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PLAAS mourns the passing of activist icon and MPhil candidate, Constance Mogale (1971-2023)

Tribute from her supervisor and friend, Professor Ruth Hall I first met Constance Galeo Mogale sometime in 2002, upstairs in the offices of the Landless Movement of South Africa (LAMOSA) in Braamfontein. Peter Jacobs (now at HSRC) and I had asked her for an interview, for a series of reports we were writing evaluating land reform. She was assured and…
jvandieman@plaas.org.za
January 25, 2024
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PLAAS welcomes African visiting professor back from the diaspora

PLAAS welcomes African visiting professor back from the diaspora PLAAS is proud to announce that we are hosting Professor Thembela Kepe of the University of Toronto, who is also our former colleague, for six weeks on a prestigious African Diaspora Fellowship.  The fellowship is an initiative of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), the…
jvandieman@plaas.org.za
December 7, 2023
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Agrarian scholars tackle climate politics in new (free) book

Agrarian scholars tackle climate politics in new (free) book As world leaders converge for the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), the dominant narrative is focused on technical solutions to climate change. Amidst these discussions, centered on offset markets, carbon capture, and alternative energy technologies, a crucial element remains conspicuously absent: the rural and agrarian dimensions of the climate…
jvandieman@plaas.org.za
December 4, 2023
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Global Agrarian Studies Conference – Blog

PLAAS makes a mark at the Global Agrarian Studies Conference In a recent gathering celebrating half a century of the Journal of Peasant Studies (JPS), scholars and activists converged in the heart of Beijing. UWC’s Institute of Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) was right there at the helm. The International Conference on Critical Agrarian Studies in the 21st Century,…
jvandieman@plaas.org.za
November 13, 2023
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Rural Women and Climate Justice: A call to action in EMS Faculty

Professor Ruth Hall and Professor Moenieba Isaacs, Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) In a world gripped by the urgency of climate change, the voices of rural women often remain unheard. On August 23, 2023, we convened a public webinar hosted by our Economic and Management Sciences Faculty, bringing together a panel of experts to shed light on…
PLAAS
August 31, 2023
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PLAAS PUBLIC LECTURE: How Many Women Actually Own Land? – women’s land rights in India and South Africa

“Women’s land rights has become a key question in South Africa and globally, but how many women actually own the land,” is the question that Professor Bina Agarwal posed during a public lecture she delivered on June 13 2023. The renowned economist and academic, whose work marked a key moment in moving from women and development to gender and development,…
PLAAS
June 29, 2023
mining south africa
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Mining, Capital and Dispossession in Post-Apartheid South Africa

By Dr Phillan Zamchiya Central to David Harvey’s proposition in both his books – The New Imperialism and The Limits to Capital – is that accumulation by dispossession entails the expropriation of the means of production by capital through extra-economic means in the context of neo-liberal capitalism and globalisation. In my latest journal article available here, I challenge the casual application…
PLAAS
September 5, 2022
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Land Reform: What we really should be talking about and why

We’re having the wrong discussions about land reform. So says Professor Andries du Toit, director of the Institute of Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape. “Public debate has been overly concerned with the redistribution of rural land for farming purposes and has almost entirely focused on the emotive issue of changing the constitution…
PLAAS
July 11, 2022
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The land summit was a fiasco. It reflected the government’s commitment to land reform.

By Constance Mogale and Katlego Ramantsima The Communal Land Administration and Tenure Reform Summit held in Boksburg, Gauteng at the weekend proved that the government is not fully committed to ensuring that land reform delivers on the aspirations of ordinary people. South Africa held its last national communal land tenure summit in 2014. Given the almost decade-long hiatus, there were…
PLAAS
June 4, 2022