Dynamics of Development Intervention, the Case of Peddie, Eastern Cape
Fukweni Nondumiso
Dissertation submitted in fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Social Science in Rural Development (Social Sciences and Humanities)
University of Fort Hare
Fort Hare Institute of Social and Economic Research (FHISER)
March 2009
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This study has been made possible by the people of Peddie. Their knowledge and willingness to share information greatly benefited this study. I appreciate their friendliness and hospitality. A special thanks to Mrs Mbuseli who accommodated me during the period I conducted my interviews in Peddie.
I would also like to extend my appreciation to my Supervisor, Professor Leslie Bank, who supported me. Without his constructive comments this thesis would not be possible. I would also like to thank my friend, Christopher Phiri for his support and motivation. Special thanks are further extended to my field assistant, Nokuthembela Maxhegwana, who really dedicated her time in helping me during field work.
This study would not have been successful without a scholarship from NRF and the Melon Foundation. Lastly, I would like to thank my family- my husband for his support and motivation throughout the process of writing, my mother and sisters: Kholeka, Nzwaki, Nomthunzi and Sandiswa for their encouragement.
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Abstract
A large number of development initiatives, aimed at improving the overall quality of life of communities, have had a limited success rate in addressing poverty levels. Poverty has increased drastically and more and more people are among the poorest of the poor in spite of all the development actions and programmes that are aimed at improving the quality of life (Chambers, 1997;1) The study explores the dynamics of commercialization of agriculture at Prudo and Benton villages in Peddie, Eastern Cape. These dynamics include labour issues, lack of people involvement in decision making processes and the sharing of benefits within the pineapple project at Benton. It also explores the challenges of cash cropping at Prudo. Additionally, the study looks at the challenges faced by the poor within small projects administered by the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Social Development. Finally, the study explores the role that natural resources play in livelihoods in Peddie. To achieve these objectives, a review of literature and empirical research presented in the form of case studies will be used. The central argument of this thesis is that development has failed the majority of the poor in Peddie. Despite that, rural people continue to survive. Development projects did not generally bring about any significant reduction in poverty; neither did they bring about any significant economic transformations.
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4 Acronyms
ANC African National Congress CAC Ciskei Agricultural Corporation CCMA Commission for Conciliation Mediation and Arbitration CLARA Communal Land Rights Act EDAFU Eastern Cape Disadvantaged African Farmers Union EPAU Eastern Province Agricultural Union FAWU Farm Workers Union FHISER Fort Hare Institute for Social and Economic Research GAD Gender and Development GEAR Growth, Employment, and Redistribution HFPP Household Food Production Programme IFSNP Integrated Food Security and Nutrition Programme IDP Integrated Development Programme ISRDS Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Strategy LED Local Economic Development MFPP Massive Food Production Programme NFES National Food Emergency Scheme SANCO South African National Civic Organization SMME Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises SADT South African Development Trust SDI Spatial Development Initiatives TLC Transitional Local Council TRC Transitional Representative Council WAD Women and Development WID Women in Development
5 Table of contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... 2 Abstract ...... 3 Acronyms ...... 5 Table of contents ...... 6
CHAPTER ONE: ...... 9 The Failure of Development: Some Perspectives and Approaches ...... 9 1.1 Statement of the problem ...... 9 1.2 Development Failure ...... 10 1.2.1 Knowledge and Power ...... 11 1.2.2 Institutions, Participation and Brokers ...... 17 1.2.3 Gender and Development ...... 21 1.3 Development Failure in South Africa ...... 25 1.4 Methodology and Research Design ...... 27 1.4.1 The Choice of Peddie as Study Site ...... 28 1.4.2 Methods used for data collection ...... 30 1.5 Limitations of the Study ...... 33 1.5.1 Structure of the Thesis ...... 34
CHAPTER TWO: ...... 36 The Rural Development Discourse: Agriculture, Poverty and Rural Livelihoods in the Eastern Cape ...... 36 2.1 Introduction ...... 36 2.2 Two Agricultures? ...... 39 2.3 Welfare and Service Delivery: Poverty Alleviation in Rural Areas ...... 43 2.3.1 Reconstruction and Development Programme ...... 44 2.3.2 The Growth, Employment, and Redistribution Strategy ...... 45 2.3.3 Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Programme ...... 46 2.3.4 The Provincial Growth and Development Programme ...... 46 2.3.5 Conclusion ...... 51
CHAPTER THREE: ...... 52 Livelihood Making in Peddie: Historical and Contemporary Considerations ...... 52 3.1. Demographic and socio-economic indicators ...... 52 3.1.1 Introduction ...... 52 3.2 Agricultural boom in Peddie in the 19th Century ...... 55 3.3 The fall of Agriculture ...... 56 3.4 Betterment Planning in Peddie ...... 57 3.5 Capital-intensive development projects in the 1980s...... 58 3.6 The Ciskei National Ranch ...... 58 3.7 Employment status of potential labour force ...... 60 3.8 Formal Employment ...... 60 3.9 Education and Literacy ...... 63 3.10 A Rural Livelihoods Framework ...... 63 3.11 Livelihood strategies in Peddie ...... 67 3.11.1 Agricultural production ...... 67 3.11.2 Cattle farming ...... 68
6 3.11.3 Social grants and migrant remittances ...... 69 3.11.4 Use of natural resources ...... 70 3.11.5 Formal employment and piece jobs ...... 70 3.11.6 Small businesses ...... 70 3.11.7 Informal businesess, street vendors and saving clubs ...... 71 3.12 Case studies of individual household livelihood strategies ...... 71 3.12.1 Nozimasile's household ...... 71 3.12.2 Nolusindisos' household ...... 72 3.12.3 The Dlamini household ...... 73 3.12.4 Nokwanda’s households ...... 73 3.13. Conclusion ...... 74 Chapter Four: ...... 76 Power, Authority and Local Governance in Development Practice ...... 76 4.1 Introduction ...... 76 4.1.1 Revival of traditional authority ...... 79 4.1.1.1 The Communal Land Rights Act ...... 79 4.1.1.2 Traditional Authorities ...... 79 4.2 A History of Local Government in Peddie ...... 81 4.3 Traditional Leadership and development in Peddie ...... 85 4.3.1 Historical background ...... 85 4.3.2 Apartheid era systems ...... 86 4.3.3 Land administration systems ...... 86 4.3.4 Post-apartheid systems ...... 86 4.3.5 Development projects ...... 88 4.3.6 Land allocation ...... 88 4.3.7 Arable land ...... 89 4.3.8 Conclusion ...... 89
Chapter Five: ...... 91 Commercial Farming and Commodity Production Projects ...... 91 5.1 Introduction ...... 91 5.1.1 History of farming and development in Peddie ...... 92 5.1.2 Food plot production on irrigation scheme in Peddie ...... 93 5.1.3 Crops and land-use ...... 94 5.1.4 Problems facing the scheme ...... 94 5.2 Pineapple Production ...... 95 5.2.1 Background of the Pineapple project at Benton ...... 95 5.2.2 Dynamics in the project ...... 96 5.2.2.1 Participation in the project ...... 97 5.2.2.2 Opportunism and corruption ...... 98 5.2.2.3 Labour issues...... 100 5.2.2.4 Conflicts between workers ...... 101 5.2.2.5 Institutional weaknesses ...... 102 5.2.3 Household experiences ...... 105 5.2.3.1 Nosethu Bonani ...... 105 5.2.3.2 Lumko Mtati ...... 106 5.2.3.3 Nophumle ...... 107 5.2.3.4 Conclusion ...... 108 5.3 Cash crop production at Prudhoe ...... 109 5.3.1 Crops grown ...... 110
7 5.3.2 Canola pilot project ...... 113 5.3.3 Chicory project ...... 114 5.3.4 Conclusion ...... 115
Chapter Six: ...... 117 Social Welfare Projects ...... 117 6.1 Introduction ...... 117 6.1.1 Poultry keeping projects at Sigingqini village ...... 117 6.1.1.1 Case studies of household experiences ...... 118 6.1.1.2 The Goqwana household ...... 118 6.1.1.3 The Gatya household ...... 118 6.1.1.4 Siyakhula poultry project ...... 120 6.1.1.5 Dynamics at Sigingqini village ...... 121 6.2 Poultry keeping and community garden Projects at Mthathi Village ...... 121 6.2.1 Conclusion ...... 123 6.3 Baking project at Mphekweni ...... 124 6.3.1 Conclusion ...... 127 6.4 Projects at Gwalane Village...... 127 6.4.1 Conclusion ...... 129
Chapter Seven: ...... 131 Craft-making project ...... 131 7.1 Introduction ...... 131 7.1.1 Nongenile’s beadwork project ...... 132 7.1.2 Conclusion ...... 133 7.1. 3 Natural resource use in crafting of mats in Peddie ...... 134 7.1.3.1 Introduction ...... 134 7.2. Case study area of natural resource use in Gwalane ...... 134 7.2.1 Biophysical background ...... 134 7.2.2 Land use and tenure ...... 134 7.2.3 Culture, tradition and recreation ...... 135 7.2.3.1The economy ...... 135 7.2.4 Resources and the process of mat-making ...... 136 7.2.4.1 Location and access to raw material used ...... 136 7.2.4.2 The process of weaving ...... 137 7.3 Household experiences ...... 137 7.3.1 Mamngwevu's life history ...... 137 7.3.2 Nophumlani’s household ...... 140 7.3.3 Nokholekile’s household ...... 142 7.3.4 Nomantombi’s household ...... 142 7.3.5 Conclusion ...... 143
Chapter Eight: ...... 145 8.1 Conclusion and Research Findings ...... 145 References ...... 150 8.3 APPENDIX 1 ...... 160 APPENDIX 3 ...... 168
8 CHAPTER ONE:
The Failure of Development: Some Perspectives and Approaches
1.1 Statement of the problem
The challenge of alleviating poverty, especially of the rural poor, is a universal one. South Africa is faced with this challenge, as well as the challenge of redressing the inequality intensified by apartheid. South Africa, under the leadership of the ANC has expressed the political will to alleviate poverty, as is amply demonstrated by the number of anti-poverty programmes that have been launched since 1994. These include poverty alleviation projects, social welfare programmes, Local Economic Development projects and commercial projects. In order to increase the chances of success of such projects, they are to be monitored on an ongoing basis and evaluated at predetermined points in their development cycle. The paradox of participation in development derives from its rhetorical popularity in combination with the continued processes of social and economic exclusion (Davids, Theron & Maphunye, 2005). The government's response to the country's steady economic growth, persistent poverty and high levels of inequality is an integrated approach that seeks to link economic growth with development (May, 2001, Tereblanche, 2001).
Government's effort to eliminate poverty have been frustrated by continued job losses in the formal sector as well as by a lack of institutional capacity to deliver programmes designed to address poverty (Aliber, 2003). In addition, there is poor understanding amongst policy makers about the nature of the poverty that they are aiming to address. Aliber makes the point that despite an explosion in poverty oriented research in recent decades, there remain significant gaps in our knowledge of practical measures that work. Clearly it is important that poverty reduction policies be informed by ongoing research if public funds are to be utilised effectively. The aim of this thesis is to investigate a range of poverty alleviation and economic upliftment programmes, projects and initiatives in the Peddie area. These projects range from those initiated by the Department of Social
9 Development, Department of Agriculture and those that are initiated locally. They all involve the commodification of local products and resources and have been operating for some years. The aMazizi area which is my study area has been selected because it is home to some high profile agricultural projects, such as the pineapple project. I want particularly to explore and analyse the dynamics of commodification in the projects. The thesis will also look at village dynamics of poverty alleviation projects administered by the Department of Social Development and the Department of Agriculture at Gwalane, Sigingqini, Mphekweni and Mthathi villages in Peddie. This thesis seeks to explore the reasons why so many of these projects have ended in failure. Additionally, the study has the following objectives:
to explore the dynamics of commodification on cash crop production in Peddie
to examine the village dynamics around the poverty alleviation projects such as poultry farming, piggery and craft-making.
to document household experiences and the impact of the poverty alleviation projects on the lives of the people in Peddie.
to document the importance of natural resources on the livelihoods of the people in Peddie.
to examine the sustainability of these various projects
1.2 Development Failure
There are different perspectives on why development fails. Alternative meanings of development are hotly contested and indeed the very idea of development is under challenge. Voices from the post-development school claim that, at best, development has failed, or at worst it was always a ‘hoax’ designed to cover up violent damage being done to the so called ‘developing’ world and its peoples. Since the 1990s there has been increasing pessimism about the actual achievements of development. In one classic analogy, the development industry was likened to Foucault’s analysis of the modern prison system, which has as its stated aim the rehabilitation of criminals, but continues to exist despite its consistent failure to achieve its objectives. In 1990, Ferguson argued that ‘development’ had a very similar historical experience. Born as a modern concept in the
10 wake of the Second World War the world has been awash with development project and funds which have achieved very little in terms of reversing the fundamental inequalities in the world economy. In a similar way, Sachs and Esteva (2000) argue that development was always unjust, never worked and has now clearly failed. They further argue that it is the rich and powerful that are in the position to be able to promote development and they are likely to do so in ways which benefit themselves.
In a classic article, Sachs (1992) suggested to the world that ‘the idea of development stands like a ruin in the intellectual landscape’. He went on to state that: ‘delusion and disappointment, failures and crime have been the steady companions of development’. The post-development school, with which Sachs is associated, claims that development is simply a way of allowing the industrialized North, particularly the USA, to continue its dominance of the rest of the world in order to maintain its own high standards of living. Rahnema (1997) suggests that the majority of people whose standard of life has greatly deteriorated do want positive change and he suggests we need to bring development as it is currently understood to an end for this to happen. The end of development is described by the post development school as not the end to the search for new possibilities of change but a move away from the mechanistic, reductionist, inhumane and self- destructive approach to change. What these scholars suggest is a new approach to development – one that is not dominated by the agendas of the rich.
1.2.1 Knowledge and Power
One of the most articulate accounts of the inequalities of power and knowledge in the global configuration of development is provided by Escobar (1995), who highlights the inequalities of power relations in development. More particularly he focuses on the contrast between local knowledge which is often viewed as parochial, irrational and traditionalist and expert knowledge, viewed as progressive, universal and scientific. He argues that this unequal relationship is deeply embedded in the development discourse. It is the devaluation of local knowledge, which justifies the actions and policies of development elites.
11 In his book, The Making and Unmaking of the Third World , Escobar (1995) points out that to understand development as a discourse one must look at the system of relations established among them. He argues that it is this system that allows systematic creation of objects, concepts and `strategies; it determines what can be thought and said. These relations established between institutions, socio-economic processes, forms of knowledge, technological factors define the conditions under which objects, concepts, theories and strategies can be incorporated into the discourse. The system of relations establishes a discursive practice that sets the rules of the game; who can speak, from what points of view, with what authority, and according to what criteria of expertise, it sets the rules that must be followed for this or that problem, theory or object to emerge and be named, analyzed, and eventually transformed into a policy or plan.
Escobar (1995) points out that the objects with which development began to deal after 1945 were numerous and varied. Some of them stood out clearly; poverty, insufficient technology and capital, rapid population growth, inadequate public services, archaic agricultural practice and so on, whereas others were introduced with more caution or even in surreptitious ways such as cultural attitudes and values, religious, geographic or ethnic factors believed to be associated with backwardness. These elements emerged from a multiplicity of points; the newly formed international organizations, government offices in distant capitals, universities and research centres in developed countries, and increasingly with the passing of time, institutions in the Third World. Everything was subjected in the eye of the new experts.
Escobar (1995) observed that some clear principles of authority were in operation. They concerned the role of experts from certain criteria of knowledge and competence. Institutions, such as the United Nations, were given the moral, professional and legal authority to name subjects and define strategies and international lending organizations, carry the symbols of capital and power. These principles of authority concerned the governments of poor countries which commanded the legal political authority over the lives of their subjects, and the position of leadership of rich countries, which had the power, knowledge and experience to decide on what was to be done. Problems were continually identified and client categories brought into existence.
12 Development proceeded to name, create and define abnormalities and pathologies in the underdeveloped, the malnourished, the small farmers or the landless peasants. It was this act of creating the ‘Third World’, as a geo-political space filled with deficiencies which was the master move which allowed one half of the world to define the problems and solution for the other half. Escobar (1995) therefore calls for the deconstruction of the ‘development paradigm’ in its entirety so to make space for the ‘unmaking’ of the 'Third World'. Escobar suggests that social movements are one of the vehicles through which these 'hybrid' societies can clarify and strengthen identities, embracing cultural, social, political, and even economic differences and thereby fulfill a potential for resisting and subverting the axiomatic of capitalism and modernity in their hegemonic forms. He suggests that it is only possible for the local to engage with the global on a basis that can be insightful, productive and illuminating, when local identity has been reclaimed, reshaped, owned and defended in its specific context and locality, and when a collective construction of alternatives to hegemonic discourses has been effectively produced.
In Escobar’s understanding development is likened to cultural imperialism, as a system of knowledge and power maintained and reproduced through a particular kind of discourse which operates at a global level. A more useful application of a broadly similar approach is seen in the work of Ferguson(1990) on Lesotho. In his study on rural development in Lesotho, he points out that development agencies, such as the World Bank, have a tendency of funding rural development projects that fail. I have also observed that this has been the tendency with many development projects in Peddie, where you find that huge amounts of money are injected in projects that fail. The reason given by local officials is that development failure results from a lack of monitoring of these projects and the fact that they were understaffed. Ferguson suggests that the reasons for failure in development are sometime less obvious. Citing an example of commercial stock farming project that became a failure in Lesotho, he argues that these projects failed to make any positive impact at a local level as they were based on a set of faulty assumptions about the nature of social and economic life in the migrant dominated rural economy of this country. Ferguson asserts that the World Bank project team was basically unable to develop any understanding of the complex economic, social and cultural dynamics which underpinned local attitudes to livestock. They viewed Lesotho as a traditional agrarian society whose main problem was that it was isolated from modern economic systems and especially rural markets. This analysis failed to account for the fact that Lesotho was
13 deeply integrated into the southern African capitalist economy. As a result, most rural residents were actually wage workers rather than peasants. Rural households in Lesotho in the 1980s regarded their cattle as more than a marketable commodity; it was a source of security and savings for retirement, which should not be sold unless absolutely necessary.
