. This survey includes studies of Angola, Botswana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. In addition to major sections on economic and legal issues, special sections feature studies of Land and Pastoralism, and Land and Women.