What is the University of the Western Cape’s role in achieving the African Union’s goal of “Land Governance, Justice and Reparations for Africans and Descendants of the African Diaspora”?
“As Africans, each time we engage on this issue of land, we are reminded of our history and the history of dispossession, and the ongoing struggles for inclusion and redress,” said University of the Western Cape (UWC) Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Academic Affairs and PLAAS advisory board member, Professor Monwabisi Ralarala.
Prof Ralarala made these comments at the sixth Conference on Land Policy in Africa (CLPA) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, which took place from 10 to 13 November. It was organised by the African Union Commission (AUC), the African Development Bank (AfDB) and United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA). The conference was historic: it was the first time university Vice-Chancellors and country Land Ministers met together at the conference, and through a special Vice-Chancellors and Ministers Dialogue, spoke about their experiences. UWC was the only South African university present at the meeting, and the conference also hosted a keynote address from South Africa’s Minister for Land Reform and Rural Development, Minister Mzawnele Nyhontso. UWC-PLAAS Professors Ruth Hall and Moenieba Isaacs were also in attendance, along with our most recent PhD graduate, Dr Charity Rusere.
“The tensions over land ownership and access remind us that democracy is not yet complete until redress and issues relating to the material conditions that affect our people are also part of the solutions,” Prof Ralarala added. He explained how this informs UWC’s new Institutional Operation Plan (IOP), which is the university’s strategy for the next five years. This plan foregrounds three important change initiatives:
- UWC agenda: centered around our history as the intellectual home of the democratic left, this position informs our approach as we grapple with the political moments back home but also on the global stage.
- Our intellectual agenda: to a greater extent, it is responsive to the challenges and needs of communities. UWC is well known for working hand-in-hand with communities, and central to this agenda is our pursuit of social justice.
- Our beehive of cultures: with culture, we want to highlight the languages that we value, the right to a language, and the right of a language. And research, along with research findings, must be conducted and disseminated in the language that is understood by communities.
Prof Ralarala presented UWC’s work in the land sector so far, highlighting UWC-PLAA’s role as the technical node of the Network of Land Governance in Africa. As this special node, UWC-PLAAS provides the teaching and training on African land governance through the specialised UWC-accredited course, The Political Economy of Land Governance in Africa. Through this programme, we have trained 410 land professionals from 42 countries on the African continent, and is conceptualised to deal with specificities of land administration on the African continent.
Prof Ralarala also reminded delegates that UWC-PLAAS is a founding member of the Land Deals Policy Initiative, based at the International Institute of Social Studies at Erasmus University, Rotterdam. This collective generates in-depth research across countries and regions on land and its related topics such as food systems. It also focuses on and data, information, and knowledge exchanges for movements, researchers, policy makers, and think tanks.
“Ours is an unusually rich and broad framing of land governance, in that we bring together themes of pre-colonial and colonial land tenure and legacies; comparative land law and practice; women’s land rights; natural resource management; urban and rural land administration; land and food system transformation; land governance, mining and extractivism; climate change and land-based livelihoods; and African and global policy frameworks,” Prof Ralarala explained. “Our approach is one of incremental change and improvements.”
Prof Ralarala underscored UWC’s unique perspective to promote pan-Africanism, multilingualism, and interdisciplinary and multidsciplinary work. UWC was one of the first to adopt the AU Curriculum Guidelines, which the university also contributed to building. To make our work more inclusive, Prof Ralarala committed to UWC offering multilingual UWC-PLAAS Masterclasses and short courses. He also said that UWC and UWC-PLAAS would work together to develop and implement our Climate Change and Land Governance short course, piloted in 2025. The course would be implemented for two cohorts, and insights will be reported to the CLPA in 2028.
Additionally, Prof Ralarala said UWC would host at least one in-person regional dialogue on land, natural resources, or climate change in the coming 18 months, and report on the soon-to-be accredited Climate Change and Land Governance short course after two cohorts.
UWC-PLAAS features in the CLPA 2025 call-to-action
UWC-PLAAS PhD graduate Dr Charity Rusere launched a report at a side event at the conference on 12 November 2025, which debunk the dangerous myth that Africa has vast tracts of available land, waiting for commercial agriculture investment or carbon off-set projects. The Land Availability and Land-use Changes in Africa report findings reveal all the ways that people depend on these lands that are gradually being erased by those who seek to advance their vested interests in critical mineral mining, carbon markets, timber demand, and agricultural expansion.
These concerns were echoed at the conference and in other similar reports, such as the Oakland Institute’s latest report on land rights, Climatewash: The World Bank’s Fresh Offensive on Land Rights, which calls for reclaiming policy power and reinstating customary and public land governance systems that serve people, not profit.
The CLPA conference culminated in a call-to-action, asking that UWC-PLAAS’s short course on Climate Change and Land Governance in Africa and is accredited, and told non-state actors on the continent that they should partner with researchers to produce evidence that counters the myth of “unused” land to shift narratives and drive reparative justice.
More than a statement, the call-to-action lays out a roadmap of action for the continent’s position in upcoming global processes, including the International Conference for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD+20) and the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists 2026 (IYRP).