Ferguson also shows that development has important ‘unintended consequences’, which uphold and support specific social and political interests that entrench development as a social discourse and ensure that it continues to reproduce itself despite its manifest failures. He argues that, despite its repeated technical failures, the 'development machine' has been highly successful at expanding state control over rural areas, and that this should in fact be understood as ‘aid's primary function’. A similar set of observations could be made for development in Peddie district, which is the focus of this study. The existence of the need for development has expanded state involvement and control in the Peddie area. Here, as in Lesotho, the failure of development project seems to provide no reason for officials and agencies to leave the area. In fact, lack of success is often a prerequisite for renewed project funding.
On this issue, Hobart (1992) argues that it is important to recognize that local and expert or scientific knowledge not only stand in an unequal relationship to one another, but also that as systematic knowledge grows, so does ‘the possibility of ignorance’. In other words, ignorance is not simply the antithesis of knowledge, ‘it is a state which people attribute to others and is laden with moral judgment’. Thus, being underdeveloped often implies, if not actual iniquity, at least stupidity, failure and sloth’. The upshot of Hobart’s argument is that as the systematic knowledge on which development and policy interventions are based expands, so local knowledge in the form of local practice is increasingly devalued and derided. This creates a cycle where as the application of systematic knowledge in the development field broadens so it creates a political imperative for its further expansion.
In the process of policy formulation, nation-states clearly play a central role in attributing knowledge, ignorance and agency. Gardener and Lewis (1995) summarise the position as follows:
14 Development practice is seen to use a specific corpus of techniques which organise a type of knowledge and a type of power. The expertise of development specialists transcend the social realities of the ‘clients’ of development who are labelled and thus structured in particular ways (women-headed households/ small- farmers etc.) Clients are thus controlled by development and can only maneuver within the limits set by it.
This dramatic polarisation of local and scientific knowledge has recently done a great deal to sensitize development policy makers and planners to the need to acknowledge and accommodate local knowledge and practice in planning processes. Even the World Bank (which was the focus of Fergusons study) and IMF responded to these critiques and introduced a new system of Participatory Poverty Assessments (PPA’s) in the mid-1990s, which has now been undertaken in over 60 countries. The initiative is seen as a reflection of the growing acknowledgement of the potential value of ‘local knowledge’ in development.
In the World Bank’s 2000 Development Report of extensive attention is also given to ‘voices of the poor’, suggesting that the poor are being heard. However, there are many who regard these initiatives as gratuitous ‘add-ons’, populists window-dressing, aimed at trying to clean up the Bank’s tarnished image. Quite what the status of the apparent shift in thinking is still unclear, but it does raise the question of whether the poor can be heard, whether their local knowledge and practices can be better understood and they might ultimately influence policy? Indeed, while the World Bank is advocating the voices of the poor, it recently released a report on agricultural development which made very little reference to local knowledge. In reflecting on the green revolution as a paradigm of knowledge for development, the report argued that it had played a critical role in the creation and dissemination of new agricultural knowledge around the world, especially in Asia. It suggests that the critical role that governments and development agents played in this process was that they closed the knowledge gap through the promotion of new breeding seeds and scientific production techniques, which allowed food production to grow in leaps and bounds.
The Green Revolution, the report suggests, thwarted the predictions of Malthusian pessimists that Third World population growth was rapidly outstripping food supply. But the report also readily admits that the uptake of new plant varieties and production regimes has been much slower than expected and that ‘ information blockages ’, which
15 prevent critical scientific knowledge from reaching the poor, and the lack of private sector investment in Third World agriculture has been the main causes of this. The latter problem is related in the report to the leakage of key research findings into the public domain, without the creators receiving compensation. The argument of the report is that breaking down ‘information barriers’ (i.e. ‘closing the knowledge gap’) and creating new opportunities for private investment are the keys to increased food production and agricultural development in the development world. The approach, with which the current policies of the South African government would be most sympathetic, significantly makes no mention of local knowledge and practice. It argues that the technological gap between the “fortunate few” and poor countries can be closed by enlightened policies facilitating the acquisition of “knowledge”. As the 1999 World Bank World Development Report states:
Knowledge is like light. Weightless and intangible, it can easily travel the world, enlightening the lives of people everywhere. Yet billions of people still live in the darkness of poverty –unnecessarily.
This conceptualisation of the “knowledge gap” has been fiercely challenged by some in the development sector who continue to press for policies which are more in touch with local realities, understandings and practices. But development analysts and anthropologists have also noted that scientific and local knowledge are not always as separate and polarised as some academics have suggested. They note that sources of power in development are more diffuse than the Escobar-type position is prepared to acknowledge. A discourse of control based on (western) universal legal fictions can also be discourse of entitlement at the local-level, where ‘recipients’ or ‘beneficiaries’ press claims on the state or development agencies (cf. Sillitoe 2004). In terms of agricultural development, in particular, there is, of course, evidence of cases where developers have taken their lead from local farming know-how in seeking solutions for broader problems. In view of the complexities of local realities it is difficult to feel confident about the notion of absolutely incommensurable knowledge systems, which separate development agencies’ representations and the actuality of situated local practices and understandings. In the case of South Africa, where the state and the rural residents have been engaged in long ‘conversations’ about progress and development, and where state development discourse shapes claims for entitlement and participation, it is not always easy to know where local knowledge begins and ends. On the other side, however, there
16 is little to suggest that the new post-apartheid development agents have a greater regard for ‘local knowledge’ - at least in relation to the making of rural livelihoods – than their predecessors (Cousins 2000; Lattif 2000).
Much of the writing about knowledge and power has been informed by Foucauldian perspectives and place a strong emphasis on the role of discourses to define and shape fields of power and inequality. Scholars like Long and van der Ploeg (1989), have also argued for the need to deconstruct the concept of ‘planned intervention’ which is diagnostic and prescriptive in nature. They suggest that the underlying belief is that local situations or ways of organizing social life are no longer valid or somehow ill-founded and inappropriate, and hence need restructuring or eliminating altogether if development is to take place. They assert that the imposition of systematic scientific knowledge not only undermines local knowledge, but tends to result in increasing confusion, vagueness and variability at the local level. Norman Long has championed actor-centred approaches to development for many years and has suggested that development processes, whether planned or otherwise, seldom make enough space for everyday and organic social interaction and exchange. By trying to cordon off development from the flows and rhythms of everyday interaction, many mistakes and misunderstandings are created, which could be avoided and improve the efficacy of development practice. Long (1989; 2004) acknowledges that there are ‘battlegrounds of knowledge’ that define rural development processes and that struggles occur around knowledge control and dissemination. Yet he is also open to the idea that development can work better under certain circumstances than under other – there is no inevitability of the failure of development in his view. In other words, the (meta-) discourse does not determine the outcome in every instance.
1.2.2 Institutions, Participation and Brokers
Turning to other perspectives, public choice theory of development highlights the role of institutions in development. North (1990) described institutions as the rules of the game in a society, or more formally, the humanly devised protocols that shape human interaction. They encompass norms, social values, rules and regulations which shape but not necessarily determine opportunities for people to access and utilise resources. Public choice theorists argue that how the institutions are constructed, reconstructed and
17 reconstituted is critical to their effectiveness as a tool to regulate the behavior of individuals within the society. If the construction of institutions is dominated and controlled by centre elites, such as political leaders and civil servants or state custodians with the relevant stakeholder groups denied opportunity to participate fully and effectively, the result would be inappropriate and non-viable institutions which are likely to be instruments for the maximization of elite interests and objectives (Mbaku, 2004). Continued poverty has not been caused by the shortage of capital but by the lack of economic freedom, political opportunism by civil servants and politicians and the absence of structures for the peaceful resolution of conflicts.
The resulting laws and institutions will affect the welfare of many people and therefore it is necessary that all relevant stakeholder groups be enfranchised, empowered and provided the facilities and allowed to participate fully and effectively in institution building. It is not enough to assess projects only in terms of sustainability in general but also in terms of institutional development. According to the World Bank (2005), institutional factors often determine the success or failure of development programmes. Olson (1996) argues that economic success is not determined by endowments in natural resources or access to both human and physical capital.
The availability of resources is not a precondition for development; resources can be created in the process of development. Economic performance, many argue, is determined by the quality of institutions and policies. Even if a country has a high endowment of productive resources, it may still fail to achieve its production potential if it does not have the appropriate institutional environment i.e. an environment that enhances entrepreneurial activities, protects individuals and their property and allows for the productive use of resources, including labor.
Mogale (2003) argues that although the principle of public participation is accepted as part of international, decentralized decision making and democratization processes, the culture of public participation has not been established in South Africa. The good intentions and foundations laid by the South African Constitution (1996) and numerous Acts and White Papers regarding public participation, will not, per se, create a culture of public participation, they will only serve as a vehicle for the introduction of public participation, but authentic and empowering public participation will only become a reality
18 if it becomes a process generated from within- the public themselves must be the primary actors in establishing the required culture.
Shepherd (1998), argues that projects have become much more a routine way of doing the business of development, and tend to be routinized in content and procedure rather than being at the thinking or cutting edge of development. There are certain characteristics of a project as a concept that are fundamental, and a fundamentally problematic for the achievement of rural development objectives of strengthening the hand of local rural people, reaching the poor, alleviating poverty and improving rural people's environment and health. Shepherd argues that the project has a control orientation and an economic core. A control orientation is antithetic to many common progressive rural development objectives. Despite the rhetoric of participation, strongly proclaimed in many rural development project documents, politician's speeches and academic commentaries, a control orientation has been evident.
In a similar vein, May (2000), asserts that the rural areas of the country are places where poverty, economic exclusion is concentrated. The rhetoric of participation has been accompanied by increased control over recipients. In development situations the decisions are usually taken by the powerful. Globalization and market -led export orientation have increased the exclusion of the disadvantaged. Genuine participation is difficult in the context of development programmes and projects. The state and big organizations mostly dominate in the development sphere. A good example of this dominance is uncovered in Faucoldian’s analysis (1994) of development planning in Lesotho. He calls development an “antipolitics machine”, referring to the way in which increased government control over the population is hidden by the concept of development planning.
May (1994) argues that participation mostly manifests as a means to an end for development managers including governments rather than as an end itself, which would be its more radical and authentic meaning. It is added onto a development intervention managed from outside, for functional reasons. Often this meaning leads to mere consultation, or a notion of 'self-help' or it becomes political jargon, saying “the people” when autocrats or bureaucrats speak for them. In practice, participation often remains
19 limited and used as a means. It is often nothing more than consultation or the use of local labour.
The political parties’ point of view on the failure of development as advocated by the Democratic Party is due to corruption and misuse of state funds. This party attributes development failure to institutional weaknesses. On the other hand, the African National Congress claims that an absence of integration is the key; hence there is a need for integrated development with cross cutting programmes. There is also a lack of market/ private investment through the creation of public private partnerships.
In a more general context, Chambers (1993) has argued that poorer rural people are hard to reach; they are typically unorganized, inarticulate, often sick, seasonally hungry and quite frequently dependent on local patrons. They are less educated, less in contact with communications, less likely to use government services, and less likely to visit outside their home areas than their more affluent rural neighbours.
The point that Chambers emphasizes is that urban officials and foreign experts alike can easily make rural visits without either seeing or speaking to the poorer people. Projects and programmes for rural development are again and again captured by the rural elite for their own advantage. Credit goes to the credit worthy who are the least needy. Subsidized inputs supplied through a cooperative are monopolized by the leaders of cooperatives who are the better off people. Crew and Harrison (1998) argue that people’s responses to development are informed by their own history as well as their experience of, or at least the reputation of development intervention. When people appear to be cooperating, adapting to, or resisting externally driven development projects, they are not merely reacting to outsiders, they may be reinterpreting development concepts such as tradition, progress and modernity; however but their actions are meaningfully understood only within the context of their own social, economic and political positions and the ideologies that arise from these.
Rew and Harrison (1998) argue that the inclusion and participation in development do indeed lead to some people, who might be called elite, putting themselves forward and increasing their visibility. Rossi (2002) argues that understanding the role of development brokers is a critical part of understanding how and why development works. Visibility may
20 occur through forming groups, through associating themselves with the local extensionist or through accepting development projects. Almost by definition, the excluded are less visible if not silent. This is what has been happening in Peddie; projects have been continually monopolized by the elite and this has disadvantaged the poor. Rew and Harrison (1998) argue that there is no coordinated conspiracy in the development industry, and not all projects obviously fail. Their argument is that there is no certainty of failure or that the projects will always consolidate national or international power relations. With reference to Ferguson’s work, that as much as there are projects that extend the nation state, there are others that weaken it. Where projects do successfully expand the power of the state, it is argued that a government led conspiracy is not necessarily at work; ambitious aims of partnership and gender sensitivity, recognizing indigenous knowledge and decentralized decision -making often appear disappointingly empty.
Bandow (1998) claims that in many African countries, aid resources have been used to expand and sustain a bloated and parasitic civil service, finance non-viable development projects that have generated benefit for incumbent politicians subsequently imposing significant costs on society. In many cases foreign aid helped support brutal and exploitative dictatorships and subsidized the implementation of inefficient, poorly designed and disastrous projects. This is what is happening with these small projects that the Government continues to implement in areas like Peddie. These projects are not viably strong to supply income, which is what the people are looking for and so significant costs are imposed on those who have no access to income as they cannot afford to contribute fees required to make the project sustainable. What results are conflicts and enmity between people. Despite the Government's effort to alleviate poverty, the proportion of people living in poverty continues to rise. Rural people have their own strategies of constructing livelihoods. The next section looks at how people mobilize domestic resources, taking initiatives based on indigenous knowledge and skills.
1.2.3 Gender and Development
In the rural South African context, one of the themes that has been consistently raised in relation to the absence or lack of development has centred on discussions of the position of rural women and their exclusion from developmental processes. As a result it is worth
21 reviewing some of the literature on approaches to gender and development in a broader context.
A gendered approach to development hinges on an understanding of power relations. The key is the belief that if development strategies are to make a difference to individual lives, and to women's lives in particular, they need to take into account the ways in which power relations are gendered. This means that development strategies need to address the gender power relations operating in households, other institutions, different spheres of government, and society as a whole and only then can development succeed. The earliest approaches to locating women in development strategies were developed in the 1970s. One of these, Women in Development or WID, followed in the footsteps of modernization theory and applied its thinking to women. This theory held that economic growth based on the North American model was what Third World countries needed for development. WID programmes stressed Western values and targeted individual women rather than social groups as the catalysts for social change. WID depicted traditional societies as authoritarian and male dominated and modern societies like USA as democratic and egalitarian (Walker, 1995). The oppression of women in the Third World was compared with the emancipation of women in the modern world.
WID strategies tended to centre on gender equality and efficiency. For example, birth control programmes were seen as a means of population control. This approach assumed that the Third World needed a smaller population in order to achieve modernization and democracy. WID activists argue that women's empowerment will not occur by law only, but through a combination of legal reform and grassroots organizing around women's rights. This approach recognises that legal reform based on a human rights discourse is often a critical element in a strategy for women's empowerment. Notwithstanding the achievements of WID activists in the international and legal arenas, the WID approach has also been criticized for its uncritical attitude to modernization theory and its implicit assumption that a Western model of society is appropriate for all societies. Its focus on women is often based on the assumption of a universal womanhood and has blinded recognition of the complex linkages between race, class and culture.
Following dependency theory, feminist theorists argued that gender oppression was intensified with the spread of capitalism in the colonized world. As subsistence production
22 was taken over by capitalist forms, men took charge of production and politics and assigned reproduction and consumption to women. Theorists of Women and Development argued that feminist activists should recognize the differential position of women and men in capitalist power relations and in the development process. The Women and Development (WAD) approach added a new dimension to feminist theorizing on development, in particular leading to research into waged and unpaid labour and produced critiques of women in the global economy. The exposure of women's exploitation by multinationals encouraged the formation of trade unions. Berger (1992) argues that while activists in South Africa in the 1980s did not specifically discuss WAD theory, they engaged with debates in feminism and Marxism and identified the trade union movement as a key site of struggle for women's empowerment.
Like WID, the WAD approach was criticized for its limited scope. The narrow focus on working class women precluded the possibility of coalitions across class lines, excluded those not in formal employments, and confined the political field to work related activity. Also, WAD activists failed to recognise the significance of efforts to achieve legal protection for women. They argued that legal reform was useless while the structure of the society remained organized on exploitative profit seeking lines, implying that capitalists would simply use women as cheap labour regardless of the law. This blindedness further limited the scope of gender activism. What can be deducted from the theory is that the middle class is the one pushing its own agendas on the work of gender.
By the end of the 1980s, a shift occurred away from WAD towards a more political and inclusive set of strategies known as Gender and Development. This approach sees gender as a fundamental category of analysis of development. It demands a consideration of relations between women and men and the power contexts in which development occurs. Gender And Development (GAD) analysis focuses on devising appropriate strategies for the empowerment of women in specific localities. These activists see the need for a gender sensitive legal framework that women can use in domestic environments, at government level, and in international contexts. The GAD approach represents a coming together of the WID and WAD perspectives. GAD sees development as a set of processes influenced by political, socio-economic, and domestic forces Walker, 1995).
23 Differing feminist perspectives are not considered to be necessarily incompatible and so GAD allows for the possibility of feminists and gender activists of different persuasions working together. Further, in viewing men as potential supporters of women's emancipation, GAD opens up new strategies for intervention in social transformation. GAD strategies include lobbying for and ensuring that the state plays a role in providing programmes to support the work of social reproduction, such as the care of children and health care. This approach also recognizes initiatives designed to overcome household conflicts arising from gender and generational differences.
The main stumbling block to gender-sensitive reform in South Africa at local level is a deeply entrenched acceptance of male traditional authority and patriarchal controls in households and local government. Walker (1995) suggests that one of the biggest obstacles for rural women is the contradiction between Government's commitment to gender equality and its persistent engagement with the politics of traditionalism. These politics have been well documented in the rural areas of KwaZulu-Natal. Walker further points out that South Africa defines itself as a non-racial and non-sexist society, and Government concedes that rural society is patriarchal and that rural women are disadvantaged by patriarchal control, yet the Government stops short of acknowledging that in order to redress these, certain changes have to be made.
