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Pastures of plenty?: Land rights and community-based agriculture in Peddie, a former homeland town in South Africa

Literature › Works

Alec Thornton (2009). Pastures of plenty?: Land rights and community-based agriculture in Peddie, a former homeland town in South Africa. Applied Geography 29. Elsevier.
Type journal article
Scope Post-1994 South African economy
Method survey fieldwork
Period studied 1981–2005
Regions Peddie, Eastern Cape, former Ciskei homeland, Eastern Cape
Themes agriculture land, bantustans removals influx, transition post apartheid, inequality poverty unemployment, origins segregation
Citation key thornton2009

Argument

Through a case study of the Masizame Community Garden Project, a women's garden on municipal commonage in the former Ciskei homeland town of Peddie, the paper argues that post-apartheid commonage reallocation for poverty alleviation is frustrated by poor communication, unclear user rights and weak capacity at provincial and municipal levels. Garden members mistook verbal municipal permission to use land for group ownership. The paper contends that the literature neglects commonage in former homeland towns, as distinct from communal land in rural homeland villages or commonage in non-homeland towns. It calls for clearer legislation, better information flows, and NGO and civil society advocacy.

Evidence and method

Part of a 2003-2005 field investigation of urban and peri-urban agriculture in the Eastern Cape (author's PhD, Thornton 2006): a household survey and questionnaire in Peddie, key informant interviews with municipal and Department of Agriculture officials, focus groups with the MCGP, personal communications, a town-planning map, the Ngqushwa IDP, Mail & Guardian reporting, and secondary literature.

Findings

  • Eastern Cape poverty is severe relative to the national average, and is attributed partly to the apartheid homeland inheritance. (p. 13)

    An estimated 72% of the population in the EC live below the poverty line, which is more than the national average of 60%

  • Peddie has high unemployment and low incomes, with many women heading households. (p. 15)

    70% have members who are unemployed, which is higher than the national average of 45%. Further, 72% of households with employed members in the municipality earn <R800/month

  • The homeland system is framed as serving the economy's need for cheap black labour via controlled urbanisation and segregation. (p. 12)

    The homeland system was a result of controlled black urbanisation and racial segregation, which served to provide key sectors of the economy with a steady supply of cheap black labour

  • Group members believed that funding approval carried ownership of the land, but they appear to have only verbal permission. (p. 18)

    Most of the members of Masizame were under the impression that approval of project funding extended to group or communal ownership the land which they cultivate.

  • Tenure insecurity is concrete: no deed or contract exists, and a school is planned on the site. (p. 18)

    In studying a town-planning map, it was discovered that the construction of a school is proposed on the current site of the MCGP.

  • Provincial fiscal mismanagement in the Eastern Cape, a homeland legacy region, undermined poverty relief. (p. 17)

    79% of the provincial budget between 1996 and 2004 is unaccounted for

  • The paper claims a policy gap: confusion over rights of groups to commonage in former homeland towns. (p. 18)

    there is a fundamental lack of clarity, at multiple levels, regarding the rights of groups and individuals to access municipal commonage for legitimate poverty alleviation activities