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Struggles with activism: NGO engagements with land tenure reform in post-apartheid South Africa*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2010

Elizabeth Fortin
Elizabeth Fortin*
Affiliation:
Centre for Development Studies, Department of Social and Policy Studies, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, United Kingdom
*
Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

In 2004, a long-awaited piece of post-apartheid legislation, the Communal Land Rights Act – to reform the land tenure of those living in the former ‘homelands’ of South Africa – was passed into law unanimously by parliament. This unanimity, however, conceals the extent to which the process towards this moment was deeply contested. Exploring the efforts by land sector NGOs to secure legitimacy in their engagements with this process reveals the extent to which wider power relations and contestations have determined their positioning. Those within the non-governmental land sector who opposed the legislation pitted themselves against African National Congress politicians and high-profile traditional leaders. However, the adoption of a Mamdani-inspired discourse to contest such politics and oppose the proposed legislation contributed to reinscribing narrow readings of knowledge considered to be legitimate. Their engagements were also shaped by changes in the NGO sector. Reduced funding for land sector NGOs and an increasingly ambivalent relationship between them and government contributed to contestations between NGOs and among people working within them. Their strategic engagements in such wider and internal politics influenced both the frames within which such policy change could be debated and the ways in which individuals working for NGOs consequently positioned themselves in relation to their constituents.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , September 2010 , pp. 383 - 411
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Ian Scoones, Barbara Oomen, Linda Waldman, Phil Woodhouse and Roy Maconachie for their comments and guidance in relation to earlier versions of this work, as well as two anonymous referees for their comments. I would also like to gratefully acknowledge the support of an ESRC Studentship (Institute of Development Studies, PTA-030-2003-00356) and Fellowship (Institute of Development Policy and Management, PTA-026-27-1924).

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