Some of the key institutions in rural society that need to be transformed, include the institutions of local government, the chief, traditional and tribal authorities, customary law, polygamy and the male dominated homestead (Walker, 1995) . At the same time, the legitimating discourses of tradition, custom and African cultures that are used to defend these politico-legal institutions need to be transformed. In Walker's terms, these untransformed, interlocking systems of authority constitute official rural patriarchy and are an institutional obstacle to the achievement of gender equality. Government is reluctant to begin dismantling this institutional patriarchal system because of unstable politics in particular regions such as KwaZulu-Natal. The Government continues to engage with traditionalism in this province, giving credence to traditionalists because of its need to gain political control in the region. This is according to Walker (1995), evident in national attempts to outmaneuver the Inkatha Freedom Party and in its substantial support for the Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa (Contralesa).
24 The Traditional leaders, who are Contralesa members, consistently defend customary law and patriarchal domination. They oppose women's ownership of land and gender equity at every level. These traditional leaders habitually use the emotive vocabulary of Africanism and respect for indigenous culture as a means of justifying patriarchal control over women and young men. Walker (1995) suggests that 'tradition' and 'custom' be critically deconstructed so that rural policy is not developed on the basis of historical, partisan, and self-serving uses that traditionalists make of these terms. Central to her argument is the point that 'tradition' is not gender neutral as men and women do not stand in the same relation to 'tradition', and do not necessarily agree on what is valuable and significant.
Walker believes that for the women's movement to represent rural women, its starting point must be to adopt a concept of tradition as dynamic and constantly changing, and an understanding that tradition is never pure or pristine, but complex and malleable. This means accepting that tradition has been refashioned in relation to the changing needs of the past and that it is perfectly capable of being refashioned again, better to fit contemporary goals of a non-sexist and non-racial society. Walker suggests two areas of improvement: the education and empowerment of rural women accompanied by programmes aimed at men as well. Secondly, a more focused research, aimed at plotting and understanding the complex and varied responses of men and women to tradition and to the choices offered to them in this time of transformation.
1.3 Development Failure in South Africa
In South Africa the Bantustan model set the development agenda through the homeland system. Black homeland areas in South Africa where most of the poor were located, lacked resources and services during the apartheid era. The introduction of villagisation and Betterment planning policies by the apartheid government involved the separation of residence from arable land, stock grazing areas, woodland and water courses. Betterment planning in the communal areas sustained a myth of traditional societies existing in the homelands, unconnected to the South African mining economy. The apartheid system also kept alive the myth that a rural livelihood could be made in places like Peddie almost independently of the industrial economy. This is evidenced by the fact
25 that the government made a choice to collapse industries in Dimbaza, Ezibeleni and Butterworth that employed thousands of workers from rural areas (Bank, 2004). Rural development policies and discourses have largely imagined and planned for rural residents without taking sufficient cognisance of the extent to which some rural residents continue to hold stakes in the urban areas.
The construction of the Eastern Cape as an object of development has led to its underdevelopment. The colonial dichotomies of modernity and tradition continue to operate freely in the present. The Eastern Cape has been labeled as a space of poverty, ruralness, tradition and underdevelopment. Abnormalities as cited by Escobar were created and these include among other things women's poverty or vulnerable women. The assumption has always been that all rural areas are poor. To address this pathology, rural poverty alleviation projects such as entrepreneurial projects, agricultural projects and Local Economic Development projects were initiated. In Peddie these projects varied from Social welfare projects, agricultural projects and LED projects.
The assumption is that people in rural areas are agrarian. There is no focus on rural industrialization. The sad part about these projects is that most of them fail, especially the agricultural ones developed along a capitalist mode of production. In Peddie these include cash crop production projects. This anticipated transition of rural economies moving away from subsistence modes of economic activities to more productive, sustainable and growth enhancing economic activities that the government has anticipated in places like Peddie, has not occurred. Many of the current projects in Peddie are not sustainable because they are biased towards poverty alleviation. Secondly, these projects are not sustainable because their survival depends on continuing support from the government.
The same scenario observed by Escobar is embraced by Bank and Minkley (2005), who argue that rural development in the Eastern Cape has remained highly polarised and continues to reproduce a series of colonial dichotomies such as those between the modern and the traditional, between the commons and the market, between the wasted land and productive land, between the urban and the rural and between the local and the global, which in many ways hinder rather than advance our understanding of rural social and economic change. They argue that the assumption has been that by restoring land to
26 the dispossessed communities and providing basic welfare support and services in the underdeveloped rural areas, new processes of economic development would naturally unfold as rural people recovered their dignity and self-respect and began to express themselves as citizens of a modern democratic state. These writers argue that this has not occurred. Agrarian transformation effected along capitalist lines is not working in the Eastern Cape.
Against this background on the perspectives of why development fails, I argue that no single factor accounts for the failure of development. There are a variety of reasons that account for the failure of development in Peddie. These range from capitalism which has caused underdevelopment, weak development institutions, lack of participation and discourse of development which ignores local knowledge. In Peddie, development has failed due to a lack of participation, lack of administrative capacity and lack of inclusion of local knowledge in development projects. Notions of participatory development and empowerment, which focus on the local and putting local people and local knowledge first as advocated by Grillo (1997), have the potential to create another form of power and control to that produced by top-down approaches. It is a power that is intensely political, yet obscured because it utilizes liberal democratic language that appears people-centred despite the evidence that development interventions rarely result in those at whom initiatives are aimed gaining greater autonomy or becoming more empowered.
Projects in Peddie have been presented as if they represented the solution to the needs of the community whereas in reality the beneficiaries are excluded in the planning and implementation of such projects. It is rare to find a development project that does not in one way or another claim to adopt a 'participatory' approach involving 'bottom-up' planning, acknowledging the importance of 'indigenous' knowledge and claiming to 'empower' local people, yet those claims are nothing but rhetoric. In Peddie this has been evident, especially on commercial projects that are meant to alleviate poverty.
1.4 Methodology and Research Design
27 1.4.1 The Choice of Peddie as Study Site
The Eastern Cape Province has the third largest population in South Africa, approximately 144 million people, which is 15,5% of South Africa’s 40.5 million people(Statistics South Africa, 1996). The Province is generally seen to be one of the two poorest in South Africa. Unemployment rates are the highest at 48.5% in comparison to the present national average unemployment rate of 33.9%. The high poverty level is a major concern in the Ngqushwa municipality. This situation is worsened by the fact that there is a high rate of unemployment in the area. The municipality intends addressing these problems through various initiatives spearheaded by its Local Economic Development (LED) division. The municipality hopes to work with the Amatole District municipality to improve upon infrastructural provision and upgrading in the municipal area.
I have chosen Peddie as my study area because it has been the focus of development intervention since the 1980s. During the 1980s Peddie benefited from the development of capital intensive agricultural schemes such as the Tyefu irrigation scheme, the Ciskei National Ranch and the Citrus Schemes along the Keiskamma River. State support to impoverished households during the post 1981 period took the form of increased expenditure on old age pensions and occasional public works programmes, which were aimed at poverty relief and often consisted of natural resource management programmes, such as soil conservation projects. During the post 1994 period the area received special attention and treatment from the then MEC for Agriculture, Max Mamase. The pineapple project is one of the projects that received most attention from the Mec. The project has also been in the headlines in the media. This was because the project enjoyed success and recognition overseas during its initial phase. Peddie is also an area that has been exposed to betterment planning.
The Amazizi area, which is my study area, is an area where Betterment planning met with considerable resistance and two chiefs were murdered by villagers for agreeing to the implementation of betterment without consulting with the residents. Betterment planning was an apartheid- state driven attempt from the 1940s until the 1960s to socially and physically reorganise villages in the reserves/homelands and to respond to land degradation. It mainly comprised the culling of stock, the physical reorganization of agricultural land especially reallocation and fencing of arable lands for the so called
28 preservation of nature, and a further re-allocation of residential plots (Bundy, 1988, De Wet, 1996, Mager, 1992)). Betterment planning therefore, involved the separation of land belonging to a community into three categories, namely residential, arable and rangeland. The dispersed clusters of homesteads were consolidated into a single village assigning a single residential plot to each household. Usually fences were erected by the State to physically separate the different land-use categories from each other, and also to subdivide the rangeland into camps. Trollope and Coetzee (1975) reported that by the 1970s, 78.7% of Ciskei had been demarcated into grazing, cultivated and residential areas and that 86.5% of the planned area was under some form of range management.
Peddie is also an area where the influence of traditional leadership substantially diminished during the 1980s. Their responsibilities have been taken over by appointed or elected civic organizations such as the South African National Civic Organization (SANCO). Such responsibilities include the allocation of land, provision of services and development, and the enforcement of peace and order in the village. Moreover, Peddie is an area where basic services have been rolled out. It has been the focus of poverty alleviation projects such as poultry, piggery and handicraft. It is clear that Peddie has been prioritized for development, yet as this thesis will demonstrate, interventions have failed. This research will explore reasons for the failure. Despite the fact that Peddie has been the focus of development, poverty remains the main concern.
One of the most important objectives of the Ngqushwa Integrated Development Programme (IDP) process is to create sustainable employment that will boost the economic growth of the municipality. Local Economic Development projects are aimed at reducing the high rate of poverty and improving employment through the establishment of small micro medium enterprises (SMME), agricultural development and tourism promotion and development (Ngqushwa Integrated Development Plan, 2002).
29 1.4.2 Methods used for data collection
This study set out to explore the dynamics of commodification and to evaluate the impact of poverty alleviation projects on the lives of people in Peddie. My approach involved close association with the people and often participation in their activities. Ethnography, which was used for this study, is a style of research that is distinguished by its objectives, which are to understand the social complexities of people in a given setting. It involves intimate familiarity with day to day practices and the meanings of social actions. It is premised on the view that the central aim of the social sciences is to understand people’s actions and their experiences of the world, and the ways in which their motivated actions arise from and reflect back on these experiences (Brewer, 2000). During my fieldwork I lived at Gwalane village for one month (August, 2006) so as to be familiar with the projects and project members in the area. I was accommodated by Matshezi, a 62 year old widow who was once involved in a leather bag making project. She helped me a lot in identifying various projects in the area. Her daughter, Nolubabalo, a teacher at ABET (Adult Basic Education and Training) became my research assistant. I have known Nolubabalo from High School and we became friends. She was traveling with me to the surrounding villages as she knows the area very well. After two weeks I was able to travel on my own, because I was familiar with some areas since I did my 11 th and 12 th grades at Nathaniel Pamla High School in Peddie, and therefore I was not a total stranger to the area. From September to December 2006 I made sporadic visits to the study area so as to monitor the progress of those projects that still survived and to acquire more information on how they were being managed. That meant traveling from King William’s Town where I reside to Peddie three to five days a week.
Data collection methods that were employed included, survey questionnaires, unstructured in depth interviews, observation, participant observation, and desktop research and the data collection exercises were conducted from August to December 2006. In order to get more insight on the projects I spent as much time in the villages often taking transect walks with the villagers. I first visited the projects in 2002 when they were first initiated, but by 2006 most of them were no longer operating. These were mostly poverty alleviation projects, which mainly included poultry and piggery. I visited
30 people who were involved in the projects enquiring about the reasons for their failure and the impact of the failure to their livelihoods. I also visited those projects that were still operating trying to find out their viability and sustainability. Survey questionnaires were administered to the key stakeholders from the Municipality, the Department of Agriculture, Department of Social Development and the Department of Labour. The selected projects in each village were those that were available. I visited both the ones that were still operating and those that were no longer operating. In other words from the chosen study area, I studied all the projects that were both operational and non operational.
The first category of projects that I visited included commercial projects such as the pineapple projects at Benton, and the cash crop farming projects at Prudhoe. The main aim was to gain more insight into why these groups have not been able to acquire and sustain shares in these commercial enterprises. In order to acquire more information about these projects, I interviewed the key stakeholders from the Department of Agriculture and the Municipality. I also interviewed the project members. I interviewed ten members from the pineapple project. For the cash crop projects at Prudhoe I interviewed eight project members. From the Department of Agriculture, and the Municipality I interviewed four officials. In all, twenty two people were interviewed for the commercial projects, drawn from the key stakeholders in the Department of Agriculture and the Municipality, the project coordinators and the workers.
The second category of projects that I visited was the social welfare projects administered by the Department of Social Development and the Department of Labour and Agriculture. These included poultry farming projects, a piggery, a handicraft project and a bakery. For this category of project, I concentrated on three villages, namely, Mthathi, Sigingqini and Gwalane as this is where these projects were popular. At Sigingqini I interviewed ten project members from three poultry farming projects. Additionally one individual sewing project was visited at Sigingqini. At Gwalane eight project members were interviewed and at Mthathi seven members were interviewed. The number of project members in each project ranged between seven and ten. Two officials from the Department of Social Development and one from the Department of Labour were interviewed. In all twenty nine respondents were interviewed for the social welfare projects. I believe that the number of people interviewed in each project were representative of all the participants of each project.
31
Semi structured interviews were used to generate more information on individual experiences, especially on those projects that failed. The advantages of using semi structured interviews are that they allow the researcher and interviewees to have a far more wide-ranging discussion and also allow the respondents to raise issues that the interviewer may not have anticipated (Chambers, 1997). Most importantly, semi structured interviews allow the respondents to relate their own experiences by describing and explaining their lives in their own way.
Structured interviews were conducted with a number of key role-players from the local Municipality, the Department of Agriculture, Social Development and the Department of Labour concerning the role that they play in the implementation and support of the projects. At Mphekweni, I visited the bakery project where I interviewed six members. The people I interviewed in this village had been involved in sewing projects which did not succeed largely because of financial constraints.
The third category of projects I visited were households involved in trading traditional mats. These were more individual projects that involved the use of natural resources. A detailed case study at Gwalane village was carried out to assess the role of natural resources for the people living in the area. Semi structured interviews and participant observation were used to determine the source of raw materials and their availability. My main interest was to determine the role played by these projects in livelihoods. I took trips with the weavers of the mats to the place where they harvest the raw material, observing, asking questions, listening to their conversations and discussing issues related to access to the raw material they use, how and when they started weaving mats, the problems experienced and the extent of their involvement in the trading of mats. People in Peddie speak Xhosa, which is my language and that worked to my advantage as I did not require the services of a translator. In all 61 people from a variety of projects were interviewed for this thesis to enable me to draw conclusions.
I spent as much time as possible with the participants, building relationships by being involved in their activities such as weaving, eating and traveling together. Secondary material was also reviewed and it included published and unpublished articles as well as government documents from the internet.
32
Research Ethics All names of informants have been changed in accordance with agreements on anonymity. The informants who expressed detailed and controversial issues about certain projects were assured of confidentiality of their statements. Agreements with informants included the permission to use their likenesses and photographs of their names, but guaranteed anonymity
1.5 Limitations of the Study
Since people in rural areas, especially in the study area are so used to the idea of development and also due to the high levels of poverty in the Eastern Cape in particular, the research was sometimes associated with some development opportunity coming from outside. At times, this influenced the way people responded to some questions. Secondly, people involved in the projects were mostly old people and so questions that required the participants to state the times when certain events occurred, was very difficult.
Thirdly, on the side of key role-players such as the Municipality, it was not easy to acquire all the information and the accompanying documents, such as the Integrated Development Plan (IDP) and maps. The reason given by one official was that they were sick and tired of researchers as they were researched three times in a year, especially by the Rhodes Institute of Social and Economic Research. There have been cases where it was impossible to secure an appointment with certain officials. One such case includes an interview with the Project Manager of the Pineapple project. In this instance I was asked to fax a questionnaire, which I did, but still couldn’t get any response. Besides having done my higher grades in Peddie, Gwalane is my husband’s home village and although we do not live there some people know me. I believe this had impacted on how a certain class of informants perceived me. Due to my professional status as a teacher, I had experienced difficulty interviewing the educated group of informants. I could easily capture that they recognize my surname and that I was from Peddie.
33 The negative attitude towards research especially among government officials was also evident. This has been as a result of corruption which has been a common practice within these government departments. As a result no one wanted to be responsible for giving out inside information. In spite of all the difficulties and potential limitations, I believe that I have managed to generate a rich reservoir of data.
1.5.1 Structure of the Thesis
In the first chapter, I have covered some aspects of the perspectives and approaches to development failure. The methodology used for the study and research design is also presented above and a brief description of the study area. In Chapter Two, I intend to review literature that relates to rural development discourse in the Eastern Cape. The emphasis is on agriculture, welfare and service delivery and poverty alleviation. The chapter further looks at the current government strategies to alleviate poverty and the importance of rural people's own strategies of survival.
Chapter three will deal with livelihood making in Peddie. A brief discussion of the study area will be provided. In addition a discussion of the social and political background of the area will be presented.
Chapter four will provide a discussion on power, authority and local governance in development practice. Specifically the chapter will look at political institutions in Peddie and how they have shaped the economic processes. A historical background of traditional leadership, and land administration during the apartheid and post-apartheid era will be provided. In chapter five I will examine the dynamics of commodification in Peddie, particularly during the post 1994 period. Different types of projects will be analyzed. These will include cash-crop projects such as pineapple, chicory, cotton wool, canola, soya beans and maize. These projects are administered by the Department of Agriculture.
In this chapter I will also discuss the history of farming and development in the area, specifically looking at food plot production in the irrigation scheme in Peddie. In chapter
34 six I will be focusing on the second category of projects, the social welfare projects administered by the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Social Development. These include poultry farming, piggery, bakery crafts and community gardens. I will specifically examine village dynamics of these projects, particularly poultry farming projects. The three villages involved are Sigingqini, Mthathi and Gwalane. In chapter seven I will discuss the importance of natural resources as a livelihood strategy for the people in Peddie. A detailed case study, which was carried out in one village to assess the role of natural resources for the people living in the area, will be presented. Chapter eight will include the conclusion and research findings. This chapter will summarize the major findings emerging from both the literature and the analysis of the case study.
