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Placement: Women on Farms Project, Stellenbosch,
South Africa
Project Title: Growing Equality? Change in the
Farmlands of the Western Cape after Apartheid.
Abstract:
The history of the Western Cape is at once distinctly South African
and distinctly its own. The coalescence of geography and demography
bred a set of circumstances that colored Western Cape’s pre-colonial
history and 350 years of black-white interaction. These particular
hues and tones contributed to significant differences in the agricultural
economy, demographic trends, political leanings, civil society activity,
and the wealth of the province. It may seem puzzling at first that
a province that ran counter to many national trends would reveal
anything significant about the trajectory of national agriculture
after apartheid and South Africa’s efforts to use economic
growth to redistribute wealth more broadly. Despite the variables
in the Western Cape, its preeminent economic position set the stage
for changes in agriculture and offered important lessons about the
effects of South Africa’s post-apartheid agricultural policy.
In the twelve years since the democratic transition, the national
government’s faith in a form of growth hypothesis based on
balancing growth priorities with workers’ rights demonstrated
little transformative potential on the farms of the Western Cape.
This period left open the possibility that established business
interests would evolve in order to set the terms of change to their
favor: leaders of the South African Agricultural Union took advantage
of the government’s desire for economic growth and long-held
insecurities about the opinions of international investors, all
the while remaining a trusted and influential partner in national
agrarian initiatives. As a result, its interests fundamentally shaped
subsequent redistributive efforts. Moreover, labor trends that emerged
at this time continued to shape the farms of the Western Cape. Growing
stratification among farm workers, combined with many farmers’
interests in scaling back their responsibilities for farm workers’
livelihoods, created widening fractures in rural black communities.
Questions about if these trends were reversible continued to be
the subject of debate. There were hints of changes that might create
new possibilities. The Western Cape saw the rise of a grassroots
movement of farm workers pushing for change which endeavored to
address the widening chasms. This movement was fought with difficulties,
but many participants were determined to challenge the inequality
on the farmlands not only between whites and blacks but also among
farm workers. In addition, there were also inklings that the government’s
course was changing. The first signs lay in South Africa’s
increasing willingness to challenge the developed world’s
advice and seek new allies in international trade. More recently,
the national government made a fundamental shift in the policies
guiding its land reform strategy in an effort to redistribute more
land to black South Africans. While the vast majority of South Africa’s
farms still belonged to whites and the vast majority of blacks living
on farms still worked land that they did not own, the question of
whether this would continue to be the case remained uncertain.
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