Policy affecting the rangeland commons in South Africa has been based largely on management models developed for large-scale commercial farming. This paper examines the current policy situation and discusses some of the most pervasive ecological and economic assumptions that have influenced development in the rangeland commons: that increasing livestock sales and full-time commercial farming are the best way to improve productivity and resource management; that communal rangelands are invariably overstocked and degraded and that destocking, fencing and rotational grazing are required to address this; and that communal tenure per se is the root cause of degradation and privatisation is the answer. A wealth of research now shows that these assumptions, while they may be suited to commercial agriculture on large land holdings, are an inappropriate basis for policy on rangeland commons. Instead, policy should support multiple livelihoods to enhance resilience and reduce risk, support the aims and overcome the...

Drought, change and resilience in South Africa’s arid and semi-arid rangelands

The concept of cultural landscapes relates to the multifaceted links between people, place and identity. From a professional perspective, the concept refers to a category of designated conservation areas with specific biocultural heritage values. From a local perspective, it may refer to a landscape that is associated with the provision of a culturally-specific sense of identity and belonging. We explore these two perspectives through a comparative analysis of three cultural landscapes in South Africa, the ‘expert’ designated Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape and the Richtersveld Cultural and Botanical Landscape, and the local associative landscape of emaXhoseni, which is not formally recognised. We propose that a biocultural diversity perspective of heritage not only recognises the inextricable relationship between nature and culture, but it also gives prominence to the beliefs, values and practices of local people, and to strengthening their agency to safeguard their heritage in ways and forms that are relevant to them.

Despite the size of the informal small-scale farming sector and its livestock holdings in South Africa, there has been little detailed work to assess how livestock populations are affected by droug...