35 CHAPTER TWO:
The Rural Development Discourse: Agriculture, Poverty and Rural Livelihoods in the Eastern Cape
Colonial dicothomies continue to operate quite freely in the present,.... Of these dichotomies, that between “modernity” and “tradition” has proved to be the most enduring. The first axis –modernity - is associated with progress, development, “the West”, science and technology, high standards of living, rationality and order; the other axis – tradition – is associated with stasis or even stagnation, underdevelopment, conventional tools and technologies, poverty, superstition and disorder( Gupta,1998 )
2.1 Introduction In considering the Eastern Cape countryside we are presented with sharply polarised discourses of development. The opposition is so marked that it evokes Hobart (1992) assertion that the ‘modern’ or ‘scientific’ is opposed to traditional or local knowledge. In terms of the dominate colonial (now post-colonial) discourse, there are fundamentally opposed agricultural regimes in the Eastern Cape, which are underpinned by different and opposed knowledge systems. The axis of modernity and science was seen in this instance to reside in the white countryside where commercial farming predominated, while the axis of tradition, associated with ignorance and backwardness, was seen to predominate in the communal areas of the African reserves (later homelands). From the early missionary days, Xhosa farming practices were represented as wasteful, ineffectual, unproductive and unscientific. Local maize and sorghum farmers were said to largely ‘scratch around in the soil’, while white settler farmers used effective modern farming techniques, which involved deep ploughing, proper herd management and mono-cropping on fenced lands laid out in straight lines. African farming practices were constructed as irredeemably poor and based on ignorance of new and effective land use management system and agricultural technologies. The aim of successive white governments in South Africa has been to manage the communal areas in such a way that remained functional to the maintenance of white political domination and growth of the modern economy (especially in the urban areas) (Wolpe 1972).
36 In the Eastern Cape, the notion of dual economy came to exist, perhaps more strongly in the minds of officials and policy makers than in the realities on the ground, where white and black farmers were at loggerheads over the control of land and labour, but were also constantly trading and exchanging goods and ideas. Ainslie (2000) has recently questioned the descriptive accuracy of the dual economy thesis in relation to the cattle economy of the province, suggesting that many of the assumptions of an African “cattle complex” are misinformed. One of these is the idea that Africans do not sell cattle, while commercial farmers do. Ainslie (2001) shows that this analysis only holds if applied to formal market transactions, but falls away when the large and commercial significant illicit, informal, intra-communal and cross border cattle market is acknowledged and enumerated in the Eastern Cape. He also shows that, in times when global markets have boomed for products such as wool, African farmers have historically also shown the capacity to be highly responsive to new opportunities. Ainslie concludes that the idea of a polarised livestock economy are not very helpful and disguises the complexity of local livestock management systems and extent to which they inter-relate, especially in the areas and zones around the former homelands.
Recent research by Bank (2003) into maize production in the Amatole district of the Eastern Cape also raises questions about dual economy arguments in relation to maize production. He argues that the underlying logic behind African and settler attitudes to maize and its role in their complex livelihoods and commercial strategies has historically remained remarkably similar. He notes that neither Africans, nor white farmers have ever viewed maize as a strong commercial crop, but have primarily used it to underpin household and farm-wide (including workers) subsistence requirements. By trying to produce enough maize annually to meet farm subsistence needs, white farmers tried to reduce the risk of commercial cropping and livestock farming. Planting maize themselves or allowing farm workers to have their own fields reduced their wage bills and spread risks in a drought-prone sector, where many farmers felt they need some protection from the vagaries of the market. Arguably this is precisely how maize has historically been viewed by black farmers in the communal areas, where it has always been viewed as subsistence crop (the Bundy thesis notwithstanding). Households in these areas have historically looked to wage labour remittance, state transfers (pensions), livestock sales and petty commodity production as sources of cash income and ‘profit’ for the household. The similarity in attitudes not only has significant implications for current attempts to
37 revitalise commercial maize production in the province, but suggests - as Ainslie’s does for livestock - that there is greater overlap in the ‘knowledges’ that inform rural livelihoods in the Eastern Cape than we have been prepared to acknowledge.
In terms of the dominant development discourses circulating in South Africa in relation to communal areas, places like the Peddie district in the former Ciskei is seen as a place of agrarian production, of subsistence orientated farming, which has been in a state of steady and almost terminal decline over the past century. One of the main aims of post- apartheid development planning has been to imagine appropriate interventions to support farming. As we will see later in the thesis, Peddie has been the focus of a wide variety of schemes to rejuvenate agriculture. This has evolved into debates around what kind of agrarian development strategies would be most appropriate in this area and what sorts of farmers are worth supporting. In the discussion below, I suggest that a distinction is made between ‘emerging commercial farmers’, who are seen as positive and progressive, and ‘resource-limited farmers’, who are viewed in negative terms within the dominant rural development discourse.
The other major theme in rural development discourse has been the issues of poverty alleviation. The issue of poverty has been seen as a particularly intense pathology in the rural Eastern Cape. In fact, in the construction of the Eastern Cape as a new geo-political entity after 1994, poverty has remained its defining characteristic. The development apparatus in the Eastern Cape have focused particularly on the problem of poverty. Numerous schemes for social and economic assistance have been rolled out in the Eastern Cape to assist household in places like Peddie in their struggle for survival. In this chapter, I explore some of the post-apartheid debates around agrarian development and poverty alleviation in the Eastern Cape. I focus on the main positions and programmes that have been rolled-out to assist the rural poor. Some of these schemes have been mainly welfarist in orientation, while others have concentrated on commodity production and market exchange. The chapter concludes by indicating that for most rural people livelihoods are made through the use of a multitude of strategies and resources rather than recourse to one source, such as commercial agricultural, wage labour or welfare grants.
38 2.2 Two Agricultures?
While recent research suggests that it would be opportune to revisit the old modern- tradition dichotomy in the light of new historical evidence and the contemporary challenges which face rural residents in the ‘borderlands’ of the province, it is surprising, as Gupta (1998) notes above, how tenacious colonial dichotomies can be in post-colonial contexts. For example, in setting out the challenges for rural development and agriculture in the former homelands at the launch of the new national Integrated Rural Development Programme in 2001, Minister Mufamadi explained the vision of the programme as follows:
This vision [of the IRDP] is a radical one in that it envisages transformed rural economies which move away from subsistence modes of economic activity to productive, sustainable and growth enhancing economies activities, and many of the current projects are not sustainable because they are biased towards poverty alleviation and are not explicitly developmental . --- Minister Mufamadi’s presentation of the Intergrated Rural Development Programme to Cabinet in 2001
In the above address, Minister Mufamadi focuses on the contrast between ‘subsistence’ and ‘commercial’, between modernity and tradition, in rural development. The former associates with the past, with existing unsustainable farming practices of African communal areas, which he sees as a barrier to development, while the latter is associated with ‘productive, growth enhancing economic activity’ of commercial agriculture. Current projects interventions in rural areas are also criticised by Mufamadi because they are seen not to be ‘sufficiently productive and growth oriented’. The association of commercial agriculture with development and sustainability and existing local agricultural and livelihoods practices with ignorance, backwardness and underdevelopment provides a powerful mandate for new development advisors to dress up old policies and programmes in new clothes. It is not surprising that most of the ideas for rural development and for strengthening agriculture in the former homelands were first articulated and developed by the old homeland development corporations.
The replication of Minister Mufamadi’s thinking at the provincial level was reflected in the 2003-4 budget address of Department of Agriculture MEC, Mr Max Mamase. He lauded the progress being made towards the further commercialization of farming in the Eastern Cape, while at the same time raising concerns about the poor performance of poor farmers and the growing threat they presented to food security in the province. He
39 suggested that food security, together with HIV-AIDS and corporate governance, were the three most pressing problems for the Eastern Cape. He noted that escalating food prices, the boom and bust cycles in the international food markets and continuing decline in land prices, which were often below the production values of land, threatened commercial food production sector and agri-business as a whole. The situation was exacerbated by low levels of government funding in agriculture (said to be only 1% of the GDP, whereas it is 3% and higher in many other developing countries). In addressing agricultural development in the province, Mamase emphasised that it was imperative that government support projects, programmes and schemes that support emerging farmers and in the process broaden the base of commercial agriculture. Mamase made little connection in his address between the need for food security in the province and the dramatic shift to game farming in the province, which is partly being driven forward by the very cheap land prices in the province.
Like Mufamadi, Mamase’s framework contained two categories of farmers, what he called ‘resource limited farmers’, who are presented as an environmental threat and the targets for poverty alleviation programmes, and the commercial farmers, who are presented as critical cogs in the development chain. Policy interventions should take the form of limiting the environmental damage done by resource limited farmers, while at the same time giving some of these farmers, the progressive ones, the support they need to establishing themselves as ‘emerging farmers’, the intermediate rung on the ladder to their maturity into fully fledged commercial farmers. One of the ways that policy makers imagine that this process might be speeded up is through tenure reform. The assumption here is that large-scale tenure reform will help to stop the ‘tragedy of the commons’ and slow down environmental degradation associated with the communal areas. Mamase expressed his views as follows:
The communal land tenure system poses a challenge of a different nature. Communal ownership of grazing land interferes with the proper planning of the communal lands. The decision making process does not facilitate the commercialisation of agriculture. The delay in proper planning of grazing land exacerbates the denudation of this diminishing and finite resource, leading to unchecked soil erosion with grave consequences for future generation – MEC Mamase, Eastern Cape Budget speech, 2003
40 Mamase’s speech echoes many of the concerns raised by white agricultural extension officers and politicians in the 1940s when agricultural betterment schemes were proposed for the reserves. In the settler discourses of the time it was the ‘resource limited’ African farmers who were seen to be causing environmental degradation and undermining the economic viability of the reserves. The implication in the MEC’s statement above is not only that the poor are to blame for the state of the reserves, but the ‘tragedy of the commons’ can be reserved through private land ownership and the commercialisation of agriculture. But are there any guarantees that the transfer of land into private hands will not worsen the plight of the rural poor? Is there not, as James (2003) has suggested, an equal possibility of a ‘tragedy of the privates’ where the state off-loads land onto poor communities, who have no means of supporting themselves on that land?
The evidence above suggests that thinking and discourse about rural livelihoods and development are still underpinned by a set of binary discourse – modernity/tradition, state/market, communal/ private tenure, subject/citizen – which has created a polarity in thought and action which has made it difficult for policy makers and planners to deal with the diversity of livelihoods which are evident in the process. The social and economic realities in the communal areas are harsh and unrelenting, but the evidence presented in the report shows that the ideal of the modern and the traditional exist more as models in peoples’ minds (including the rural poor themselves) than realities on the ground. As Gutpa (1998) points out for India, poor farmers are seldom totally rejecting the messages of modernity. They simply interpret them in their own subversive ways, where “through mimicry and mockery, parody and protest, riots and rebellion, the not-quite-indigenous and the not-quite modern disrupt the complacent march of continuous progress implicit in discourses of growth and development”. The call by Gutpa (2000) is for researchers to pay much closer attention to ‘processes of hybridity’, to the manner in which the social and economic logics of ‘alternative modernities’ are crafted amongst the poor in the creative and sometimes tragic engagements the relations of power, tradition and development is a point well taken. But so is the suggestion that we need to careful interrogate the categories used and employed by developers, because naming is never an innocent process, it is always part of a broader process of framing problems and suggesting solutions.
41 The same point has recently been made to James (2001) in a series of critical reflections of development policy in the land sector. James notes that there have been two positions that have dominated this sector. The first she identities as a populist and equalitarian one which has been nurtured in years of anti-apartheid struggle and strongly support redistribution and restitution of land to those who were denied it in the past. The other approach with a developmentalist focus and associated with World Bank interventions in the sector acknowledges the primacy of the market, and favours the development of small- through medium to large-scale. The former approach enjoyed a brief period of influence when Derek Hanekom was Minister of Land Affairs and appointed a number of advisors from the NGO sector to define departmental policy. Since February 2000, when Thoko Didiza was named the new Minister of Land Affairs and Agriculture, the focus of departmental policy and activity has shifted to prioritising the provision of financial support for commercial and emerging farmers and de-emphasising the need of the poor, which have been picked up by other donor funded programmes, such as the DFID’s emphasis on rural livelihoods. The point is that a focus on the rural poor has not disappeared, but rather that the agenda of the Department has been dominated by the language of carrying capacity and optimum yields. James claims that, despite the divergent positions held in these debates,
Overall there has been a remarkable degree of overlap between those operation within these diverse institutional frameworks and arenas of knowledge. And what is particularly noticeable about much of it is the extent to which it speaks of the countryside as a separate place, counter-posed to the city. There is little evidence in these writings that those who might be stakeholders in the rural areas might equally ‘hold stakes’ in the city (James 2001: 104).
The populists have emphasised the homogenous nature of the claiming groups with a largely rural and agricultural orientation. They were all disadvantaged by betterment, which undermined their agrarian livelihoods, and that this needs to be restored. The emphasis here has been on the small-is-beautiful orientation and to development initiatives which owe much to Chambers style participatory research and development approaches. The emphasis here is that small-scale, community focused interventions can go a long way to improved food security and strengthening subsistence strategies in these areas. The counter-argument to this has been that the true potential of small-scale agriculture in the former homelands has not been tested because of the racially defined policies of the past and that there is still enormous scope for this sector to develop.
42
The construction of ‘the rural’ as a unique geo-political space, with its own unique and particular problems and issues, has dominated policy thinking in this province where a demand for a unique rural development strategy was identified in the late 1990s and measures were taken to reverse what was seen as the ‘urban bias’ on development planning and delivery in the province. The current focus in government policy on food security entrenches notions that rural people should be farmers and that focus of rural development programmes should be helping them to ‘farm better’. One of the consequences of the current rural development discourse is that it directs attention away from the critical role urban wages and state transfers in the livelihood strategies of people.
2.3 Welfare and Service Delivery: Poverty Alleviation in Rural Areas
In addition to discussions about the revitalization of agricultural production in rural areas, the other focus of state intervention in rural areas has concentrated on poverty alleviation and welfare provision. In fact, since 1994 the South African state has implemented a range of policy reforms aimed at socio-economic development of rural areas, including the former African ‘homelands’. These reforms include sectoral policies in areas such as housing, forestry, water and land, as well as institutional reforms in local governance. Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Programme (ISRDP) was announced by President Mbeki in February 2001, during the State of the Nation address. Since then the ISRDP has been transformed into an implementable programme. The state began a process of decentralizing responsibility for service delivery to new local government institutions, including district and local municipalities. These institutions are expected to develop Integrated Development Plans (IDPs) with the aim of coordinating Government programmes and services.
43 2.3.1 Reconstruction and Development Programme
Against the background of South Africa's colonial and apartheid history of disempowerment and top-down decision making, South Africa's first democratically elected government deemed it necessary to embrace people-centred development through its 1994 socio-economic policy framework, the Reconstruction and Development Programme (Davids, Theron, Maphunye, 2005). The RDP, which is the centre of all post 1994 policies, pledged to build one million houses, provide clean water, sanitation and health care to all, redistribute 30% of the productive land, develop an integrated system of education and training that would provide opportunities to all including, a 10 year compulsory education cycle and launch an expanded public works programme to create jobs. Therefore the RDP was based on meeting basic needs of the community, building the economy, developing infrastructure, promoting peace and stability and resource development.
The principles of people-centred development, formulated as the building blocks of development, public participation, social learning empowerment and sustainability featured strongly in the integrated, people-centred approach advocated by the RDP as well as in the academic textbooks of South African authors. Subsequently, the RDP Base Document became the RDP White Paper in September 1994. However, it soon became apparent that the Government did not have the capacity to respond to the enthusiasm for change at grassroots level. According to Davids, Theron and Maphunye (2005) the main limitation of the RDP was that it meant different things to different people. This meant that everyone in South Africa from business people, the Government to ordinary people, had different and often conflicting expectations of the policy document.
The programme was also over emphasized and exaggerated because it wanted to achieve and remove all inequalities in a short space of time, while the external forces were also guiding and dictating how development was supposed to take place, yet promoting inequalities in the process. RDP resulted in various government departments and associated entities undertaking a multitude of programmes and projects. Although there was some form of progress in the delivery of services in rural areas, it was not sustainable because of lack of coordination and proper consultation with beneficiaries. In
44 some instances there was a problem of duplication of projects because of competition between Government departments.
2.3.2 The Growth, Employment, and Redistribution Strategy
In 1996 the Government released the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy whose main objective was to increase economic growth and to create significant new job opportunities. The GEAR strategy identified many of the structural weaknesses in the economy that inhibit growth and employment creation, and focused attention on market-based policy measures to address them. The GEAR strategy recognized that accelerated job creation is essential to achieving a sustained reduction in inequality, and that substantial job creation would require structural transformation to achieve higher and more labour-absorbing growth within the economy (May, 2001). Since its inception at the beginning of 1996, GEAR has been a controversial strategy. In many circles GEAR signified a shift from the people-centred development approach of the RDP to a more growth centred approach more concerned with boosting investor confidence which, if left unchecked, would benefit only the affluent (Davids, Theron & Maphunye, 2005). Despite these criticisms, the Government promoted several programmes that sought to attract private sector investment with the hope that benefits would trickle down to the poor. Among these, were the Spatial Development Initiatives (SDIs), intended to target areas of the country that have both unrealized economic potential and great need.
When the SDIs were first introduced, it was envisaged that rural people from the disadvantaged areas would benefit through employment, partnerships with external investors, deriving income from leasing out their land and the improvement of the local and regional infrastructure. However, the SDIs have been widely criticized for the lack of a clear implementation strategy and being inconsiderate of the real needs of the rural poor (Kepe, 2001).
In 1997 the government introduced social assistance grants for children to target those in lower income households, in an attempt to support child growth and development. This assistance is provided in the form of three types of grants: the Child Support Grant for eligible children under nine, whose parents or care givers cannot afford to feed and clothe
45 them; the Care Dependency Grant for disabled children up to the age of 18; and the Foster Child Grant for people caring for children who are not their own.
