In the Shadow of Policy

"The book is full of critical information on South African land reform and attempts to rejuvenate domestic agriculture. Local case studies shed light on the implementation and outcomes of land reform--sometimes failed, sometimes successful, often mixed, often surprising, and nearly always not greatly helped by the 'experts.'" --Ben White, professor of rural sociology, International Institute of Social Studies, the Hague, Netherlands

Ben Cousins & Paul Hebinck, PLAAS, Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, Capetown, South Africa

Setting the scene: land and agrarian reform in post-apartheid South Africa: Post-apartheid land and agrarian reform policy and practices in South Africa: themes, processes and issues; Land and agrarian reform policies from a historical perspective; Land reform and agriculture uncoupled: the political economy of rural reform in post-apartheid South Africa. 'Mind the gap': discrepancies between policies and practices in South African land reform: Consultants, business plans and land reform practices; 'Seeing like a land reform agency': cultural politics and the contestation of community farming at Makhoba; Land reform and newly emerging social relations on Gallawater A farm; Property rights and land reform in the Western Cape; 'Rent a crowd' land reform at Survive and Dikgoho land reform projects; Locating policies in the daily practices of land reform beneficiaries: the Mighty and Wales land reform farms; Where are the youth in land reform? The Vuki case; Land compensation in the upper Kat River valley; In the shadows of the cadastre: family law and custom in Rabula and Fingo Village; Land reform, tradition and securing land for women in Namaqualand Karin Kleinbooi. Competing knowledge regimes in communal area agriculture: What constitutes 'the agrarian' in contemporary rural African settlements of the central Eastern Cape?; The Massive Food Production Programme: a case study of agricultural policy continuities and changes; The Massive Food Production Programme: does it work?; 'Still feeding ourselves': everyday practices of the Siyazondla Homestead Food Production Programme in Mbhashe; Cultivators in action, Siyazondla in action? Trends and potentials in homestead cultivation; Smallholder irrigation schemes as an agrarian development option for the Cape region; Cattle and rural development in the Eastern Cape: the Nguni project revisited.