Public Presentations
Up one levelPowerpoint presentations, workshop presentations, conference presentations etc
Rural civil society scan: Report on the research process and findings
In this presentation, Rick de Satge reports on finding from a scan of rural civil society in South Africa, including a literature review, and proposes a new model for understanding rural civil society based on formality/informality and inward/outward looking
Characterization of indigenous knowledge and practice and current subsistence, commercial and recreational techniques and practices for using fish in storage dams in selected rural areas of South Africa
WRC Consultative Workshop on Inland Fisheries - presentation
Recommendations for Revisions to Inland Fishery Access Rights and Property Rights Regimes
Presentation to a Consultative Workshop on Inland Fisheries, 7 March 2011, Pretoria: The presentation emphasised that restructuring property rights regimes would be essential, and that policy needs to articulate: access rights, withdrawal rights, management rights, exclusion rights and lienation rights. While, in theory, rural people could all access inland fishing areas for recreational fishing, they were often blocked from access by physical barriers or illegal coercion. Policy therefore need to address these issues within the framework of equitable distribution and a developmental, livelihoods approach.
Marine governance in the EU: South African perspectives
In this seminar presentation, Prof Raakjær spoke about the project to develop a set of fully-costed ecosystem management options to achieve the objectives set by the Marine Strategy Framework Directive and the Habitats Directive, and with reference to the proposed Maritime Policy. Geographical scope the Baltic Sea, the North East Atlantic, the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea. He then reflected on the implications of this for the SADC region and South Africa.
Poverty and fisheries: Anything to learn from the Norwegian experience?
Norwegian development assistance has always been poverty oriented on paper, but with a weak understanding of strategies, entry points, interventions and the measuring of results. Norwegian input into fishing systems in developing countries have tended to use the same models applied in Norway.
The potential and limits of the Proactive Land Acquisition Strategy (PLAS): Land Reform implementation in Gauteng Province of South Africa
This presentation, made at the 'New Researchers Workshop on Land and Agrarian Studies' on 27-28 October 2011, showed that beneficiaries self-identify and also identify suitable land as the government has no mechanisms for identifying land.
Directions for land reform – what might another Green Paper propose? Alternative options and their ideological underpinnings
The presentation examined four international and South African ideological arguments about and approaches to land reform: “Modernist-conservative”/ modernisation, “Neo-liberal”/ efficiency & equity, “Welfarist”/ poverty alleviation and “Radical populist”/ structural transformation
Property and Access Rights in Public Dams
Dr Mafa Hara discusses how South Africa's public dams can be used to develop inland fisheries to build communities, tackle food insecurity and create opportunities for the poor.
The Monster from the Green Lagoon: Assessing the 2011 Green Paper on Land Reform
Prof Cousins highlights key issues for land reform not tackled by the government's Green Paper on Land Reform
Social differentiation and ‘accumulation from below’ in Msinga, KwaZulu-Natal
South Africa has a highly unequal distribution of agricultural land hence land reform BUT Who should be the primary beneficiaries of redistributive land reform? How can land redistribution address the structural dimensions of inequality and poverty? Supporting smallholders... but what is a ‘smallholder’?
DARMA: SA small pelagics
DARMA aims to bring the small-scale quota holders into participation in the Ecosystems Approach to Fisheries (EAF) Scientific (and management?) Working Groups in which they are currently not participating
DARMA: Lake Chilwa Basin Case Study: Progress report, 2009-2010
Natural resource managment of Lake Chilwa Basin in themes: Economy and Livelihood Institutional structure and Governance Ecology and Environmental status Settlement patterns Water management Fish management
DARMA: Kafue Flats Case, Zambia - Interim Report, 2009-2010
The immediate objective of the action in the first year (2009-2010) was to bring together scientists in Zambia (and towards a regional network) who would develop an ecosystem approach to commons management
DARMA: South east arm of Lake Malawi Case Study - Interim Report, 2009-2010
Athough 60% of the land in Mangochi is under customary land, most of the land along the lake has been leased to cottage and hotel developers. The research looks at costs and returns from fishing by small scale fishers, conflicts among different stakeholders (tourism industry, fisheries, agriculturalists) and development policies, and local communities’ participation in fisheries management
DARMA: The Dwesa-Cwebe Nature Reserve of the Transkei/Wild Coast Region of South Africa
The interest in the Dwesa-Cwebe as a study area on community empowerment, natural resource utilisation, and sustainable development centres around the unresolved issues after land restitution in the area
DARMA: Zambezi Case Study Report, 2009-2010
Lake Kariba, Zimbabwe & Zambia, research on integrated management of natural resources, interim report
A Tale of Two Dorpies: Case Studies from Limpopo and a Perspective on Land Reform and Rural Development Policy
PowerPoint presentation from a Seminar held in the PLAAS Boardroom on Thursday 10 March 2011
The Social Dynamics of Rural Poverty in the Eastern Cape
Our key concern is with social policy, with specific reference to policy around social protection and cash transfers. These matters are often highly contentious. Much debate focusses on the supposed characteristics of poor people themselves, and on the extent to which their poverty is the result of their attributes and their choices. Our work attempts to illuminate the broader context - and in particular, to understand the livelihood strategies and responses of poor people to poverty, with or without social grants. Our work draws on insights gleaned during a period of qualitative research in two particular contexts of vulnerability in South Africa: case studies conducted in rural villages near Mount Frere in the remote Eastern Cape and in African townships on the outskirts of greater Cape Town.1 It attempts to make a contribution to what can be learned from quantitative studies by capitalising on the ability of qualitative analysis to cast light on the meaningful and relational dynamics of social process. Unlike econometric efforts to model ‘behaviour’, such research involves an attempt to review the experiences of poor people, and the discursive manner in which they themselves give meaning to and react to their circumstances.
