Ben Cousins, Director

The year 2002 was an extremely busy one for PLAAS staff, and saw the initiation of many new projects and activities, some of them qualitatively different to anything undertaken before. These included an in-depth, national review of the land reform programme, and the release of several media briefings that summarise research findings on poverty in the Western Cape. Others were the co-hosting of a continent-wide networking programme on land and resource rights, and lobbying and advocacy in relation to a proposed new law, the Communal Land Rights Bill. These indicate that PLAAS is only just beginning to realise its potential to combine rigorous academic research, effective communication of research findings, highly-focused policy advocacy, and effective networking in support of African research and policy advocacy.

Research highlights of the year include the initiation of a project to evaluate national land and agrarian reform policies and their impacts since 1994. Ruth Hall and Dr Peter Jacobs were recruited to undertake this research and made impressive progress in relation to this ambitious and challenging task. Other important new projects that began in 2002 included Dr Thembela Kepe’s research on HIV/Aids and land-based livelihoods, and the multi-disciplinary and international Knowfish project on the informational needs and institutional structures for effective fisheries co-management, co-ordinated by Dr Mafa Hara.

Path-breaking research on chronic poverty in South Africa was conducted by Drs Cobus de Swardt and Andries du Toit, who together led survey research on 2000 households in the rural Eastern Cape (Mt Frere), the rural Western Cape (Ceres) and Cape Town (Khayelitsha and Nyanga). They also co-ordinated five in-depth studies on topics such as social security and malnutrition, food security and HIV/Aids. The policy relevance of this research was dramatically revealed by the impact of a series of press briefings summarising their emerging research findings. These resulted in twenty newspaper articles, eight radio interviews, and invitations to make presentations at many national and international forums, including a conference in Washington organised by the World Bank.

A key focus for several PLAAS staff in 2002 was advocacy and lobbying in relation to the land and resource rights of the rural poor. This was undertaken within three different initiatives. Firstly, a project on 'land reform and sustainable development', undertaken in collaboration with partners from Noragric at the Agricultural University of Norway, focused on encouraging debate and discussion on land rights at the World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD), held in Johannesburg in August/September 2002. A policy brief and a research report were published and widely distributed at the summit, and two workshops (one in Cape Town and one in Johannesburg, during the summit) were organised to promote awareness of the need to integrate land reform concerns into mainstream discourses of sustainable development.

Secondly, PLAAS engaged in public advocacy and lobbying around a proposed new land law for the first time. Together with the National Land Committee, we initiated a project to organise community consultations around the draft Communal Land Rights Bill, develop appropriate communication materials, and assist partner NGOs and community representatives to strengthen their understanding of land tenure (and thus make more informed submissions to parliament). In July 2002 PLAAS organised an international workshop on ‘Tenure reform in Africa – lessons for the Communal Land Rights Bill’, and papers from Kenya, Uganda, Mozambique and Tanzania were presented. A training workshop on land tenure was held for NGO partners, and several community workshops were organised by two PLAAS consultants, Aninka Claassens and Lungisile Ntsebeza. Articles in the media helped generate wider debate on the CLRB. The project will host a number of other community consultations in early 2003.

Thirdly, the Pan-African-African Programme for Land and Resource Rights, which is co-hosted by PLAAS and three other leading centres in Africa, was launched with an inaugural workshop in Cairo in March, attended by researchers and practitioners from 18 African countries. Subsequent workshops were held in Lagos and Nairobi. The Lagos Declaration on Land and Resource Rights in Africa, drafted by members of the network, was widely circulated at the WSSD in Johannesburg.

How effective have these three advocacy projects been? This is always difficult to assess but regular reflection on the usefulness of such exercises is important, and it will be important to ask this question again when all three projects are concluded. The challenge for researchers from PLAAS is to ground policy advocacy in open-minded and rigorous research, and to remain open to ongoing debate around competing viewpoints. We need to constantly remind ourselves that no-one has the monopoly on truth and that all claims to truth (and all policy stances) are inherently contestable. This perspective on the ‘politics of knowledge’ is one that PLAAS, an academic institution, is well positioned to convey to NGO partners in the sector.

Another PLAAS event of note in 2002 was a three-day international symposium on transformation in the South African fishing industry, co-hosted with the Norwegian Fisheries College at the University of Tromsø. The symposium was attended by over 60 participants from the region, with fourteen papers being presented by researchers from South Africa, Mozambique, Namibia and Norway, in addition to three papers by the lead researcher from PLAAS, Moenieba Isaacs.

In 2002 PLAAS maintained its publication output, with a total of one book, five research reports, six occasional papers, and three policy briefs/ research briefings produced. The book, Contested resources: Challenges to the governance of natural resources in southern Africa, is a volume of conference papers edited by Tor Arve Benjaminsen of Noragric, Ben Cousins of PLAAS and Lisa Thompson of the Centre for Southern African Studies, and contains a number of high quality papers by internationally respected scholars.

Another highlight in 2002 was the continued expansion and refinement of the post-graduate teaching programme offered by PLAAS, under the direction of Dr Edward Lahiff. This is undertaken in close collaboration with various academic departments at UWC, UCT and the University of Stellenbosch as well as the Legal Resources Centre. It saw an increase in student numbers in 2002, with seventeen students registered, most of them employees of land-related NGOs or professionals in the land and rural development sectors, and six of them from outside South Africa. Nine of the twelve students who registered the inaugural 2001 course graduated with a Post-graduate Diploma in Land and Agrarian Studies in 2002, and one will continue to do an MPhil in 2003. Discussions around the possibility of awarding degrees jointly between the three universities continued, but the matter has not yet been resolved. A PLAAS staff member, Thembela Kepe, graduated with a PhD in Development Studies in 2002.

As reported in 2001, an intensive organisational change process within PLAAS has resulted in more effective systems and procedures for governance, management, and administrative support services. In 2002 these were further refined and strengthened, and together with improved salaries and conditions of service helped provide a sense of stability and continuity for a team of extremely hard-working research and administrative staff.

The major challenge now for PLAAS is the issue of long-term sustainability. Next year, 2003, will see PLAAS receive its final core grant from Ford Foundation. Major new initiatives to raise additional funding and secure core support from the university itself will be required if PLAAS is to secure its current status as the leading centre of research and training on land reform and related issues in the country (and possibly the region).