scholarly journals How to understand, evaluate and influence efficient progress in South Africa’s land reform process: A typology from historical lessons from selected sub-Saharan African countries

Author(s):  
Nhlanhla C. Mbatha

Background: With reports of widespread failures in South Africa’s land reform programmes, the levels of policy uncertainty in the political rhetoric that influences land reform have been increasing. Since 1994 policy targets to transfer land to black farmers have not been met. Of the 2005 target to transfer about 25 million ha of commercial farmland to black farmers by 2014, less than 5 million ha. have been transferred for commercial use. Some studies report failure rates in resettlement projects of up to 90%. To account for the failures, revisions of policies and amendments to legislations have been proposed within a political environment that is becoming increasingly intolerant to slow progress in land transfers and to resettlement failures.Aim: Against this environment, this paper presents a typology for understanding and evaluating important elements of the land reform project in order to influence progress in the process.Setting: The study adopts a historical review of land reform processes in post-colonial Kenya and Zimbabwe in order to identify potential challenges and key lessons for South Africa.Methods: Hence, using institutional and historical analytical lenses in exploring different narratives, the paper reviews reported failures and successes in land reform policy cases from the selected countries. From an institutional framework, prevalent social institutions and key lessons from Kenya, Zimbabwe and South Africa, a typology for evaluating important elements of the land reform process in South Africa is developed and discussed. Additionally, a review of global data collected on average sizes of farms in different regions of the world is provided as evidence to support propositions of what would constitute efficient farmland size ranges for small to medium commercial farms in South Africa.Results and conclusion: A proposition is made on how to use the typology to guide policy and research interventions to reduce failures and promote successful cases in different areas of the land reform process in South Africa, and possibly other similar contexts.

Author(s):  
Mukovhe Maureen Nthai

The development of Africa is not only a problem to the Africans alone but also to the world at large. This is because some regions of the world also depend on Africa for their livelihoods. In Sub Saharan Africa one of the rural development strategies identified is land reform. Post-colonial African governments have argued that land reform would alleviate the majority of the people in the region from poverty, create employment, and address inequality. This is the position adopted by the post-apartheid government in South Africa beyond 27 April 1994. However, the South African post-apartheid land reform has had some significant complexities in its implementation – especially with regard to funding. Funding was impeded by widespread corruption in government. In addition, there has been immense lack of interest in making funds available for land reform in South Africa from non-governmental entities and donors.


Author(s):  
Motsepe Matlala

The National African Farmers' Union (NAFU SA) was established in 1991 with the aim of creating a "home" for thousands of black farmers who had previously been excluded from mainstream agriculture. At the time of its formation there was no farmer organisation operating at national level in South Africa.


Author(s):  
Susanne Freidberg

The last years of the 20th century were tough times for selling food to Europeans. The competition was fierce, the rules uncertain, and the retail markets picky. It was not just that huge supermarket chains had come to dominate food retailing, and to demand products conforming to ever-higher standards of convenience and aesthetic quality; these trends were common across the industrialized world. In addition, they demanded that the suppliers of those products— farmers and manufacturers, but also a range of intermediaries—meet standards of hygiene and accountability that were unimaginable twenty, even ten years earlier. The supermarkets wanted assurances that none of their products would set off another food scare; too many had already shaken European consumers’ faith in the supermarkets’ increasingly globalized offerings. On the supermarket shelves, these assurances might appear as new labels or packaging, if they appeared at all. What consumers largely did not see was the work that went into providing them with food as certifiably pure as it was pretty. This work took place on farms and in packhouses; in consultants’ offices and corporate boardrooms; in activists’ meetings and chemical analysts’ laboratories. It demanded long flights, short deadlines, and nonstop vigilance. Above all, the work of assuring the overall goodness of globalized food required all kinds of people and things to deal with each other in new ways, and often across great distances. In this sense, it transformed the social relationships of food provisioning on both an interpersonal and transcontinental scale. This book explores how these changes took shape within two fresh vegetable trades, or commodity networks, linking two Sub-Saharan African countries to their former European colonial powers. The francophone network brings Burkina Faso’s green beans to France, while the anglophone network brings an assortment of prepackaged fresh vegetables from Zambia to the United Kingdom. Broadly similar in some ways, they differ radically in others, including the ways that they experienced Europe’s late twentieth-century food scares. By exploring the history of these differences and how they are sustained and transformed in specific places, practices, and social institutions, I hope to illuminate the relationship between culture and power in globalized food provisioning.


