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Land redistribution policy in South Africa emphasises commercial farming as the legitimate use of land. This production-oriented framework fails to take into account the intertwined but unstable relationship between the production of market value and social reproduction, and how this shapes social differentiation. Drawing on a case study of the Besters Land Reform Project in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, the paper shows that land and cattle are not simply moments in the production of beef but material and discursive resources in (re)making the social conditions of the household. Cattle are used in drawn-out ceremonies that occur in specific spaces and stitch together families and communities pulled apart by rising inequality, making land constitutive of identity and belonging as well as of capitalist value production. Until land reform policy recognises the multi-functionality of land and cattle, and the contradictory relationship between functions, agricultural production will be a limited indicator of “success” or “failure.”
Donna Hornby; Ben Cousins. “Reproducing the social”: contradictory interconnections between land, cattle production and household relations in the Besters Land Reform Project, South Africa. Anthropology Southern Africa 2019, 42, 202 -216.
AMA StyleDonna Hornby, Ben Cousins. “Reproducing the social”: contradictory interconnections between land, cattle production and household relations in the Besters Land Reform Project, South Africa. Anthropology Southern Africa. 2019; 42 (3):202-216.
Chicago/Turabian StyleDonna Hornby; Ben Cousins. 2019. "“Reproducing the social”: contradictory interconnections between land, cattle production and household relations in the Besters Land Reform Project, South Africa." Anthropology Southern Africa 42, no. 3: 202-216.
The paper investigates whether farm dwellers in the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province of South Africa are subject to a “double exposure”: vulnerable both to the impacts of post-apartheid agrarian dynamics and to the risks of climate change. The evidence is drawn from a 2017 survey that was undertaken by the Association for Rural Advancement (AFRA), which is a land rights Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), of 843 farm dweller households. Data on the current living conditions and livelihoods was collected on 15.3% of the farm dweller population in the area. The paper demonstrates that farm dwellers are a fragmented, agricultural precariat subject to push and pull drivers of mobility that leave them with a precarious hold on rural farm dwellings. The key provocation is that we need to be attentive to whether the hold farm dwellers have over land and livelihoods is slipping further as a result of instability in the agrarian economy? This instability arises from agriculture’s arguably maladaptive response to the intersection of structural agrarian change and climate risk in post-apartheid South Africa. While the outcomes will only be apparent in time, the risks are real, and the paper concludes with a call for agrarian policy pathways that are both more adaptive and achieve social justice objectives.
Donna Hornby; Adrian Nel; Samuel Chademana; Nompilo Khanyile. A Slipping Hold? Farm Dweller Precarity in South Africa’s Changing Agrarian Economy and Climate. Land 2018, 7, 40 .
AMA StyleDonna Hornby, Adrian Nel, Samuel Chademana, Nompilo Khanyile. A Slipping Hold? Farm Dweller Precarity in South Africa’s Changing Agrarian Economy and Climate. Land. 2018; 7 (2):40.
Chicago/Turabian StyleDonna Hornby; Adrian Nel; Samuel Chademana; Nompilo Khanyile. 2018. "A Slipping Hold? Farm Dweller Precarity in South Africa’s Changing Agrarian Economy and Climate." Land 7, no. 2: 40.