Gaining Ground?

Mugabe's policy of land seizures in Zimbabwe raised concerns in South Africa. Would the same thing happen there, given that some politicians signalled support for these actions? The South African press reported attacks on white farmers in remote areas; they in turn formed vigilante groups which directed violence against African farm-dwellers. Land reform first captured, but then served to disappoint, popular expectations aroused by South Africa's first democratic election. The ANC knows that its supporters expect large white farms to be divided up among poor blacks, but also that incautious initiatives could destabilise the economy and exacerbate racial tensions. Set amidst these conflicts, Gaining Ground? shows how land reform policy and practice in post-apartheid South Africa have been produced and contested.Set in the province of Mpumalanga, the book gives an ethnographic account of local initiatives and conflicts, showing how the poorest sectors of the landless have defied the South African state's attempts to privatise land holdings and create a new class of African farmers. They insist that the 'rights-based' rather than the 'market-driven' version of land reform should prevail and that land restitution was intended to benefit all Africans. But their attempts to gain land access often backfire. Despite state assurances that land reform would benefit all, illegal land selling and 'brokering' are pervasive, representing one of the only feasible routes to land access by the poor.Land is not only understood literally, but has become a fulcrum for social and moral disputes: over inalienable rights versus private property, public responsibility versus private enterprise, welfarism versus self-reliance, patrimonial leadership versus egalitarian democracy. Gaining Ground? shows how human rights lawyers, NGOs and the state in interaction with local communities have tried to square these symbolic and economic claims on land.