2.3.3 Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Programme
By year 2000 a strategy called the Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Strategy (ISRDS), which is a ten year vision was formulated by the Government. The aim of the ISRDS is to deliver the promise of a better life for poor rural people through local government (Davids, Theron & Maphunye, 2005). The ISRDS is designed to realize the vision that would attain socially cohesive and stable rural communities with viable institutions, sustainable economies and universal access to social amenities, able to attract and retain skilled people who would be equipped to contribute to growth and development. Local Governments in some of the provinces in South Africa such as Limpopo, KwaZulu Natal and the Eastern Cape where most of the rural poor live, have identified programmes for promoting sustainable rural livelihoods. The impetus to create the ISRDP was the observation that the investment in rural areas did not have the envisaged impact in alleviating poverty and strengthening local institutions. While the range and quality of existing development and antipoverty programmes appeared to be appropriate, their ability to provide an integrated service that match local priorities was weakened by poor coordination and integration.
The programme was aligned with Integrated Development Plans, and served as a vehicle for mainstreaming and giving effect to the nodal projects (Government of South Africa, 2000). Four years after its launch, the programme have had mixed results. Gains have been made in redirecting budgets towards the nodes: but progress has been uneven, and failure resulted because of poor coordination, which is one of the main problems the programme was meant to address. The reasons for this included confusion about the roles of actors in the various spheres of Government, and lack of skills.
2.3.4 The Provincial Growth and Development Programme
46 In addition to the three broad policy frameworks, the Government of the Eastern Cape is currently engaged in a provincial growth and planning process. This process will culminate in the adoption of a Provincial Growth and Development Plan (PGDP), which has a ten year vision of sustainable growth and human development in the province to achieve the national goal of a better life for all and the province's vision of an Eastern Cape devoid of the imbalances and inequalities of the past, with integrated and balanced development (Ainslie, 2004). The PGDP identified food security and agrarian transformation as a key strategy for development.
One initiative, which has attracted the attention of the PGDP process, is the Massive Food Production Programme (MFPP) which was formulated in 2003. The scheme, targeting a cadre of emerging farmers is directly aimed at enhancing food security by establishing significant commercially-orientated sites in the midst of the communal areas of the former homelands. The programme offers applicants, whether individuals or groups, support if they can arrange to put 50ha of land under cultivation. Although the programme targeted maize as the crop of choice in the first phase of the project, it was anticipated that other crops could be grown under the same conditions with the same incentives. MFPP requires that local small unit farmers are given subsidies of approximately R2300 per hectare to cover the costs of basic inputs for production. The farmers are also compelled to take out loans for certain equipment needed for tillage as well as to cover the cost of seeds and other inputs. The scheme is designed in such a way that 20% of the costs will have to be repaid after the first year through the sale of food. The Amazizi area in the Eastern Cape, which is the study area for this thesis, is an example of such an area where a massive food programme has been implemented. Seventy hectares of land is under cultivation and a wide variety of cash crops are cultivated. The main concern is that no benefits have been realized by the poor due to various reasons that would be dealt with in the following chapter.
Critics have claimed that the Massive Food Programme remains typical of other programmes in the sense that it is top down and prescriptive in its design. It is based on a standardized scientific model, which disregards local knowledge, economic practices and agrarian values. The MFPP programme is built on the establishment of new dependencies for rural participants. Other critics claim that since the MFPP is confined to the homelands, it seems to replicate the old model of two stream economic
47 transformation, the Tomlinson Commission of the 1950s inside the reserves: one section of the rural population is targeted to become small-scale commercial farmers whilst another, larger section is given extended support from the state to make it easier to survive. In this sense the programme might be regarded as just another homeland development scheme. Some critics argue that while this programme can be criticized for a lack of ambition and vision and producing old dualistic frameworks for development, it nevertheless does provide attempts to address food production and agrarian transformation in the province and at least compel the state to do something about ‘wasted land’ (Bank & Minkely, 2005).
Another strategy implemented by the Government to target the poor is the initiative by the Department of Social Development through which the National Food Emergency Scheme (NFES) was established. NFES is a government response to provide interim relief measures to households and potential beneficiaries severely affected by food insecurity(Strategic Plan for South African Agriculture, 2006). Food parcels were distributed to poor communities. The study area is also an example of the area where food parcels were distributed. Even this strategy has not been without its shortcomings as the poorest of the poor did not benefit from the scheme. The criterion for selection was unclear to many and people complained about being left out.
In July 2002 Cabinet approved the Integrated Food Security and Nutrition Programme (IFSNP) as one of the key programmes of social cluster (Strategic plan for South African Agriculture, 2006). The programme aims to achieve physical, social and economic access to safe and nutritious food for all South Africans. Its goal is to eradicate hunger, malnutrition and food insecurity by 2015. The Agricultural starter pack programme aimed to move people out of the Food Parcel Scheme by encouraging them to grow their own food. By January 2006 some households had received agricultural starter packs. In the study area this scheme was implemented but not everyone received the starter packs. The reason was that some, especially those who do not attend meetings did not know about it and so they were not on the list.
By mid 2006, provinces were being encouraged to phase out the Agricultural Starter Pack Programme and replace it with the sustainable Household Food Production Programme
48 (HFPP) that would concentrate on distributing starter packs as well as help to develop and transfer suitable input, technologies, information, training and capacity building.
Another initiative by the government is the revitalization of the irrigation schemes. Research conducted on smallholder irrigation schemes in the Eastern Cape acknowledged that these schemes were moribund and had been inactive for many years. Several causes for this have been deficiencies in infrastructure, emanating from inappropriate planning and design or poor operational and management structures, both beneficiaries and government assigned extension officers, lack of technical know-how and ability, absence of people involvement and participation, inadequate institutional structures and inadequate tenure arrangements. Also these schemes have been characterized by local political power struggles that hinder effective problem solving (Perret, 2001).
In Peddie, the major problem experienced in the schemes like Tyefu irrigation scheme has been weak farmer leadership. This has according to Averbeke (1999) been compounded by the political rivalry of the two farmers' unions, Eastern Province Agricultural Union (EPAU) and Eastern Cape Disadvantaged African Farmers Union (EDAFU). Another problem has been the marketing of crops, including transport. Now the government aims to revitalize small holder irrigation and curtail the financial burden of their maintenance and operation costs. Research shows that irrigation schemes account for about 4% of the irrigated area in South Africa. In spite of such a relatively small contribution, it is believed that those schemes could play an important role in rural development, since they can potentially provide food security, income and employment opportunities (Perret, 2001). Their location in remote, poor semi arid areas represents the potential for poverty alleviation and food security in such areas, even though they represent a small percentage of irrigated land at national level.
Another strategy that the government has emphasized during the post 1994 period is poverty eradication programmes that aim at improving the life of the poor. Projects are the means and instruments by which the programmes have been put in practice to achieve the intended goals and objectives. These have tended to mean state funded initiatives undertaken by the poor resulting in the creation of physical assets, institutions and business schemes and when in operation is intended to yield a sustainable flow of
49 benefits after the project has been established. These projects have been implemented up in Peddie, especially during the post 1994 period. These include the piggery, poultry, baking, sewing and craft projects.
50 2.3.5 Conclusion
The Eastern Cape has been identified as an object of development since it has been defined as a space of ruralness and poverty. The assumption has been that all rural areas are poor and yet not all people are equally poor. Market related projects have been seen as a solution to rural poverty. Peddie, which is my study area, is a place where these forces occur. The major projects that have been my focus are commercial projects dealing with agriculture, social welfare projects and those that focus on natural resource use. From the above discussion and from the studies conducted by many authors, it is clear that most households in the Eastern Cape derive their livelihoods from multiple sources of income, of which agriculture generally contributes a relatively minor part compared to wages and pensions. In trying to make the Eastern Cape the object of development, the assumption has been that people in rural areas are agrarian, hence the concentrated focus on agriculture. These projects are intended mainly to create an entrepreneurial class.
There is no significant focus on industrialisation. Regular good wages which play a large role in livelihoods have been ignored by the government. Projects that have been introduced are not viably strong enough to supply that income; as a result households that have access to urban wages are better off than those who have no access to that income. The importance of diversification has been overlooked by the government and hence the emphasis on specialization. There has also been too much emphasis on agriculture. In the study area people are less enthusiastic towards crop farming because of the work and risk involved in relation to crop farming.
51 CHAPTER THREE:
Livelihood Making in Peddie: Historical and Contemporary Considerations
3.1. Demographic and socio-economic indicators
3.1.1 Introduction
Based on census 1996 results, the total population of the Amatole district is 1,662,825 people distributed among 8 municipalities. The Amatole district is one of seven district municipalities in the Eastern Cape. The district contains 26% of the Province’s population and covers an area of23700kmsq. The total population in the district in mid 2002 was approximately1.9million, with a population density of 80 persons per km sq. At a socio-economic level, poverty is widespread in the Eastern Cape. Recent statistics show that 67% of the Province’s population lives below the poverty datum line. In the Amatole district alone it is estimated that more than half of the population live below the poverty line (of R9600 per annum in 1999). Material deprivation is compounded by low levels of service provision, which reflect that 65% of the Amatole population has no access to on-site water, 30% of the population have no flush sanitation or pit latrines and that 70% of the population are without on-site electricity.
In economic terms, the growth of real GDP in the Eastern Cape has kept pace with the national average of 0,6% per annum. However, the economically active population in the Province has risen much faster in the Eastern Cape (10% a year) than in South Africa as a whole (about 6% pa). This suggests that the Eastern Cape economy is unable to generate sufficient jobs for the work seeking population of the Province. In the period 1995 to 2001, it is estimated that less than a third of the new entrants into the job market were finding formal sector jobs in the Eastern Cape and in the Amatole district in particular. In terms of the economic profile of the Amatole district, it should be noted that this area combines elements of a sophisticated and globalised automotive industrial economy with an underdeveloped agricultural sector: where household production levels are reportedly declining and where the majority of the population now depend on state pensions and
52 welfare grants as primary sources of subsistence. The district is characterized by large discrepancies in wealth and skills. Moreover, it appears that the industrial base of the Amatole district has shrunk over the past decade and that the main new opportunities for employment are in the service and public sectors. The agricultural sector in the Amatole district is divided between a commercial farming sector and a communal agricultural sector, based in the former homelands of the Ciskei and Transkei. This division represents a fundamental dualism in the Amatole district, which has deep historical roots in the colonial and apartheid history of the region. In an as far as the HIV/ Aids pandemic, according to the Dorrington Report 2002, nationally, the epidemic can be said to be entering the mature phase. In 2002, it was estimated that 6,5 million people were infected with HIV and that life expectancy at birth was now 52,5 years compared with over 61 years in 1990. The prevalence of HIV/Aids amongst the economically active population of the Eastern Cape is estimated to be just over 11% compared with14% for South Africa as a whole. This has enormous implications for the changing complexion of the, as well as for the provision of healthcare and other state services.
Ngqushwa Municipality is situated within the Amatole District Municipality and is an amalgamation of the districts of Peddie, Hamburg and a portion of the King William’s Town district. Ngqushwa Municipality is situated in the western portion of the Amatole district Municipal area. It is made up of two urban centres, Peddie and Hamburg and 112 rural villages. Peddie is the municipal seat and is located along the King William’s Town and Grahamstown N2 road. Hamburg, a well known holiday destination in the 20 th century, lost its importance after the granting of Ciskei independence in 1981; holiday houses were expropriated and a moratorium placed on all development. Although the settlement still performs this function the facilities to actively promote tourism are notably lacking and the few remaining ones are in a state of disrepair. The rural spatial environment is characterized by scattered rural villages surrounded by ommonage. The bulk of the population of the municipality (95%) live in rural areas where the shortage of basic essential services such as water, sewerage, electricity, community facilities is inadequate, but improving gradually. The rural settlement types within Ngqushwa Municipality can be classified as follows: traditional rural villages established in response to a localized agricultural resource base located within the old arable lands and grazing camps; rural villages established in response to commercial-oriented agriculture-
53 these settlements were established in response to labour requirements of commercial farms that existed within the areas; the newly established holiday resorts-these settlements are based on the locationalised resort potential of the coastal area. Others include minor and isolated farm communities scattered within the Municipal area. The most distinguishing characteristics of the rural areas within the municipality are the absence of a settlement hierarchy, that is, the nodal and consolidated settlements where the provision of better infrastructure and facilities would be targeted to ensure efficiency and effectiveness. From the first decades of the nineteenth century, control over the area between the Great Fish and Kesikamma rivers was hotly contested by mobile chieftaincies comprised of indigenous Xhosa agro pastoralists who were pitted against expanding settler stock-farmers.
Figure 2.1: Ngqushwa locality map
Adapted from Ngqushwa IDP 2006/2007
54 3.2 Agricultural boom in Peddie in the 19th Century
The 19 th century was characterized by improvement in agricultural output in the Peddie area. According to Ainslie (1998), the people who were settled in the reserves of Peddie district after the sixth frontier war were amaMfengu. Ainslie notes that this group was to serve as buffers between the settler farmers and the Xhosa proper who had been pushed beyond the Keiskamma River. The land that they were settled on had previously been mostly under the control of the Ndlambe and amaMbelu Xhosa chieftaincies, while further to the east, the amaGqunukwebe chiefs and their followers were situated. Having complained about the scarcity of, particularly arable land, within these reserves Ainslie (1998), notes that the amaMfengu group was further disappointed when farms were granted to white settlers from 1849 and the Peddie district was quickly divided up into freehold farming areas that were largely the preserve of white farmers and smaller less favourable communal tenure reserve areas, the prerogative of Xhosa speakers.
A small number of African farmers managed to purchase and to hold onto pockets of freehold land, mostly in the eastern portion of Peddie district. German settlers who served England as mercenaries in the Crimean war, settled in places like Hamburg, German village and Woodridge for a short time as peasant farmers and later drifted off into towns like King Williams Town and East London where they took up trades and commerce. What resulted was a patchwork of tenure regimes in the municipality, with freehold land found in the better-watered, southwestern coastal areas and along the western banks of the Keiskamma river. Ainslie (1998) notes that during this period Peddie soon gained a reputation as excellent cattle country and its freehold farmers also produced considerable quantities of wool, wheat and later pineapples for the market. In the late nineteenth century Xhosa-speaking farmers in this area began producing grain and they also managed to accumulate resources including access to freehold land, through their involvement in the transport business, which was booming. These peasants began to offer unwanted competition to white farmers in the neighbouring areas of Albany and Bathurst (Ainslie, 1998; Bundy, 1988).
55 3.3 The fall of Agriculture
The reasons given by most respondents in Peddie concerning the fall of agriculture included drought, lack of fence and lack of resources to invest in agriculture. Those who still show interest in farming could not continue with farming as their crops were destroyed by both domestic and wild animals. Historically this steady decline in agricultural output in areas like Peddie can be traced back and attributed to the pressure exerted on the colonial and later Union governments, emanating from the white farming lobby. This occurred as a result of the need for black labour in white-dominated agriculture and on the mines (Lipton, 1996; Bundy, 1988; Ainslie, 1998). The imposition of the Land Acts effectively put an end to black farming on freehold land outside the reserves, while the communal reserves and trust land were beginning to feel the pressure of the population which had to be accommodated. People were forcibly removed through homeland consolidation, removals from black spots and the Group Areas Act.
The historic trend gives account for the short rise and long fall of peasant agriculture for the homelands, with a century of declining agricultural production and livelihoods. It is worth noting as Westaway and Minkley (2005) note that arable production was already declining in the 1940s before Betterment was actively implemented in most areas. In Peddie the 1940s were a particularly difficult period for rural people due to a devastating drought in 1945, which killed 20 percent of cattle and sheep and a third of the goats in the reserve of the Ciskei region (Mager, 1999). Arable production became difficult due to a scarcity of surviving oxen for ploughing as well as recurrent droughts, increasing landlessness and a lack of resources for investment in agriculture. These, according to Ainslie (1998) ensured that people in Peddie would never again engage in arable production on a scale beyond the cultivation of small gardens.
56 3.4 Betterment Planning in Peddie
Research done by Ainslie (1998) indicates that Betterment planning was introduced into the villages that now fall under Ngqushwa Municipality from the early 1950s. Tamara location was one of the first areas to experience Betterment, which included the culling of what the authorities regarded as excessive livestock. Ainslie (1998), notes that Betterment planning met with considerable resistance in some areas of the former Peddie district, particularly in Tyefu location and in the aMazizi area in Peddie South, where two chiefs were murdered by villagers because they had agreed to the implementation of Betterment apparently without consulting their followers. Most local people objected to the restrictions that Betterment planners wished to place on the number of cattle and other livestock that could be kept in particular reserve areas.
Betterment was introduced, at least partly to stem the environmental decay that had become evident in many reserve areas. Severe soil erosion, infestation of prickly pear and other alien weeds all hindered agricultural production and threatened to disrupt the usefulness of the reserve areas to which surplus labour could be directed and confined. While researchers have pointed to the local institutional crisis that the imposition of Betterment often brought on, no systematic consideration has yet been undertaken of the relative gains and losses resulting from the implementation of Betterment in many villages of the Ngqushwa Municipality. Ainslie (2001) cites that, given all the research done in other areas on the impacts of Betterment, the specific effects and legacy in Ngqushwa municipality remain largely unknown. The mid 1960s saw white farmers adjacent to the reserves mechanizing their farming operations. That meant that thousands of people had to leave their farms that had been their homes for generations, to resettle in reserve areas. The inflow of people into villages from white-owned farms placed arable production under further strain.
57 3.5 Capital-intensive development projects in the 1980s
Ainslie (1998) argues that, the 1980s were a particularly difficult time in terms of the rural economy of Peddie and cast a long shadow over efforts to build the rural economy. He goes on to argue that interventions, such as the capital intensive agricultural schemes like Tyefu and the Ciskei National Ranch and Citrus Schemes along the Keiskamma River did not bring about any turn-around in the rural economy of Peddie. These projects were all managed by Ulimocor on behalf of the Ciskei Department of Agriculture and Forestry and receiving funding from various South African sources, notably the Development Bank of Southern Africa. Mager (1999), notes that there was a troubled relationship between Ulimocor and the Department of Agriculture and Forestry as the basic functions carried out by the Department of Agriculture seemed to suffer from a lack of vision, inadequate funding and poor management. Ainslie (1998) further states that these interventions provided some employment opportunities for local people, but they were highly contested political projects which also struggled to register any real commercial success partly because the managers were salaried civil servants and thus beauracrats, who relied on consultants rather than farmer entrepreneurs to see their programmes through. What Ainslie also notes is that little attention was paid to enhance local skills. The expertise remained locked in the hands of management staff, which was made up of people from outside the local area.
