Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies
Recent Publications
Farai Mtero (2021). Equitable access to land for social justice in South Africa. PLAAS Research Report 56
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”…
Read More
Young African Researchers in Agriculture (YARA) Working Paper Series
Jabik, B.B. (2021). Relevant Local Climatic Knowledge for Sustainable Agro-Ecological Practices by Small-Scale Farmers in Northern Ghana Local knowledge on climatic conditions which hitherto was used to predict the likelihood of weather outcomes is under threat of extinction due to lack of documentation coupled with a gradual decline in its knowledge transfer. Using participatory and ethnographic research approaches including focus…
Read More
Mtero, Gumede & Ramantsima (2019) Elite Capture in Land Redistribution in South Africa. PLAAS Research Report 55.
This report seeks to deepen the understanding of elite capture in land reform and to provide a more comprehensive picture of its causes and consequences. The key overarching questions include: who has benefited from South Africa’s land redistribution? Who have been the winners and losers in land redistribution and why? What are the criteria for beneficiary targeting and selection? The…
Read More
Phillan Zamchiya (2019). Differentiation and development: The case of the Xolobeni community in the Eastern Cape, South Africa
Most agrarian scholars argue that long historic processes of colonialism, capitalist development and implementation of neo-liberal structural policies in Sub-Saharan Africa have resulted in deagrarianisation and its sub-genre of depeasantisation particularly in South Africa. I argue that this long historic process epitomised, in some cases, by abandonment of cropping fields and deactivation of agriculture was uneven between and within communities…
Read More