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THURSDAY 23 JUNE 2022 from 13:00 – 15:00 SAST/CAT

Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) and Ndifuna Ukwazi (NU) invites you to a second online dialogue on Equitable Access to Land in South Africa titled Pushing Back: How activists are pushing for access to land and housing, and push back against a recalcitrant state, hostile corporate power and violence”

Critical Dialogues on Equitable Access to Land in South Africa – Dialogue 2
PLAAS and NU are hosting a 3 part series of public dialogues on the current realities and prospects for broadened access to land in South Africa. The dialogues focus on the complexities of realising access to land on an equitable basis; take stock of existing struggles for urban and rural land justice as well as the implications of landmark court judgments that have drawn attention to the failures of post-apartheid land reform; and critically assess how we can promote redress, substantive equality and collective healing through broadened access to land. 

We look forward to rich debates and engagements with civil society representatives, academics, social movements, community-based organisations, land and housing activists, experts, and the general public.

Pushing Back: How activists are pushing for access to land and housing, and push back against a recalcitrant state, hostile corporate power, and violence
South Africa’s Constitution contains progressive reform measures that place an obligation on the state to promote just and equitable land reform. Yet increasingly land and housing activists have viewed the post-apartheid state’s inability to prioritise land reform as a failure and sought to find alternative solutions. This webinar examines the grassroots strategies and tactics that land and housing activists use to push for the realisation of their constitutional rights to housing and equitable access to land, with a particular focus on innovative alternative forms of promoting access to land including collective mobilisation, litigation and self-management of occupations. While many of these alternatives offer potential solutions to the issues that have plagued the land reform processes, many of these land and housing activists have experienced severe push back from the state and corporate power. In some instances, this push back has even taken the form of violence and intimidation at the hand of police. Bringing together land and housing activists from across the country, this webinar examines the interplay between how activists are pushing for the realisations of their rights and promote equitable access to land to the urban and rural poor and the push back they are exposed to in response.

Key questions
How are land and housing activists pushing for the realisation of their constitutional rights to housing and equitable access to land in post-apartheid South Africa’s rural and urban areas? 

What innovative alternatives are these pushes leading to? Are there lessons to be learnt from these pushes that could inform alternative approaches to a more just and equitable land reform programme in South Africa? 

How can these alternatives be promoted to ensure more equitable land reform outcomes?

What push back are land and housing activists exposed to in response to their claiming their rights from the state and corporate power (including mining houses and farming cooperatives)? How do land and housing activists respond to these push backs? 

 

Pushing Back: How activists are pushing for access to land and housing, and push back against a

recalcitrant state, hostile corporate power and violence 

The second public dialogue on broadening access to land in South Africa, hosted by PLAAS and Ndifuna Ukwazi

Facilitator: Mpho Raboeane

Date: Thursday, 23 June 2022 at 13h00 – 15h00 CAT

Register here to join: https://bit.ly/3zHp870

Item Speaker
Welcoming remarks and introduction of panel
(10 minutes)
Mpho Raboeane
Presentations from panel
(10 minutes each x 4 = 40 minutes)

Sheila Madikane (Reclaim the City)

Thapelo Mohapi (Abahlali baseMjondolo)

Maseipati Mokone (Land Access Movement of South Africa (LAMOSA))

Bonani Loliwe (Vulamasango) 

Discussion: Questions and Answers
(55 minutes)
All

Pulling the threads together: A reflection on push back

Using this to see what we could move into for the next dialogues / craft an activist agenda
(5 minutes each x 2 = 10 minutes)

Nkanyiso Gumede 

 Nomzamo Zondo

Closing Remarks Mpho Raboeane

Link to the first dialogue – Click here: Broadening Access to Land – PLAAS / Ndifuna Ukwazi Online Public Dialogue

Panelists

Mpho Raboeane

Mpho Raboeane is an attorney in the Ndifuna Ukwazi Law Centre, specialising in constitutional law and human rights litigation. She is passionate about building people’s power through education and political conscientisation.

Sheila Madikane

Growing up in Ceres, Sheila Madikane always wanted to be a lawyer and stand for people’s rights but due to financial constraints, she was not able to go to school. She ended up working as a household keeper when she moved to Sea Point in 1987. As a housekeeper, she did not have any protection from the government especially in housing. In 2016, she was part of the members that formed Reclaim the City movement. It was then where she realised that despite not being a lawyer, she was still standing for people’s rights in the beautiful movement of Reclaim the City where she was elected as the Sea Point Chapter leader.

Thapelo Mohapi 

Thapelo Mohapi was born in Matatiele in the Eastern Cape and raised in Durban, Kwazulu Natal. He is the General Secretary of Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement SA. Thapelo has also served as the chairperson of the Briardene branch in Durban within the movement. Thapelo is a former senior organiser for Ndifuna Ukwazi, an NGO that campaigns to advance urban land justice in Cape Town. He believes in two things that can change the life of South Africans. He believes that it is only when people are democratically organised from grass roots that the political frame of the country will change. He also believes that South Africa needs selfless leaders in order to change the status quo of corruption.

Maseipati Mokone

Maseipati Mokone was born in Sophiatown in Gauteng Province. She lived there until she was 10years old and had to move due to the Sophiatown forced removals. After secondary education, she went on to do a teacher’s course at Wilberforce Teacher training centre. She taught until 1982, and then went full time to farming. She then did several courses on Agriculture such as: Farming for profit and others. She even became a mentor at Grain Sa. She is a proud woman in agriculture and loves what she does.

Bonani Loliwe

Bonani Loliwe is land activist from Eastern Cape. He has been involved in the land sector for the past 17 years as a Border Rural Committee organization staff member. He served from 2012 – 2015 in the National land reference group that was established by Minister Nkwinti. He is the head of administration within the Vulamasango Singene (VS) social movement. VS has, since 2000, been advocating for the reopening of land claims especially for Betterment Scheme (known as trust) Victims of the Eastern Cape.

Nkanyiso Gumede  

Nkanyiso Gumede is a researcher at the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. He is part of a research team investigating equitable access to land for social justices. He is also an MPhil student on land and agrarian studies, investigating the outcomes of land reform for employment, livelihoods and land tenure rights for farm labour on land redistribution farms in selected provinces in South Africa.

Nomzamo Zondo 

Nomzamo Zondo became SERI’s Executive Director in January 2020 after serving as SERI’s Director of Litigation since July 2014. Nomzamo joined the organisation as an attorney in February 2013. In May 2018, she was elected to serve on SERI’s Board of  Directors. Joining SERI fulfilled her lifelong dream to work with exploited and marginalized communities and of using the law to balance the scales of social justice. She works mainly on cases related to the right to housing, defending communities threatened with eviction and litigating for the provision of basic services in and the upgrading of informal settlements. She has represented social movements and community-based organisations fighting to secure adequate housing and informal traders and informal workers fighting for their right to earn a living. She holds an LLB degree from the University of the Witwatersrand and served her articles of clerkship with the Wits Law Clinic. She was admitted as an attorney in 2008 and later joined Glenrand MIB, attending to claims on the Attorneys Insurance Indemnity Fund Scheme.