3.6 The Ciskei National Ranch
According to Ainslie (1998), the Ciskei National Ranch at Birha in Peddie was launched in 1984 with 1500 cattle. The Ranch was responsible for the fattening of oxen bought from the local villages and neighbouring farmers and then resold yearly to the abattoir in Port Elizabeth. Later the Ranch turned to breeding better quality stock, such as Bonsmara and Brahman, and later, Nguni. The Ciskei government would buy heifers to be resold to the communities in the area at a subsidized rate. During research on the Communal Land Rights Act in 2007, some respondents, especially older men kept mentioning that they wished the days of Sebe could come back when they used to buy Nguni cattle at
58 subsidized rates. The Ranch closed down in 1997 with accusations of corruption and fraud around the way the registered Nguni was dispersed.
In as far as the Ciskei National Ranch is concerned, there are currently no plans to revive this project. The current scenario in as far as the irrigation schemes are concerned, was that in 2005 the MEC for Agriculture, Mr Nkwinti joined hands with the Department of Agriculture and the Municipality and realised that without the resuscitation of the irrigation schemes in the Eastern Cape, it was going to be difficult. The rationale was that these schemes were a source of food security and poverty alleviation. The Department of Agriculture is being helped by the Municipality through the Municipal Infrastructural Grant to revive the irrigation schemes. Tyefu irrigation scheme in Peddie is also going to benefit from this.
59 3.7 Employment status of potential labour force
Poverty is the major concern in Ngqushwa Municipality. It is estimated that about 91% of the population earn less than R1600 per month. About 78% of the population is unemployed (Ngqushwa IDP, 2006/07). It can be deduced that the high level of unemployment, coupled with low income levels are responsible for the high poverty rate, which in turn will affect affordability levels in the area.
Table 2.1 Employment status of the labour force Status % Employed 11 Unemployed 89
.unemployed, looking for work 26%
Not working- not looking for work 6% .
.Not working-scholar/full time student 34%
.Not working-pensioner/retired person 11%
Not working- other reasons 12% .
Total 89% Source: Ngqushwa Municipality IDP, 2006/07
3.8 Formal Employment
Of the employed households, 13% are in primary activities (farming and mining), 18% in the secondary sector (manufacturing, construction and utilities) and 69% are in tertiary sector. Most household members with employment are not employed in Peddie. Migrant remittances are of significant importance especially for those households where no members receive old age pension or grant. However, unemployment levels in the
60 metropolitan centres in the region and nationally have often translated into an increased return migration of people to rural villages. There is no industry in the area and the tertiary sector of the economy is dominated by a high level of employment in social and service activities, with most jobs associated with state-owned employment. In terms of the major activities within these sectors, community services, including government services provide 46% of the employment opportunities for the local economy. This is followed by trade/commerce (14%), agriculture (11%) and manufacturing (10%). The remaining economic activities account for less than 20% of the formal employment opportunities in Ngqushwa Municipality area. Since Ngqushwa Municipality area is predominantly agricultural in nature, this sector needs to be fully developed in order to perform the function of a typical rural municipality. The municipality intends addressing these problems through various functions spearheaded by its LED programmes.
Table 2.2 Employment by sector Sector Activity Number % Primary Agriculture 554 11.0
Mining 108 2.0 Secondary Manufacturing 509 10.0
Electricity/Water/Gas 30 1.0
Construction 359 7.0 Tertiary Trade/Commerce 695 14.0
Transport 239 5.0
Finance 164 3.0
Community Services 2260 46.0 Total 4918 100.0
Source: Ngqushwa Municipality IDP, 2006/07
The agricultural economy of the region includes an unproductive extensive subsistence agriculture commonly found in the traditional settled Tribal areas and freehold farms.
61 Despite this factor the Municipality is said to possess some agricultural enterprises which could form the basis for economic growth, if properly tapped. These include livestock, horticulture and field crops. In terms of marine resources, fishing in the Hamburg area is reported to be good by a number of recreational fishermen who visit Hamburg regularly. Tourism industry has now been identified as the major income generation activity for the area, if properly developed and promoted. Numerous unique tourism development potentials exist within the region. These include the Great Fish River Nature Reserve, which abounds with game such as buffalo, kudu, black rhino and small antelope. This game reserve offers game and bird watching, fishing, camping, canoeing and hiking. The natural assets of the Keiskamma River, beaches and the ocean act as a major tourist attraction in the region. The Breakfastvlei Outspan, the stone cairns and places where prayers for rain were held, are good tourist attractions in the region. The Peddie coastal area forms part of the Sunshine Coast and stretches from East London past the Great Fish River to Port Alfred. This zone is part of the Fish River Spatial Development Initiative where diverse development projects, including tourism, have been targeted.
Rapid economic development in Ngqushwa Municipal area is restrained by inadequate infrastructure. Many roads in the Municipality are in poor condition and public transport is not of the desired standard. Although the area is blessed with water resources especially dams, about 40% of the population still depend on natural sources of water. Access to social and community services in the Municipality are still inadequate. Education, community halls, licensed cemeteries, health, HIV/AIDS management and much more are either of a very low standard or are non-existent. It is rather ironical that the Municipality faces a huge challenge in its endeavors to better the lives of its people through its mandate of developmental governance due to a lack of a sufficient and sustainable internal revenue base.
The Municipality’s weak financial base is all too revealing by the fact that over 58, 63% of the revenue is from the national government with only 10, 3% internally generated (IDP, 2002). Of the 84 230 people forming 21 888 households and distributed in 14 wards over the municipal area, women and children form the majority. The municipality therefore needs to formulate sustainable rural development policies, which are also gender and children oriented.
62 3.9 Education and Literacy
About 30.91% of Ngqushwa Municipality household heads have never been to school while 8.09% have completed primary school. A further 10.24% have matriculated with only 3.91% having post-matric qualifications. This implies that only a few individuals are likely to have access to better employment opportunities. The population is also characterized by a high rate of adult illiteracy with about 52% receiving less than grade 7 education (Ngqushwa Municipality, IDP, 2003).
Table 2.3 Education and literacy Schooling % No school 30.91 Some primary 20.85 Complete primary 8.09 Secondary 26.00 Grade 12 10.24 Higher 3.91 Total 100.00 Source: Statistics South Africa, 2005
The Municipality hopes to work with the Amathole District Municipality in terms of the division of powers and functions to improve infrastructural provision and the upgrading in the municipal area.
3.10 A Rural Livelihoods Framework
Rural livelihoods, and conditions which sustain them, are diverse. Making a living in rural areas today involves improvising responses to disappearing job prospects, falling agricultural output, collapsing infrastructure and the withdrawal of public services (Francis, 2000). For most people farming alone cannot provide them with an adequate living. Francis argues that researchers and policy makers concerned with rural poverty are now taking seriously the fact that diverse rural livelihoods call for different analytic approaches rather than assuming that the main purpose of rural development is to
63 promote smallholder farming. Rather than concentrating their effort on improving the productivity of small farms, there is a need to support and enhance diverse livelihoods.
Rural conditions are changing rapidly and the livelihood strategies of local communities are diversifying with many families attempting to access multiple sources of income (Ellis, 1998). Ellis (2000) defines rural livelihood diversification as the process by which rural households construct an increasingly diverse portfolio of activities and assets in order to survive and to improve their standard of living. This diversity includes the land-based strategies of arable farming, livestock husbandry, the consumption and trade of natural resources and migrancy. In many situations, rural people engage in a combination of livelihood strategies which include, agriculture, small and micro enterprises, wage labour, pensions and disability grants, remittances, work parties, savings clubs, unpaid domestic labour and non-monetized activities such as barter and exchange. According to Rahnam (1989), households may diversify their livelihoods for quite different reasons. For some, diversification may be part of a strategy of accumulation and for others diversification is a response to the inability of any one source of sustainable income. This diversity is also aimed at managing risk, reducing vulnerability and enhancing security. In an apparently growing trend, rural households in regions across the continent cannot rely on farming alone to make a living, neither can they depend on receiving a flow of remittances from urban areas. Rahnam further argues that people respond to opportunities provided by the resources they have to hand, by market demand and by social networks and so flexibility and improvisation should be celebrated.
Grown and Sebstad (1989), suggest that the goal of the poorest groups is survival, that the goal of people whose basic survival is assured may shift to security and that people who have achieved basic security may pursue growth. They argue that the shift from survival to security is marked by a diversification of the livelihood mix. In some circumstances very poor people may have to rely on a mix of activities, precisely because none of them are reliable. Additionally, most rural households can no longer rely on adequate remittances from migrant relatives. Shackleton (2001) points out that there is an overwhelming perception that in the communal areas of South Africa rural livelihood diversification through reliance on land-based livelihood strategies makes insignificant contributions to overall livelihood well-being. Residents of communal areas are largely seen as being reliant on transfers from urban areas as well as on pensions. Cousins
64 (1999), argues that although cash from urban areas and government sources is the main stream economy in many areas, the multiple and diverse livelihood base of rural households is not widely recognized. Ainslie (2003) points out that in order to support the poor a great deal of support should be directed towards the development of local institutions which are tasked with overseeing the management of common property resources in order to maximize production and ensure the sustainable use of resources, which will contribute towards the sustainable livelihoods for the poor. Ainslie (2002) further argues for a more nuanced understanding of the variety of livelihoods and lifestyle options that characterize former Bantustan rural areas, home to millions of South Africans. He argues for retaining these multiple options including the possibility of achieving household food security, and against a drive for commercialization, particularly one that is naive of history and economic realities. The point I am trying to make here is that there is little regard or recognition for the diversity of rural livelihood strategies in a place like Peddie.
Rural communities in South Africa engage in crop cultivation and livestock farming as livelihood strategies. Rural people engage in cropping and livestock keeping mainly for subsistence purposes. Livestock remains a critical component of the livelihoods of millions of households in the rural areas, although unevenly distributed between households. According to Shackleton (2001), the contribution of livestock to rural livelihoods is much more significant than it is currently estimated. Rural people are involved in livestock farming for different reasons, which include slaughter for feasts or home consumption, cash from sales, milk for home consumption, as a form of investment, for funeral purposes, for paying bride wealth, for the sale of hides and skins and for transport purposes (Cousins, 1996). With respect to the broader projects of poverty alleviation and integrated rural development many of which seek to encourage greater commercialization in the rural cattle production sector, Ainslie (2003), argues that there is a need to understand more clearly and to acknowledge the important role that cattle play as powerful cultural icons in the changing cultural and gender politics of the rural Eastern Cape.
In addition to subsistence agriculture, researchers, policy analysts and development agencies increasingly recognize the important role that wild resources play in the lives of the marginalized rural poor (Campbell 1996; Shackleton 2000 & Willis 2004). Such uses
65 of natural resources include direct consumption within the household, and harvesting for income generation. The following are invariable cited as needs, met through direct access to biodiversity: health care via indigenous medicinal plant use, energy provision from fuel wood, housing development based on wood and thatch resources, household nutrition supplementation from edible plants, fruits, mushrooms, insects and honey, income generation from the use of harvested wood and fibres from craftwork and the trade in products for all the above uses (Shackleton, 2000). Many communities are still reliant on wild resources both for utilitarian and cultural needs. Rural communities of South and Southern Africa are no exception to other areas of the developing world in procuring a wide variety of natural resources for home consumption or sale (Campbell 2002; Shackleton & Shackleton 2000). In South Africa this applies to residents of communal areas, as well as to farm laborers on commercial farms. This activity has increased in importance in response to a growing urban demand for these resources. The increasing network links between rural and urban areas has facilitated the drawing of natural resources from rural areas to towns and cities (Cunningham 2001) This emerging process has mostly been analyzed in terms of their implications for rural livelihood strategies and rural development (Tacoli 1998). Francis (2000) asserts that the best promise for development lies with the initiatives of the ordinary people. The challenge then becomes to understand how people construct livelihoods, what factors shape strategies. This approach starts with what people are actually doing to make a living. The core question is what do people in rural areas do to survive, what are the actual livelihood activities and supportive activities that enable them? Long (2000) defines livelihood as the idea of individuals and groups striving to make a living, attempting to meet their various consumption and economic necessities, coping with uncertainties, responding to new opportunities and choosing between different value positions. In his definition of livelihood, Long argues that the issues of heterogeneity must not be overlooked since we are living in an increasingly diversified world which only has trappings of homogeneity. As much as the revolution in information and communication technologies have made the world look more uniform and interconnected, Long (2000), argues that these have not destroyed cultural, ethnic, economic and political diversity. Awareness of such heterogeneity is reflected in the questioning, in certain policy circles, of standardized solutions to problems of economic development, employment and
66 welfare, in favour of what are described as more flexible, localised and sustainable strategies.
3.11 Livelihood strategies in Peddie
Rural livelihoods and conditions that sustain them are diverse and complex and Peddie is no different. In the study area all six villages have similar characteristics in terms of livelihoods options. People have developed complex systems of livelihoods, which combine a wide variety of assets, activities and social relationships. This diversity is facilitated by several factors, ranging from the availability of physical and social assets, to the people's ability to turn these assets into livelihoods. Again, the households differ in their degree of vulnerability. Households are not equally poor; there are those better off than others.
3.11.1 Agricultural production
There are strong indications that the role of agriculture in Peddie has declined. Many of the large fields have fallen into disuse, while smallholder agriculture is limited to garden plots adjacent to households. One of the reasons for the abandonment of the fields is related to the monetization of the agrarian economy. Agricultural production in this area is not practised as much as before. Some argue that this is because today's generation dislikes engaging in agricultural activities and older people are dying, while others blame it on climate. Poorer households do not have the money required to hire tractors to plough. On the other hand, households that do not have access to land sometimes fall victim to those who have when they enter into collective ploughing groupings. They end up having to work for those households that own fields, doing all the planting and weeding and when the harvest is ready, they have to share equally. This retreat from cultivation of the planting fields feeds into a vicious circle of de-agranisation. With fewer people cultivating there is little incentive for the entire village to keep stray animals out of the poorly fenced fields. Respondents report crop losses due to stray animals, and thus expressed a reluctance to cultivate in anticipation of these large losses.
67
Research carried out by Ainslie (2004) in Peddie indicates that the majority of residents continue to live in poverty. An important component of rural livelihood strategies is the consistently high number of cattle, goats and sheep, as well as pigs and poultry. Ainslie argues that this is to a considerable extent where investment in the rural agricultural economy of Peddie is currently to be found. He makes a strong case for the continued importance of cattle both as economic resources within the local household economy and as a social cipher of identity and a market of belonging to a broader community in village communities in the Peddie district. He notes that cattle ownership patterns have remained relatively stable in this area despite far reaching political and economic changes.
The reason for this is their cultural significance and also their significant contribution to local multiple livelihood strategies. It is for this reason that meaningful development is about understanding people in their specific holistic context. I have observed that some cropping and livestock keeping is practised in the study area but mainly for subsistence purposes. The main crop is maize, which is usually intercropped with pumpkins, melons, potatoes, beans and peas. Some poultry and pig rearing are practiced mostly in female headed households. Pig meat, which is usually sold locally, makes some contribution to the welfare of many households. To supplement household food, edible varieties of wild vegetables (imifino) are harvested and cooked for home consumption.
3.11.2 Cattle farming
In Peddie, cattle provide rural people with direct benefits in the form of goods and services, such as milk, draught power, manure, meat, hides and skins all of which make a considerable contribution to the livelihoods of rural people in general and not exclusively to those of the cattle-holding households, Ainslie (2004). During the 1980s, the establishment of the Ciskei National Ranch (CNR) on the farms of Peddie South brought about the subsidized sale of a few thousand good quality Nguni and Bonsmara heifers into the villages. The CNR collapsed in 1997 but it has had a lasting impact on the quality of livestock in the villages adjacent to the Ranch. During my
68 interviews in Peddie, the old men asked me to negotiate for them with the Department of Agriculture in Fort Hare to obtain these Nguni heifers.
They pointed out that they enjoyed these privileges during the Sebe regime, but now the projects that are being introduced in their villages are crop projects, which do not really address their needs. While cattle are sold regularly for cash, there are cultural restrictions that inform the appropriateness of the sale of cattle, for example, cattle acquired through bride wealth payment. The respondents regarded the selling of cattle as undesirable and anti-social. Sale of cattle to outsiders is only undertaken under very unusual circumstances such as in the event of acute destitution, to literally put food on the table; in the event of death in the household, to finance the cost of a funeral or conduct rituals associated with death and ancestor veneration; and lastly to finance the costs of education. I was told that cattle in the kraal of a rural homestead symbolize a culturally successful Xhosa homestead. Cattle are also said to connect rural Xhosa people to their ancestors, through a host of cultural and ritual practices.
3.11.3 Social grants and migrant remittances
Research done by Ainslie (2004) in Peddie indicates that livelihoods centre around the full range of availability of social grants and child support grants and grants for those who are HIV positive. Another source of livelihood comes from the wages earned in urban centres and remitted to villages in Ngqushwa rather than on local, agrarian production or local employment opportunities. Another growing source of income into rural households has been remittances from civil servants in the former Ciskei and Eastern Cape provincial government, who are an important source of income and support for their rural homesteads of origin. Pensions play an important role in the livelihoods of people in this area, with old age pensions being the most dominant.
69 3.11.4 Use of natural resources
Harvesting of natural resources for subsistence consumption and trade is of increasing significance for poor villagers, particularly women in the study area. These include herbs, fuel, wood and reeds for making mats. Villagers harvest mostly reeds (imizi) for making mats. To supplement household food, edible varieties of wild vegetables (imifino) are harvested and cooked for home consumption. This meal is mostly enjoyed when friends or neighbours gather together and so a household that has prepared imifino would share with a neighbor.
