Thursday, 22 October 2026
13:00 to 14:00 SAST
PLAAS seminar room, Jakes Gerwel Hall, University of the Western Cape
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Around 2006, based on global models of market-led reform, the Trichardtsdal-Ofcolaco area was considered a success case by the government for land redistribution and land rights restitution to historically disadvantaged individuals. More than 5.000 ha of fertile land changed hands and more of it followed in the post-2006 era. However, soon after and sometimes years later, it became clear that it only very partially produced forms of justice and livelihood that the beneficiaries, the government, and ‘mentor’ farmers had envisioned. Skillful commercial farmers left the area, typically with compensation, the new ‘owners’ struggled to take over commercial operations, and individual beneficiaries were not permitted to settle on the land because it was to be managed by Communal Property Association (CPA) and/or a Trust. Some of the transferred farms lay idle for years. Recently, however, in the course of the 2010s, ‘new’ practices of land use at the farms have unfolded as a result of both formal and informal lease agreements between CPA representatives and (new) commercial farmers. New as these practices may be, the politics of land and water use is familiar: commercial farmers especially seek to make strategic use of the new laws and policies to secure and defend their claims to water. These observations – the most recent from October 2026 – put forward questions of progressive land and water policies in South Africa: what is or can be expected from them, and are land and water policy reforms perhaps ‘too ambitious’ and ‘unimplementable’?
Through investigating the reactions of commercial farmers to land and water policy reforms in the Trichardtsdal-Ofcolaco area, Limpopo, from 1994 to the present, this seminar will elaborate on the highs and lows of implementing the reforms on the ground.
Bio
Janwillem Liebrand is Assistant Professor at the International Development Studies group, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, the Netherlands. His research and education focuses on the practices and politics of water use and management, land claims and food security. Among others, he has written about land and water reforms in South Africa and informal contract farming and agricultural intensification in Mozambique. He is also the author of the book “Whiteness in Engineering: Tracing Technology, Masculinity and Race in Nepal’s Development” (2022).