Africa ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Tranberg Hansen

AbstractThe rapid expansion in commercial exports of second-hand clothing from the West to the Third World and the increase in second-hand clothing consumption in many African countries raise challenging questions about the effects of globalisation and the meanings of the West and the local that consumers attribute to objects at different points of their journey across global space. This article draws on extensive research into the sourcing of second-hand clothing in the West, and its wholesaling, retailing, distribution and consumption in Zambia. Discussing how people in Zambia are deahng with the West's unwanted clothing, the article argues that a cultural economy is at work in local appropriations of this particular commodity that is opening space for local agency in clothing consumption. Clothing has a powerful hold on people's imagination because the self and society articulate through the dressed body. To provide background for this argument, the article briefly sketches recent trends in the global second-hand clothing trade that place the countries of sub-Saharan Africa as the world's largest importing region. There follows a discussion of Zambians' preoccupation with clothing, both new and second-hand, historically and at the present time. It demonstrates that the meanings consumers in Zambia attribute to second-hand clothing are neither uniform nor static but shift across class and gender lines, and between urban and rural areas. Above all, they depend on the cultural politics of their time. In dealing with clothing, people in Zambia are making sense of post-colonial society and their own place within it and in the world at large.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Biniam E. Bedasso ◽  
Pascal Jaupart

AbstractLittle is known about the political consequences of immigration in Sub-Saharan Africa. In this paper, we estimate the effect of exposure to immigration on election outcomes in South Africa. Our analysis is based on municipality panel data and an instrumental variable (IV) strategy exploiting historical migrant settlement patterns. We find that local immigration concentration has a negative impact on the performance of the incumbent African National Congress, whereas support for the main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, is found to increase in municipalities with a larger immigrant presence. These effects hold regardless of the skill levels of immigrants in a municipality. In terms of mechanisms, competition over jobs and local public services as well as ethnic diversity and cultural factors influence how immigration affects election outcomes. These findings are robust to a broad range of sensitivity checks. They provide evidence that immigration can be a politically salient issue in migrant-destination Sub-Saharan African countries. They also show that immigration can affect election results even in contexts where there is no single issue anti-migrant party.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (35) ◽  
pp. 233-242
Author(s):  
Boris Baumgartner

Abstract The Sub-Saharan Africa belongs to the most underdeveloped regions in the world economy. This region consists of forty nine countries but it’s world GDP share is only a small percentage. There are some very resource rich countries in this region. One of them is Angola. This former Portuguese colony has one of the largest inventories of oil among all African countries. Angola recorded one of the highest growth of GDP between 2004-2008 from all countries in the world economy and nowadays is the third biggest economy in Sub-Saharan Africa after Nigeria and South Africa. The essential problem of Angola is the one-way oriented economy on oil and general on natural resources. Angola will be forced to change their one-way oriented economy to be more diversified and competitive in the future.


Author(s):  
Walters Nsoh

The ownership and utilisation of communal property are very much tied to the modern land tenure systems of most sub-Saharan African countries, which nevertheless still rely on the customary land tenure system to operate. But how exactly do the customary land tenure systems which remain operational in many parts of Africa fit into contemporary land ownership and use structures? Drawing on a broad interpretation of (African) customary land tenure and its elements, including its communal interest element, this chapter assesses the extent to which law and practice in Cameroon are developing and protecting communal property. Using developments in the protection of collective forest rights as an example, it demonstrates the continuous difficulty in reconciling Western land law principles on the ownership and use of communal property with customary land tenure systems in post-colonial sub-Saharan African societies, and the implications this may have for the wider rule of law in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa.


