AIAS Blog - 8 July 2013 Dear Colleagues and Friends, Our blog this week focuses on Land and Food sovereignty issues in Southern Africa where members of our Agrarian South Network have been especially active. News from our networks ================ The People’s Assembly of South Africa has now issued a Civil Society Declaration which addresses important topics including land occupation, land acquisition, food sovereignty, farm support and governance. The Declaration was adopted after the Land Race and Nation Conference held in Cape Town 19-22 June. plaas.org.za/news/declaration-landracenation-peoplesassembly The Conference was jointly convened by SANPAD. The conference was designed to discuss ways out South Africa’s current impasse over the issues of Land Tenure Reform, Land Restitution and Land Redistribution, which have remained severely circumscribed by the legislative context which protects the utterly racialised division in access to land. Resolving the land question is crucial to resolving the national question in South Africa. codesria.org/spip.php?article1564&lang=en The Conference organising committee was led by Fred Hendricks (Dean of Humanities at Rhodes University) and Lungisile Ntsebeza (NRF Chair in Land Reform and Democracy in South Africa at the University of Cape Town) with support from Kirk Helliker (HOD, Sociology, Rhodes University and CODESRIA. Fred Hendricks, Lungisile Ntsebeza and Kirk Helliker are all key members of our Agrarian South Network. Sam Moyo (Director of AIAS) and other Agrarian South Network members (Praveen Jha and Bill Martin) participated. For further reading on this issue see: Reclaiming the Nation: The Return of the National Question in Africa, Asia and Latin America Sam Moyo & Paris Yeros (eds) SANPAD (South Africa-Netherlands Research Programme on Alternatives in Development) is a unique collaborative research programme that is financed by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs. SANPAD funds high quality, collaborative research by South African researchers in association with Dutch researchers. Food Security in Crisis: Lessons for South Africa from ================================ Zimbabwe ======= Neither government’s pre-ESAP high-input agriculture efforts, nor the free market, private sector thrust of the last 20 years has succeeded in substantially increasing the production of the bottom 80%. The “miracle” maize increase by Zimbabwe’s small farmers in the 1980’s was almost fully produced by the top 20% who had easier access to inputs such as seeds, fertiliser and credit and lived in areas with better soil and higher rainfall. In the absence of credit and extension services support, a greater focus on small grains, rather than mono-cropping, and the use of high yielding maize varieties, would reduce the risks of crop failure in drought-prone areas. (SACSIS) Jos Martens (agricultural expert & deputy director of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Johannesburg) examines the lessons South Africa can draw from Zimbabwe’s experiences and changing policy dynamics around food sovereignty and security. Jos Martens is connected to our Zimbabwe and Land Agrarian Network. sacsis.org.za/site/article/1461 The third leg of the Zimbabwe Land and Agrarian Network (ZLAN) national policy dialogues on land and agrarian transformation scheduled for the 5th of July 2013 was cancelled. Reflections & Reading: ============== Coloniality of Power in Postcolonial Africa: Myths of Decolonization A new book published by CODESRIA considers the incomplete de-colonisation of Africa with important case studies from Zimbabwe and South Africa. Free Access to the book and case studies on CODESRIA’s site: codesria.org/spip.php?article1791&lang=en Coloniality of Power in Postcolonial Africa: Myths of Decolonization. Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni. Dakar, CODESRIA, 2013, 308 p., ISBN: 978-2-86978-578-6 Post your comments & Discuss the issues here on our Facebook site
Posted on: Tue, 09 Jul 2013 10:43:23 +0000
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