mining south africa
Mining, Capital and Dispossession in Post-Apartheid South Africa BlogFeatured Blog

Mining, Capital and Dispossession in Post-Apartheid South Africa

By Dr Phillan Zamchiya Central to David Harvey’s proposition in both his books – The New Imperialism and The Limits to Capital – is that accumulation by dispossession entails the expropriation of the means of production by capital through extra-economic means in the context of neo-liberal capitalism and globalisation. In my latest journal article available here, I challenge the casual application…
PLAAS
September 5, 2022
Land Reform: What we really should be talking about and why Blog

Land Reform: What we really should be talking about and why

We’re having the wrong discussions about land reform. So says Professor Andries du Toit, director of the Institute of Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape. “Public debate has been overly concerned with the redistribution of rural land for farming purposes and has almost entirely focused on the emotive issue of changing the constitution…
PLAAS
July 11, 2022
The land summit was a fiasco. It reflected the government’s commitment to land reform. BlogFeatured BlogLand Publication

The land summit was a fiasco. It reflected the government’s commitment to land reform.

By Constance Mogale and Katlego Ramantsima The Communal Land Administration and Tenure Reform Summit held in Boksburg, Gauteng at the weekend proved that the government is not fully committed to ensuring that land reform delivers on the aspirations of ordinary people. South Africa held its last national communal land tenure summit in 2014. Given the almost decade-long hiatus, there were…
PLAAS
June 4, 2022
south africa land
The government’s “consultation” on communal land tenure was just a tick-box exercise BlogFeatured BlogLand Publication

The government’s “consultation” on communal land tenure was just a tick-box exercise

By Katlego Ramantsima The government recently wrapped up its public consultations on land administration and land tenure reform in communal areas. Given how central the issue of land is to South Africans, and that decisions stemming from the process will affect the lives and livelihoods of millions across the country, it’s hard to overstate the importance of these discussions. Sadly,…
PLAAS
May 16, 2022
Masifundise Development Trust Field Researcher (6-month contract) BlogNews & Events

Masifundise Development Trust Field Researcher (6-month contract)

The Masifundise Development Trust (MDT) is collaborating with the Institute of Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) to seek for a field researcher based in iSiManagaliso and Kosi Bay to document evidence for Small-scale fishers Tribunal in 2023. Start date 1 June 2022 This is a call for individuals to apply for…
PLAAS
May 5, 2022
south africa land
Equitable access to land for social justice in South Africa: a new approach to success in land reform. Blog

Equitable access to land for social justice in South Africa: a new approach to success in land reform.

By Farai Mtero In spite of progressive constitutional provisions and policy rhetoric in support of pro-poor land reform in South Africa, equitable access to land has remained elusive for the poor majority in both urban and rural areas. In an effort to address this problem, PLAAS launched a project on “Equitable access to land for social justice in South Africa”…
PLAAS
December 15, 2021
The government should establish proper pro-poor land reform instead of fiddling with the Constitution BlogFeatured BlogLand PublicationNews & Events

The government should establish proper pro-poor land reform instead of fiddling with the Constitution

By Farai Mtero, Katlego Ramantsima and Nkanyiso Gumede After close to four years of government efforts and public consultation, a bid to amend the Constitution, supposedly to enhance the state’s powers to expropriate land for land reform purposes, has collapsed. Last week, the ANC failed to garner the two-thirds parliamentary majority which is required to amend any aspect of South…
PLAAS
December 13, 2021
Marital status, urbanisation, and violence: a three-pronged threat to women’s land rights in South Africa. BlogFeaturedFeatured BlogNews & EventsNews & Events FeaturedWomen’s Land Tenure Security

Marital status, urbanisation, and violence: a three-pronged threat to women’s land rights in South Africa.

By Chilombo Musa, Mapula Mnisi, and Molatelo Mohale South Africa’s complex land question has elicited numerous enquiries into land relations in the country using various lenses. To lend to this discussion and provoke new interrogations into women’s land rights in South Africa, we undertook a study in Limpopo to explore a ‘silent’ form of urbanisation emanating from the migration of…
jvandieman@plaas.org.za
December 2, 2021
farm land
Call for Papers: Biodiversity conservation, disruptive politics, and the challenges of (challenging) spatial injustices BlogFeaturedFeatured BlogNews & EventsNews & Events Featured

Call for Papers: Biodiversity conservation, disruptive politics, and the challenges of (challenging) spatial injustices

Call for Papers: Biodiversity conservation, disruptive politics, and the challenges of (challenging) spatial injustices Panel proposal and CfP for POLLEN 2022: The 4th Biennial Conference of the Political Ecology Network – 28-30 June 2022, #POLLEN22 | www.pollen2022.com | @PolEcoNet Organised by: Bram Büscher, Moenieba Isaacs and Lerato Thakholi Abstract: In many places around the world, both north and south, efforts…
PLAAS
November 24, 2021
Double crisis for small scale food-system actors
Multiple crisis highlight need to build local resilience in the food system African food systems and Covid-19BlogFeatured Blog

Multiple crisis highlight need to build local resilience in the food system

By Nduduzo Majozi Small-scale farmers, food processors and traders in KwaZulu-Natal recently came together to plan how they could recover from the double crisis of Covid-19 and an insurgency which swept across the province in July during a wave of mass looting. Already reeling from the impacts of Covid-19 and the government’s response to the pandemic, which favoured large-scale farmers…
PLAAS
November 8, 2021