Significance The split between Qatar and its neighbours has pushed a few small African countries to side with Saudi Arabia, but leaves the continent’s leading powers and several conflict-afflicted nations eager to stay neutral -- for now. In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) -- where Gulf countries have strong diplomatic ties and major economic investments -- the crisis has had significant political effects. Impacts The withdrawal of Qatari peacekeepers from the Djibouti-Eritrea border will become a pressing concern for the African Union. Ongoing expulsions of African migrants from Saudi Arabia will complicate Saudi and Emirati efforts to find African partners against Qatar. Countries such as South Africa and Nigeria may begin to act more assertively in calling for neutrality.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (23) ◽  
pp. 9901 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louisa J.M. Jansen ◽  
Patrick P. Kalas

Tenure governance is a complex and multi-dimensional issue that requires cross-sectoral and holistic approaches, gathering the resources, information and expert skills of a variety of actors while exploring innovative, polycentric multi-stakeholder governance arrangements to address collective action challenges. To do this, multi-stakeholder partnerships are formed where public and private partners pool their resources and competencies to address mutual goals more effectively. A coherent theoretical framework to analyze multi-stakeholder partnerships as part of multi-stakeholder governance is presented based on internal conditions and the external environment. The paper expands existing frameworks to analyze multi-stakeholder partnerships through introducing a new element the deliberative capacity, a decisive success factor for the effectiveness of multi-stakeholder partnerships for multi-stakeholder transformative governance at the national level. Moreover, the practical applicability of this expanded framework is illustrated in a real case example in South Africa. This country-driven, inclusive multi-stakeholder partnership process, which integrates a variety of actors in collective decision-making on the land reform process as part of a multi-stakeholder governance process, is used as an illustration of the above framework. Such a partnership linked to multi-stakeholder governance is the key instrument to attain agreement and recognition for the dedicated implementation and monitoring of the ‘Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security’ (VGGT). The investment made by the different stakeholders in this organically constituted partnership may add to a greater transformative potential in the VGGT implementation and monitoring process, and the probability that the situation on the ground will change sustainably given the explicit linkage to national governance arrangements.


Sexual Health ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 286
Author(s):  
D. A. Lewis

Africa as a continent has been devastated by the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome epidemic caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Women are more likely to acquire HIV/AIDS for a number of reasons and incidence studies show that younger women are particularly at risk of HIV acquisition. Biologically, they are more vulnerable and the acquisition of HIV can be influenced by hormonal contraceptives as well as sexually transmitted infections, which are often more asymptomatic than is the case for men. Women in Africa are also more vulnerable because of cultural issues; in some countries polygamy is accepted practice. Women are often economically disadvantaged and disempowered. It is often hard for them to insist on the use of condoms with husbands and regular partners. Physical and sexual abuse of women, including rape, remains a major problem on the continent, particularly in times of civil war. Many women are forced to work as sex workers or be involved in transactional sex in order to survive. Most countries rely on anonymous antenatal surveys to generate HIV seroprevalence data for women of reproductive age. These data is often used as surrogate markers for HIV prevalence rates in men of a similar age. The seroprevalence of HIV among pregnant women differs remarkably around the continent, with the highest rates being seen in Southern Africa, as high as 30%, and much lower rates being seen in West Africa. These reasons underlying these differences are complex and not completely understood. UNAIDS estimated in 2005 that 470�000 (87%) of the world's 540�000 newly infected children (<15 years old) reside in Sub-Saharan Africa. Prevention of mother to child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV is thus a national priority in many Sub-Saharan African countries. Despite policies, treatment is sometimes not given at the clinic level for several reasons, and when it is, most commonly it is with single dose Nevirapine. Data from South Africa has shown that both mothers and infected babies rapidly acquire nevirapine resistance. It is likely that this will lead to early failure of first line antiretroviral (ARV) therapy among these mothers once they start their ARVs. In South Africa, for example, either efavirenz or nevirapine form the backbone of the first-line ARV regimens. AIDS defining illnesses (ADIs) in women living in Africa are similar to those observed in men. Tuberculosis is the most common ADI but other life-threatening illnesses such as cryptococcal meningitis are relatively common compared to other parts of the world. Cervical cancer and cervical intra-epithelial neoplasia (CIN) lesions are more common in HIV-infected than in non-infected women. Most countries in Africa do not have cervical screening programmes and, even in richer countries such as South Africa, the national policy is to screen women three times in their life at 30, 40 and 50 years of age. Many HIV specialist centres, with additional donor funds, are now attempting to perform annual cervical screening, at least in South Africa.


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