Real Acts, Imagined Landscapes: Reflections on South African Land Reform Discourse (Or, How to do Things with Land Reform)
Paper presented at the PLAAS/ STIAS Colloquium 'Land Reform, Agrarian Change and Rural Poverty in the Southern African Region', Wallenburg Conference Centre, University of Stellenbosch, 8-9 March 2011 DRAFT - PLEASE DO NOTE CITE WITHOUT PERMISSION
South Africa’s Agrarian Question revisited
This presentations ‘revisists’ an older paper written for the Harold Wolpe memorial conference in 1997, titled ‘Social change in the South African countryside? Land and production, poverty and power’; ublished as an Occasional Paper of PLAAS and subsequently in the 1998 Journal of Peasant Studies 25(4,): 1-32.
Livelihoods after Land Reform – the South African Case
What are the implications of land reform for livelihoods? (Direct and indirect; at levels of the individual, the household, the project, and the area) To what extent can these implications be understood in relation to the different ways land reform is implemented? What can we learn about better ways of designing and implementing land reform?
Farm Workers & Farm Dwellers in South Africa: Tenure, Livelihoods and Social Justice (with research findings from Limpopo province)
Presentation to the Portfolio Committee on Rural Development and Land Reform, 16 March 2011 While the Extension of Security of Tenure Act (ESTA) 62 of 1997 is aimed at securing tenure rights for people living on farms, it tries to balance the interests of landowners and people living on farms –and to regulate their relations. It does not aim to stop evictions, but regulates when and how evictions can happen, making any eviction without an order from the magistrate‟s court is illegal. It provides farmworkers with options for long-term tenure so farm dwellers can benefit from land redistribution, acquire land and housing of their own, including through upgrading their tenure in situ (Chapter 4 of ESTA). This legislation is almost entirely unused. However, employment in agriculture declining over time and shifting from regular to temporary employment and as many people have been displaced from farms after 1994 as before. Land is still a source of control which can reproduce relationships of dependency, patronage, exploitation and domestic governance. Based on case studies in Limpopo, this presentation examines the proposed new land tenure legislation, noting that In isolation, tenure reform, even if effectively enforced, cannot address the crisis of livelihoods of farm dwellers.
Current Policy Processes & Legislative Reforms: Presentation to a Strategy Workshop on Strategic Civil Society Engagement in Rural Transformation in South Africa
Land reform policy and legislation suffered under negotiated terms in the run-up to SA’s democracy. Land & agricultural policies were initiated and continued to move in disparate directions. Particular weaknesses resulted in policy hand-wringing and at times policy schizophrenia in a policy area that is critical to post apartheid rural transformation. Current policy & legislation reinforce above negative trends i.e tenure security bill, CRDP, Green Paper & Recapitalisation . Now centre-stage in policy speak: beyond land rights - a clear acknowledgement that ‘land reform’ has failed, but there is only vague policy direction.
Current policy initiatives: Presentation to a Strategy Workshop: Re-thinking rural transformation in South Africa, 31 January 2011
The key components of the latest green paper on rural transformation include: * Three tier tenure system (state land/leasehold, private land with limitations, foreign ownership/precarious tenure) * To reduce costs of land acquisition: multi-tier pricing regime; new valuation system; land tax * Land Management Commission (LMC) and Valuer-General Rural Development Agency * Recapitalisation and Development Programme: infrastructure, + mentorship, co-management, share equity
Ownership in land and agriculture in SA: Questions for policy
For EDD-FES-SPIII Ownership and Inequality Conference 01-02 August 2011
Retribalisation in post-apartheid South Africa: New “traditional” laws and their impacts on rural women
Presentation at a Public Dialogue: New laws, new oppressions? The potential for negative impacts on rural women of recent legislation on traditional authorities, land rights and traditional courts
Defragmenting African Resource Management
The researchers are in the process of developing conflict mitigation strategies for policy makers and incentive regimes for integrated resource management and how to take ecosystem approach at a global level.
Agenda-Setting Research Conference
At this conference, Prof Du Toit and David Neves argued that people move between households in rural and urban areas to take advantage of opportunities that arise; they use social networks in reciprocal exchanges as a way of protecting against shocks; and use the cash transfers for elderly people, those with disabilities, and children to shore up support. The mobility, network exchanges and cash transfers combine with the interaction between informal and formal employment, to create adaptive and subtle mechanisms - under-estimated in the stereotyped notion of “survivalism.”
Dynamics of social differentiation after land reform among former labour tenants in Besters, KwaZulu-Natal
This presentation, made at the 'New Researchers Workshop on Land and Agrarian Studies' on 27-28 October 2011 show how violence is woven into strategies of both survival and accumulation, as well as the many stories told about people in the area.
Labour in Large Scale Agriculture in Africa and Southeast Asia