3.11.5 Formal employment and piece jobs
There are few people who have formal jobs. Those with formal jobs either work in local pre-schools and schools as teachers, or as nurses in the clinics. Some only manage to secure piece jobs when they become available. The jobs include erecting fences, constructing toilets and houses, road construction and looking after somebody’s children.
3.11.6 Small businesses
Wealthier households run grocery shops although most of these shops are closing down and most of them are now being bought by Pakistanians and ‘amaGrigamba’ (immigrants) as they are widely called. Some households sell cooked items such as fat cakes and sausages. Some households, usually female headed households, run sheebeens and spaza shops.
70 3.11.7 Informal businesess, street vendors and saving clubs
More and more people are involved in informal businesses in Peddie. They sell fruit and vegetables in town. Others sell clothes that they buy from Durban. For many years there have also been people who selling pineapples and prickly pears by the roadside.
A number of women in this village have decided to come together, reflect on their problems, form some kind of collective structure and take some initiatives to achieve some jointly conceived objectives and thus develop authentically. They rely on a mix of livelihood activities. Included are grocery clubs (imigalelo), credit societies, piggery, traditional mat making, and selling vegetables from their gardens. The reason for this diversification of livelihood mix, they argue, is that having more than one source of livelihood means that the consequences of any one source failing will be less severe.
3.12 Case studies of individual household livelihood strategies
3.12.1 Nozimasile's household
This is a female headed household consisting of Nozimasile, her three daughters and two sons. She is receives a grant for one child, the youngest. They live in a three roomed flat. There is very little furniture in the dining room except for a table and six chairs. Nozimasile is a widower; her husband died in June 2006 leaving her with nothing. He worked at the Department of Public Works. At the time of his death the couple separated because he had been unfaithful to his wife. Her in-laws never informed her that her husband was sick as they were not living together. Although they were no longer together she showed respect by mourning for him by wearing black attire which is an indication that you have lost your spouse.
The family suffered a severe reduction in their livelihood well-being as they do not have fixed income. Soon after the death of her husband, Nozimasile found out that according to the records at Home Affairs she was actually not married to her husband. That complicated matters as she was struggling to access her husbands’ money which was not
71 much, as he resigned and took his pension and spent it on his girlfriends. What Nozimasile was struggling to claim was a mere two thousand rand from the Standard bank. She was supposed to bring proof for her marriage, which was a traditional one. The family of the in- laws refused to help her, but ultimately one man who was involved in lobola negotiations stood up for her and she received the money. With the money she bought food for her household, paid for school fees for the three children, two at high school and one in primary school, and also clothes for them. Two of her children have matriculated and looking for work because she cannot afford to send them to university. The son is looking for a job in Cape Town and the daughter in East London. Nozimasile joined a poultry project which ended two years ago; this was a bad experience for her. The project failed because the members did not afford to buy feed for the chickens. They ended up fighting and not talking to each other. Nozimasile also volunteers as a health worker at the clinic and sometimes at Nompumelelo hospital in Peddie. She mentioned that she is paid R600 only after three to four months and this is called money for soap (imali yesepha). Without regular income it has not been easy for this household to contribute to the project.
3.12.2 Nolusindisos' household
Nolusindiso is a young married woman with three children. The children are still young, the first born being 12 years of age and the last born four years. Her husband works in the mines. Her house is a big, three bedroomed house, well furnished with sofas in the sitting room, a big television and a stylish wall unit. On the wall there is a large photo of her husband. In the kitchen there is an electric stove, two fridges, a deep freezer which she uses for selling meat and ice lollies for children in summer and a normal fridge for household consumption. Outside there is a garden where she plants vegetables for sale and home consumption. When I visited this household I was offered a drink and some cookies. You could see that this household was better-off by the fencing material used, the large water tank and the gates outside. Nolusindiso is also involved in a poultry project which is so far successful. Its success can be attributed to the fact that apart from the support they acquire from the Department of Agriculture through their councilor, but also access to outside remittances, which make this project viable. Apart from receiving
72 cash from her husband, Nolusindiso uses a multiplicity of strategies and resources to make a living. Viable secure households are therefore those with a regular cash income.
3.12.3 The Dlamini household
This household consists of 69 year old Dlamini, his wife and their three sons. The three sons are all working, the eldest, a 42 year old son is a policeman in Cape Town, the second, a 36 year old son is a teacher in East London and the last born, a 32 year old son is working at Delta in Port Elizabeth. Dlamini is a pensioner who used to work at the railway in Cape Town. Dlamini owns a small bakkie which he uses to buy groceries in town and to visit his family and friends. He bought this car with his pension package. The relatively comfortable compound bears all the hallmarks of extended labour in the formal sector. The homestead consists of two sturdy roofed rondavels and a large rectangular multi-roomed house. The expensive clay brick reflects the homeowner as a person of above average means within the village. The lounge is well furnished with modern furniture, a large TV and DVD player. The busy compound shows signs of agrarian activity, a goat and cattle enclosure with fresh manure on the floor, a fowl run of chickens and creeping pumpkin plants. Because Dlamini's wife is old and unable to carry out household chores, they make use of a helper who earns R300 a month. Therefore this household is considered well-off as it has connections with kin in the urban areas. The three sons remit money to the parents every month.
3.12.4 Nokwanda’s households
Nokwanda’s home consists of one small mud block structure used for both cooking and sleeping, sparsely furnished with old furniture. Nokwanda’s sole source of income is a single child support grant, which she augments with selling chips, sweets and chocolates. Her small income and the absence of any urban remittances put her in the position of the most vulnerable household amongst the households I visited. Nokwanda lost both parents in 2001 and claims that life was much better when they were still alive. They survived better with their old age pension. Nokwanda has two brothers, but the eldest has lost
73 touch with the rural home. They last saw him in 1970 when he went to Johannesburg to look for a job. He did not even attend the funeral of his parents. The other brother is in Cape Town and does not send any money to Nokwanda. Nokwanda also occasionally does domestic work for a retired teacher in the village. Sometimes she is paid for a specific task, but more often her labour is acknowledged by the steady charity supply of food, household consumables, clothes (old and new) and shoes.
3.13. Conclusion
The case studies reveal that livelihood strategies of households within the study area are varied and complex. These case studies also reveal that households differ from one another in terms of the nature of their insertion into and connection with the formal economy. Households ranged from those with members that had permanent formal sector jobs, to those that relied on regular remittances from non-resident members, to those that had no reliable connection to formal economic employment at all. From the case studies it is clear that households with no migrancy connections to the formal economy, tended to be poor. Nozimasile and Nokwanda are typical examples of such households and they are female-headed households. These households are typically poor, not able to participate in agriculture and are not linked to any broader kinship structure that would provide them with remittances or other resources. They rely on child support grants. Nolusindiso's household is better off because her husband sends money to her. That also makes her better able to participate in the poultry project as she is able to contribute towards the joining fees and buying of feed for the chickens. The Dlamini household could be categorised as well off because money is remitted to the rural areas by their three sons and invested into their rural status.
From these case studies it is clear that the more affluent families are those with a stable income, those who can buy more cattle, invest in housing and so forth. It is also clear that the struggle for income is the fundamental issue and so the critical determinant of livelihood is urban wages or public sector wages. The case studies have also revealed the fact that rural people are not interested in specialization and so these entrepreneurial projects do not really work. It is also clear that the role of development projects in the
74 livelihood strategies of households has been ineffective. From a household livelihood perspective, there are no benefits from these projects. They are not able to provide regular cash income, something people seek. The case studies show that households are not equally poor. A distinction can be made between those households that have been able to establish a strong linkage with an urban economy; they either receive significant remittances from urban non-resident members or households that have had such links in the past, and manage to consolidate significant savings either on the basis of remittances or retirement packages. These households would be pluri-active, involved in formal, informal and agrarian activities. This chapter has also dealt with people's own livelihood strategies particularly the continuing significance of rural handicraft production as a source of rural livelihood in spite of the ongoing impact of global economic change. Despite the low value accorded to natural resource use in people's livelihoods by the government, these resources are important in rural quality of life.
75 Chapter Four:
Power, Authority and Local Governance in Development Practice
The retention in post-colonial Africa, of a bifurcated state system, which has entrenched customary power in the countryside and restricted citizenship in the cities, has held back the possibilities for the continent to realize participatory democracy and the full benefits of economic modernity. Throughout colonial Africa, majority rural populations were governed through indigenous chiefs and customary law under a regime of decentralized despotism. As a result they were ill prepared to participate as citizens in the modern states that have succeeded colonialism. Mahmood Mamdani (1996:134-1139)
4.1 Introduction
In the post-apartheid South Africa, it has not been the obstacles of the customary as much as the barriers to racial equality presented by the apartheid system that have been conceived as major obstacles to development. It was also a struggle which emphasized the need for South Africans to forge a new national identity which transcends the particularities of tribe and ethnicity. Mamdani (1996) points out that the political project of the post-apartheid government has been an ambiguous one in the sense that, while the government is strongly committed to the removal of racial privilege, it has not fundamentally challenged the foundations of customary power. The colonial state was characterized by a bifurcation between urban citizens who were entitled to rights and governed by institutions of civil society, and rural subjects who were governed by the institutions of custom and tradition, personified by traditional authorities. These traditional authorities, according to Mamdani should be understood less as resilient remnants of a pre-colonial state, and more as functional intermediaries of power between the relatively small colonial forces and the masses of the African peasantry. Thus, whilst the rhetoric of indirect rule claimed that it was a system which claimed to preserve the cultural traditions of the colonized, in reality, the traditional authorities who co-operated with the colonial state were agents of colonial control, and lacked traditional legitimacy. The transition to democracy has not broken the power of chiefs and the tribal authority systems in the rural
76 areas. New democratic forms of local government and systems of authority have been introduced in rural areas, but they continue to co-exist with chiefs and customary authorities that have remained influential and politically organized locally, regionally and nationally. In this view, Mamdani (1996) suggests that the failure of the African National Congress (ANC) to dismantle customary power remains one of the country’s major obstacles to development. Thus, the ANC has imagined that once the walls of privilege are torn down and the rights and dignity of ordinary people have been restored, then economic progress and prosperity will follow naturally and as an inevitable consequence of the delivery of liberal constitutional rights and the acquisition of modern citizenship. The central point of Mamdani is that throughout colonial Africa, the majority of rural populations were governed through indigenous chiefs and customary law under a regime of decentralized despotism. The result was that they were not prepared to participate as citizens in the modern states that have succeeded colonialism. The canonical version of such colonialism is the British system of indirect rule, formally employed only in tropical Africa but echoed both in the segregationist policies of rural South Africa and in the less explicit practices of other European powers in tropical Africa. Because such colonialism was both despotic and decentralized, Mamdani argues that it created only two possibilities for postcolonial African governments: a conservative maintenance of decentralization through either the same hierarchy of chiefs or a noncoercive clientalism, or a radical effort at development through centralized despotism.
Within South Africa’s democratized local government system, regular local elections and other consultative processes including consultation around the budget and Integrated Development Plan are seen as a sufficient mechanism to refresh the council’s democratic mandate and ensure legitimacy. In rural areas, the Municipality’s ability to construct majority support through the ballot box and regular consultation is challenged by the constitutionally protected position of traditional authority. Under apartheid, the system of traditional authority was manipulated to reinforce racial and ethnic segregation, with black South Africans assigned a tribal homeland, which then exercised political control over homeland inhabitants, ranging from central government functions to village tribal affairs. Local government functions in homelands were concentrated in urban areas and provided by the central homeland government. In rural areas, only limited local government functions with minor local government functions and local political control exercised by tribal leaders.
77
Although the system of traditional authority was corrupted under apartheid, in post- apartheid South Africa traditional authority has remained a significant social, cultural and political force with particular power within rural areas where the full influence of the democratic state has yet to be felt (Pycroft, 2000). Although traditional leaders in rural areas do not provide significant municipal services, their control over the dispersion of tribal authority land secures their political and economic influence within their areas of jurisdiction. As democratic local government in rural areas seeks to increase its influence through control over land-use planning, rural municipalities are likely to encounter resistance from traditional authorities where municipal plans do not coincide with the land- use objectives of the traditional leader.
Traditional authorities retain a constitutional right to be consulted on all issues that have bearing on land under their control. This right to consultation does not undermine the rural municipality’s constitutional pre-eminence to determine how land should be used and how state development resources should be deployed within the council’s area. There remains sufficient legal ambiguity in the relationship between the system of democratic local government and traditional local governance based on the difference between ownership of land and jurisdiction over land to cause concern. Traditional authority does not have sufficient local taxation powers or revenue-generating capacity to be able to meet the development needs of their constituents, nor to compete with rural municipalities as the conduit for service provision and infrastructure development (Bernstein, 1998). However, in many areas, traditional authority control over land can provide traditional leaders with sufficient influence to block rural council’s development ambitions. The Government needs to resolve the constitutional and legal ambiguity that surrounds the relationship between democratic local government and traditional authority. However, it is likely that any effort to reduce the influence of traditional leaders over traditional land will be resisted both through legal and extra-legal means.
78 4.1.1 Revival of traditional authority
4.1.1.1 The Communal Land Rights Act
The Communal Land Rights Act 11 of 2004 (CLaRa) is the most recent state intervention into land administration and control in the Eastern Cape. Some of the legislative Acts that have impacted on the politics of land in the Eastern Cape province are the Glen Grey Act of 1894, which marked the formal and official move to limit African land rights and restructure traditional authority and the 1913 Natives Land Act, which delineated the boundaries of the native reserves and outlawed the buying or leasing of land by Africans outside of these areas. Betterment planning implemented in the wake of the Tomlinson Commission to combat soil erosion and improve agricultural production witnessed large scale relocation and reorganization of the Eastern Cape communities into separate residential, arable and grazing areas in order to comply with state ideas of proper land use practices. These are amongst the many significant state interventions into land management, that had dramatic and lasting impacts on land use and administration practices in the Province.
4.1.1.2 Traditional Authorities
The two critical themes that emerge from CLaRa include the role of Traditional Leaders in land administration and the nature of the land rights in question. This legislation cannot be fully understood in isolation from the Traditional Leaders and Governance Framework Act of 2003 (TLGFA). While the ClaRa defines a role for traditional authorities in land reform, the TLGFA attempts to recognize and legitimize the institution of traditional leadership, while at the same time reforming it in terms of democratic principles and gender equality. The TLGFA requires traditional authorities (TAs) to transform themselves into democratic and representative bodies which then become known as traditional councils (TCs). Once these councils have been established in a community, they may act as Land Administration Committees. The TLGFA allows for the new traditional councils to be made up of 60% unelected members. Critics claim that this concession renders the
79 attempt at making the institution of traditional authorities democratic and constitutional ineffective. It has also been noted that the requirement for the traditional councils to have 30% women is simply lip-service to principles of gender equality as statistics clearly indicate that the majority of the people affected by this legislation are women.
These two Acts hold the potential to alter the role and extent of power of the existing traditional leaders, especially with regards to the control of land. It is possible that the implementation of these Acts will result in a radical shift in land politics in the Eastern Cape, which is neither constitutional nor traditional. Research carried by Fort Hare Institute of Social and Economic Research (FHISER) found that in almost all the TAs that were the focus of research, there has been transformation from Traditional Authorities to Traditional Councils. In all these newly formed TCs, the chiefs remain the heads. Each TC area is divided into administrative areas which are further divided into villages and headed by a headman. Most traditional Authorities and Tradtional Councils expressed concern about women participating in the Councils. The observation has been that most women, although not all, tended to be silent members of the Councils; it was not ascertained whether they felt intimidated or whether they were willing not to actively participate. Thus, although women have been elected to the new Councils, their participation in decision making is still questionable. What was clear was that men still dominate rural governance, despite the fact that women constitute over 50% of the rural population. Such lack of voice has had a highly negative impact on women-initiated development projects and programmes. It also has a bearing on women’s access to and use of residential, arable and grazing land. It seems the old order remains in control of communal matters including land allocation, use and administration.
Traditional leaders also raised the point that the Act is not clear on roles and responsibilities of TC members. To them it just came as a framework without practical guidelines of how to implement it. Without this approval many newly formed TCs are still unclear about their roles and responsibilities as well as their legal mandate. As a result, although land administration functions are supposed to be the responsibility of the TCs, amaphakathi and the chiefs still continue to make all the decisions. TCs thus have little or no significant impact on land administration at this stage.
80 SANCO still has a strong presence in the Eastern Cape, although more so in the former Ciskei than in the former Transkei. SANCO presence is particularly strong in those areas that are closest to urban areas. The Traditional Authorities that are least affected are those furthest from urban areas and towns. Many Traditional Authorities stated that they were frustrated by this situation. Together with the Traditional Councils they said they felt that clear guides as to the roles and responsibilities of the Traditional Councils are required to avoid run-ins and clashes with SANCO in those areas that do have a strong SANCO presence. They suggested that what was needed was a formal legal mandate, with clear roles, rules and responsibilities.
In the Eastern Cape Province, therefore, most Tribal Authorities have addressed the stipulations necessary to become Traditional Councils, but are still waiting for government to clarify how implementation of the next phase, which is to formalize and legalise these structures and give them the necessary powers to administer land in communal areas, should occur. Traditional Councils in Peddie are also registered. They are also waiting for government to clarify their roles and responsibilities and the legalization of these structures. Peddie is also experiencing run-ins and clashes with SANCO especially in the area of land allocation. One such case involves the sale of land by SANCO chairperson to a Pakistanian. The case is challenged by the chief who believes that land cannot be sold. The different types of land use that people have in Peddie include residential, garden cultivation, field cultivation and grazing lands. However, due to scarcity of land arable land is no longer available. If a resident is looking for arable land s/he has to negotiate with those who have fields and arrangements for compensation are negotiated between the two parties.
