Land Reform Revisited

Land Reform Revisited engages with contemporary debates on land reform and agrarian transformation in South Africa. The volume offers insights into post-apartheid transformation dynamics through the lens of agency and state making. The chapters written by emerging scholars are based on extensive qualitative research and their analysis highlights the ways in which people negotiate and contest land reform realities and politics. By focusing on the diverse meanings of land and competing interpretations of what constitutes success and failure in land reform Brandt and Mkodzongi insist on looking beyond the productivity discourses guiding research and policy making in the field towards an informed view from below.

Contributors are: Kezia Batisai, Femke Brandt, Sarah Bruchhausen, Nerhene Davis, Elene Cloete, Tariro Kamuti, Tarminder Kaur, Grasian Mkodzongi, Camalita Naicker, Fani Ncapayi, Mnqobi Ngubane, and Chizuko Sato.

Femke Brandt (PhD 2013), University of Johannesburg is a GES Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology and Development Studies. She has published in Anthropology Southern Africa and the Journal of Southern African Studies.

Grasian Mkodzongi (PhD 2013), is Research Associate Sam Moyo African Institute for Agrarian Studies. He has published articles and book chapters on land reform and rural livelihoods in Zimbabwe in Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy and the Review of African Political Economy.

'This volume is well written, in so far as individual chapters and the main argument are concerned and a must read for anyone interested on land reform.[...] all chapters manage to succeed in convincing the reader that we need to think about land beyond the big commercial agricultural productivity model because land is complex as there are different meanings of land to different people'.

Mzingaye Brilliant Xaba in Transformations. Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa Vol. 100, pp. 228-233.