Living on Other People’s Land; Impacts of Farm Conversions to Game Farming on Farm Dwellers’ Abilities to Access Land in the Eastern Cape, South Africa

Abstract

This contribution analyses the impacts of conversions of commercial – mainly white-owned – farms to wildlife-based production on access to land for farm workers and dwellers in South Africa. They depended on informal arrangements with landowners for access, hence the notions of ‘abilities to access’ and ‘bundles of power’ are more appropriate concepts to analyze their access than bundles of rights. In post-apartheid South Africa, the state attempted to formalize farm dwellers’ land rights, but simultaneously deregulated the agricultural sector, which stimulated land concentration and land investments, and changed social relations on commercial farms. These contradictory interventions impact negatively on farm dwellers’ abilities to access to land on commercial farms. The paper furthermore demonstrates that conversions to wildlife-based production constitute one response by landowners to the changes in the agricultural sector, but also play a role in struggles about identity and belonging in post-apartheid South Africa.

Keywords:

• Community development
• farm dwellers
• globalization
• identity politics
• land reform
• land rights
• nature conservation

Acknowledgments

The findings presented in this article emerged from a research program entitled ‘Farm dwellers the forgotten People? Consequences of conversions to private wildlife production in Kwa-Zulu Natal and Eastern Cape provinces,’ which was a collaborative project involving the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (the Netherlands), the University of the Free State (South Africa), and the University of Cape Town (South Africa). I would like to thank my fellow project team members Harry Wels, Shirley Brooks, Lungsile Ntsebeza, as well as all the students involved in the project, for their contributions and support. I would furthermore like to thank the research participants for sharing their insights with us. I am grateful to the organizers and participants of the ‘Theory of Access@15’ conference (Utrecht, 10 July 2017), in particular the editors of this special issue, and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier versions of the manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

The project was funded by the Dutch national research foundation NWO-WOTRO, Science for Development (file number W 01.65.306.00), and the South Africa Netherlands Partnership for Alternatives in Development.