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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
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
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
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
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
BlogFeatured BlogUncategorized

Snoek, the lifeblood of West Coast fishing towns

By Maia Nangle The snoek run is a quintessential part of life in fishing communities on the West Coast and in the Cape Town metropolitan area. This bony fish, which has a distinctive taste due to the anchovies and sardines on which it preys, is consumed throughout the year, but particularly at Easter. Although snoek can be caught year-round, it…
PLAAS
October 21, 2021
BlogFeaturedFeatured BlogUncategorized

Remembering Marikana

By Andries du Toit A dream died in South Africa on 16 August 2012: the dream of trust between a government and its people. When we made the transition to democracy in 1994, we knew that a rocky path still lay ahead. What we were celebrating was not the end of struggle, but the hope that the struggle for justice…
PLAAS
August 16, 2021
BlogFeatured BlogUncategorized

Food producers, traders and vendors should be prioritised in Tanzania’s Covid-19 relief package

By Luitfred Kissoly and Azizi Rweyemamu and Sadikiely Dalley As Covid-19 continues to spread and mutate across the globe, national governments are playing catch-up in their policy responses to the socio-economic threats posed by the pandemic, and the programmes adopted have been quite varied. For example, while many governments in Africa have rolled out targeted relief and stimulus programmes, relatively…
PLAAS
August 16, 2021
BlogFeatured BlogUncategorized

African Food Systems, Gender Dynamics and SSF Perspectives

By Moenieba Isaacs, Patricia Blankson Akakpo, Maia Nagel, and Editrudith Lukanga On 3 June, the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape hosted a webinar on the African food systems, gender dynamics and Small-scale fisheries (SSF) perspectives.  This webinar formed part of the TBTI open house global World Oceans Week  – and…
PLAAS
August 16, 2021