4.2 A History of Local Government in Peddie
Peddie’s origin, according to Ainslie (2004) dates back in the period of colonial conquest during the early nineteenth century. A military garrison was established at Fort Peddie after the sixth frontier war of 1834-35. Ainslie notes that the first white settlers began to receive title to land previously held by Xhosa speakers in 1849 and began to arrive in numbers in 1853 after the eighth frontier war. In Mfengu locations, headmen who reported to the Civil Commissioner were appointed to govern local residents. Ainslie in Boshoff
81 (2006) argues that the headmen occupied an 'intercalary' position, and they attempted to exploit the many ambiguities of this position to their own and their supporters’ advantage. The reserve system was legally enforced through the passing of the Native's Land Act 27 of 1913. The terms of this Act set aside specific tracts of land for the exclusive occupation and ownership of Africans. In the process Africans were prevented from acquiring land and accumulating capital outside of these small, specified areas.
The Native Affairs Act of 1920 provided for the establishment of local councils who were empowered to fulfill a number of administrative tasks and wide-ranging functions in their area of jurisdiction. However (Boshoff, 2006) argued that since the council relied heavily on local taxes and fees paid by the Africans in their locations for the council's revenue, their capacity to meet their many and varied duties was hamstrung primarily by a lack of finances. The people in Peddie felt that the Council could do nothing for them and that it was powerless to act in their interests against increasingly coercive government laws. Moreover, the lowest tier of government continued to be the headmen and his sub- headmen at village level and so people were unclear about the role and status of Local Councils. Ainslie (2004) notes that early headmen in Peddie were educated men and this was because the magistrates required the headmen to perform basic administrative duties. Mager (1992) also points out that the 'Bunga' was used by the Native Affairs Department to act as an interface between white officialdom and the geographically scattered rural locations of the Ciskei. Six Chief Native Commissioners represented the NAD, according to the Native Administrative Act No.38 of 1927. The Bantu Authorities Act 68 of 1951 was applied to the Ciskeian reserves in 1956 (Ainslie, 1998). The Act abolished local and district councils and delegated much of the local administrative authority to chiefs and headmen. Ainslie (1998) notes that the Tribal Authorities reported to the regional authorities and ultimately to the Ciskeian territorial authority. He argues that a central weakness of the Tribal Authorities was that they did not explicitly represent any of the major constituencies in the rural villages. Their lack of a popular mandate from the village residents, whom they served, mirrored the authoritarian and repressive nature of the Ciskeian government as a whole. Ainslie (1998), argues that many chiefs went on to serve in the Territorial Authority of the Ciskei and thus acted as both policy makers and local administrators and it was clear that these chiefs could not be accountable to their rural subjects, as a result opposition to Bantu Authorities mounted steadily. Betterment
82 Planning, which was introduced to rural Peddie in the early 1960s, further alienated the office bearers of local Tribal Authorities from their subjects.
In December 1981, the Ciskei took its independence from South Africa, with Lennox Sebe and his Ciskei National Independence Party installed in power. Ainslie notes that throughout the 1980s, the Tribal Authorities took centre stage in attempting to shore up political support and in suppressing growing opposition to the Bantustan system. The Gqozo era (1990 to 1994) was according to Ainslie characterized by uncertainty as power slipped away from the Bantustan regime, the Ciskei regime escalated its levels of repression. Manona (1995) notes that people responded with widespread resistance, including violence and destruction of state assets in the countryside. Ainslie points out that In Peddie, government flagship schemes, such as the Tyefu irrigation scheme and other Ulimocor-managed schemes such as the Pineapple Schemes in Peddie South and the Citrus schemes along the Keiskamma River, were specific targets for the venting of rural people's frustrations.
Moreover, the ANC aligned with the South African National Civic Organization (SANCO) set about mobilizing rural people in Peddie District in opposition to the hated headman system and Gqozo's ill- fated African Democratic Movement. Manona (1995) points out that in some areas, headmen and their supporters were hounded out of their villages and their homes burnt. Ainslie(1998), notes that when the first local government elections of the post-apartheid were held in November 1995, the ANC won 98% of the vote in Peddie District. He goes on to argue that the local government remained seriously fragmented and resistance from deposed headmen remained a problem in several areas in such a way that in Peddie alone, there were three local councils, the Peddie Transitional Representative Council (TRC), the Peddie Transitional Local Council (TLC) in the town of Peddie and the Hamburg TLC that replaced the Village Board in the seaside resort of Hamburg.
Ainslie points out that as the tension continued between the councils, as their respective areas of jurisdiction and functions remained unclear, ambitious local politicians on the other hand, in the three councils jostled to establish rural power bases for themselves, but that proved very difficult to achieve in the prevailing circumstances. By June 1999, despite considerable competition between the key political activists who were all ANC
83 members in the three councils and with input from the Peddie Development Forum, cooperation was established to produce the IDP document required by law. This was achieved with the help of the East London- based NGO, Afesis-Corplan.
Ainslie (1998) points out that by late 1999 more changes were afoot as the boundaries of Peddie District were redrawn by the Municipal Demarcation Board to include the towns of Peddie and Hamburg and a total of 112 rural villages, 44 of the latter having previously fallen under the Zwelitsha District of the former Ciskei. The second round of local government elections in December 2000 were characterized by competition for positions on the ANC election list at municipal level. According to Ainslie the three councils and their respective administrative staff had to be integrated into a single local Municipal Council after the 2000 election. Ainslie notes that the previous mayor of Hamburg topped the ANC election list and was duly inaugurated as mayor of the new Ngqushwa Municipality. However her leadership capabilities were widely questioned and that resulted to a split in the council, with the majority of councilors opposed to the mayor and intent on securing her resignation through a succession of ‘no-confidence’ votes in her leadership. This local split was said to be linked to tensions that existed between the political supporters of the then premier of the Eastern Cape, Makhenkesi Stofile, and those of Mluleki George, a prominent member of Parliament.
Ainslie asserts that in Peddie, existing tension prevented the council from meeting more than a few times and that seriously impeded service delivery and development in the Municipality. As a result, the dust has refused to settle over disputes concerning the division of the spoils between the three former councils in respect of the most sought- after municipal posts. The post of municipal manager was fiercely contested for a period of 18 months by the former town clerks of Peddie and Hamburg and the contest was finally laid to rest after arbitration by a labour court and an internal dispute resolution process undertaken by the ANC, but the tensions have not dissipated.
Ainslie argues that the loss of administrative capacity in local government in places like Peddie District, certainly since the mid-1970s, is well known and it resonated from the loss of skills that occurred when local administrative functions were handed over to the Ciskei Bantustan regime. The post 1995 local government institutions were faced with administrative challenges. This short history of local government in Peddie points to a
84 number of challenges that can be tracked over time. These include a sustained absence of democratic local government for rural people. Rural people in Peddie simply do not have a history of active, broad-based participation in legitimate and democratic local government. Their experience of local government has been one of authoritarian and coercive government intervention, linked to extreme neglect in the delivery of basic services. This has resulted in both distrust and low expectations of this system of government, and thus minimal ‘buy-in’ on the part of rural people.
During my interviews in Peddie from 2006, I also experienced a lack of accountability and transparency by the local government. It was extremely difficult to talk to the officials responsible for local economic development, and then talks proved fruitless; the official in question was either not responsible for certain areas or did not know what was happening because s/he had been on leave for quite some time or else has just taken over from somebody else. This has been the case with the Municipality, the Department of Social Development and the Department of Agriculture. When I went to the municipality and the Department of Agriculture, I had already visited many projects in Peddie, including the pineapple project which was at the time experiencing many problems, but I remember that no one wanted to respond honestly to the pineapple fiasco, they pretended ignorance of the problem. As a result of this neglect the local government made no effort at all to resolve the issues in the project and that has imposed significant costs on the local people and have now lost trust to the local government.
4.3 Traditional Leadership and development in Peddie
4.3.1 Historical background
The post1994 role of traditional leadership in Peddie has been muted (Ainslie, 2003). In Peddie their influence has substantially diminished in the past century. In the past, the role of chiefs was important particularly for the allocation of land for residential and arable purposes. In the second half of the 20 th century their responsibilities were taken over by appointed or elected civic organizations and the chiefs’ positions as tribal leaders became primarily ceremonial.
85 4.3.2 Apartheid era systems
Prior to 1994 there were systems in place for rural administration that were widely known and accepted. These systems were different for the lands subjected to Betterment and those that were not. Betterment was widely accepted and implemented in the former Ciskei, with sporadic cases of rejection where the landscape was an impediment. In those areas, development and service delivery seemed to lag. This is evident in Tyhefu at Peddie.
4.3.3 Land administration systems
Prior to 1994 there were three levels of power as far as rural administration was concerned, Headman, Chiefs and the Paramount chief. A headman was elected and did not have to be a descendant of the royal family. Headmen were paid for their services. These represented the first tier of government and represented the local office of rural administration.
Chieftaincy was hereditary; one can only be born into the position. The chief executive was largely comprised of the descendants of the royal family and respected men from the traditional authority. The main functions of the chief included, representing the Traditional Authority externally, e.g. at the King’s meetings or with the government, ruling on land administration issues and administration of the village.
4.3.4 Post-apartheid systems
Post apartheid systems were largely characterized by the advent of the South African National Civic Organisation (SANCO). SANCO operated with no defined systems for land administration. It mainly opposed the then existing systems. In general, traditional leaders, in particular, Chiefs and Headmen were caught on the unfavorable side of the political landscape just prior to 1994. They had remained in solidarity with their ‘soon-to- go’ Bantustan leaders. This proved to be decisive, because when the ANC came to
86 power, it perceived their role in the liberation struggle was jeopardized. This was manifested by the disempowering decisions and practices adopted afterwards. SANCO was introduced in the villages, with the chairperson of SANCO assuming the status similar to that of a Headman but without assuming the same functions. The claim is that state assets in the villages started disappearing and others vandalized. This had a huge negative impact on the lives of the people in the villages as they stopped working on arable land and some families moved out to townships in destitute.
During interviews in 2007, Traditional leaders in Peddie pointed out that SANCO had a strong relationship with the African National Congress (ANC). The system employed by the ANC led government allowed for a SANCO chairperson or that of an ANC branch to be elected onto ward councillorship. Ward Councillors enjoy a status similar to that of chiefs. The ward Councillors sit on the municipal council. As a result, traditional leaders were effectively sidelined and disempowered. This is evidenced in two ways: ward councilors refuse to meet with them or account to them and there is no formal requirement for the ward councilors to interact with them.
The relationship between the chiefs and the municipality is not formalized. The Municipality is not obliged to meet or consult with them on economic development matters. This is evidenced by a situation where the Amarheledwane Traditional Authority, under the leadership of chief Matomela, are challenging in court the development and erection of a service station on land that is under the authority of the chief. Their claim is that communal land belongs to the chief and can never be sold. However, a SANCO chairperson together with a Councilor sold the land to a Pakistani businessman without the consent of the chief. The traditional leaders pointed out that the same scenario occurs with service delivery. They are never consulted; sometimes they just see companies mining quarry on their land without their knowledge. Not surprisingly, in areas like Tyefu there is enmity between the municipality and the traditional leaders. During the 2007 interviews researchers struggled to conduct interviews with the traditional leaders in this area until they proved that they were not from the Municipality. These elders wanted nothing to do with the municipality until they acquire their land back which they claimed was taken from them during the Sebe regime and given to another chief in their neighbourhood. This scenario is the backdrop for development; the elders are not interested in any development initiated by the Municipality until this issue is resolved.
87 4.3.5 Development projects
Self-development activities in the rural are low. Active projects are few and some failed. The youth is said to be disengaged and/or disinterested and only middle aged men and women take up these activities. However, generally these projects are short-lived. Traditional authorities also complain that municipal councilors do not engage them in development programmes. This seems to be the case in all the traditional councils that we visited in Peddie. The Marheledwane chief stated that previously in rural areas any kind of development was channeled through the chiefs.
4.3.6 Land allocation
There is a marked discrepancy between the way in which the Traditional Council would like to conduct its affairs in relation to land allocation and administration, and the manner in which it is conducted. The authority which the traditional council has been able to exercise in any of these villages has been extremely limited. Royal families still exist but have been divested of authority. Before 1994 the Traditional Council had a great deal of authority in relation to the land. A resident desiring land would approach the headman of their village, and the headman would approach the chief for permission to allocate land to the applicant. Presently, there are dual structures operating, and it is possible for someone to obtain land by approaching the headman of a village but also by approaching the Chairperson of SANCO in their village. This scenario was prevalent at Marheledwane and eMazizini Traditional Councils. It was also evident that there were divisions between the villagers. Some residents supported the chieftaincy and they would approach the headman for land allocation who would then take the matter to the chief. There were those residents who supported SANCO and they would approach the chairperson of SANCO whey they seek land. This has created tensions and divisions in the village.
88 4.3.7 Arable land
Although most of the allocations of land include arable land, very little cultivation is practiced in Peddie. This is particularly due to lack of fencing, and lack of inputs such as machinery, seeds and fertilizer. The Traditional Council feels that the government has a responsibility to develop the necessary skills to utilize land effectively. Food shortages are a serious problem, made more so by the fact that pineapple which used to be a source of food in Peddie villages is no longer available due to commercialization of agriculture. The chiefs pointed out that tractors used to go around the villages selling pineapple at affordable prices to the villagers. Now the pineapple project has entered into contracts with national companies leaving the rural people hungry.
4.3.8 Conclusion
This chapter focused on local authority systems and administration of resources. It is evident that there is a lack of administrative capacity in places like Peddie. The weak relationship between traditional leaders, councilors and the Municipality sets the backdrop for development in this area. Chiefs are fighting for recognition, while councilors are enticing local people with non-viable projects. On the other hand, the Municipality claims to be doing all it can to involve traditional leaders but claims that they are not succeeding in setting up meetings because of reluctance on the part of the traditional leaders. Local people are caught in the middle of traditional authorities and councilors because some prefer the chiefs while others prefer councilors to tackle development issues. This has among other factors contributed to the failure of development in Peddie.
Conflicts between the traditional leaders and the local municipality are a barrier to development in rural areas. As democratic local government in rural areas seeks to increase its influence through control over land-use planning, rural municipalities are likely to encounter resistance from traditional authorities where municipal plans do not coincide with the land use objectives of the traditional leaders. This has been evident in Tyefu village in Peddie. Traditional leaders in this village were more interested in cattle farming and least interested in crop farming that the local municipality was offering. This has had
89 negative effects to the community, especially women who constitute the majority in these projects. As far as the new legislation, one of the problems anticipated is that, while the Act has been brought in existence to restructure power and authority in the communal areas, the systems of land allocation have remained largely unchanged. Although the Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework Act (TLGFA) seek to promote rural democracy, the transformation of Traditional Authorities to Traditional Councils has seen traditional leaders in these institutions constituting the majority. This translates to the fact that traditional institutions that were regarded as oppressive prior to democracy are the ones that still administer land affairs in rural Eastern Cape. It is also likely that any effort to reduce the influence of traditional leaders over traditional land will be resisted. Women still play an insignificant role in land matters in communal areas and this has resulted in them accessing land primarily at the prerogative of men. The most disadvantaged are married women who are regarded as subordinates to their spouses.
90 Chapter Five:
Commercial Farming and Commodity Production Projects
5.1 Introduction
There is a strong desire to commercialize agriculture, even with regard to communal lands (De Lange, 2004). The agro-ecological analysis of the province indicates the great untapped potential for increased production of food and other high value crops. A number of creative programmes are being planned by the Ministry of Agriculture to promote commercialization. These include the Rural Finance Scheme, which provides grant funding to resource poor communities engaged in agricultural projects. Another programme is the Eastern Cape Resource Planning Scheme which provides funding for proper identification, planning, utilization and conservation of natural resources so as to maintain and improve the agricultural production potential of communal or farm land and enhance integrated rural planning. The Provincial Department of Agriculture has also planned a Massive Food Production Scheme through the implementation of a conditional grant scheme for the production of food, and a fund to establish extensive rural mechanization units, operated by contractors who may bid for agricultural mechanization activities, transport, road maintenance, erosion control and so on.
De Lange (2004) notes that within the Ministry of Agriculture there is no consensus on the eventual outcome of commercialization. There are those who argue that the community structure has changed. There is greater degree of individualism, and more dependence on outside sources to make a living. Community based models have become dysfunctional because of internal conflicts of interest. Profitable agricultural development requires a paradigm shift towards supporting entrepreneurs, thus focusing on individual empowerment. There are too many non-agriculturalists practicing opportunistic agriculture, cluttering up the resources and preventing real agriculturalists to be productive.
91 Ainslie (2001), points out that for the former Bantustan communal areas, a particularly worrying aspect of the government's neoliberal economic path is a predictable obsession with increasing economic efficiency equated by government with commercialization of agriculture where subsistence or even sub-subsistence or survivalist production is said to be the norm. In his keynote address, the then Eastern Cape MEC for Agriculture and Land Affairs, Max Mamase, during the Amathole District road show held at the University of Fort Hare in 2002, he said “ given our background in farming and the need to produce for the markets, the department is promoting the creation and establishment of Private- Public Partnerships, where private sector, the government and the farmers organized into commodity groups work together to produce, manage, operate and market agricultural products”. Citing the pineapple and chiccory at Peddie, wool production and potato production in Ugie, Mamase pointed out that Private-Public Partnerships have been proven to be a working formula for the commercialization of agriculture in the province.
5.1.1 History of farming and development in Peddie
Local economic development is an important facet of the developmental nature of local government in Peddie. This is also where agriculture has been grouped, along with tourism. Ngqushwa municipality has to consider a large mix of land use and land tenure inherited from the previous dispensation. Much of the rural land was acquired from former white owners, consisting of surveyed farms. These are in process of disposal to black commercial farmers (Ngqushwa IDP 2006/07). Transfers continue to be hampered by complex technical conveyancing problems as a result of surveyed sub-divisions of these farms by the former Ulimocor, but which new parcels were not registered (Ngqushwa Municipality IDP, 2006/07).
92 5.1.2 Food plot production on irrigation scheme in Peddie
The development of an irrigation scheme at Tyefu was the subject of investigations by the South African Government in the mid-1930s but at that time the salinity of the Fish river was considered prohibitive of such a development (Bembridge, 1999). In 1975 the Ciskei Department of Agriculture and Forestry initiated feasibility studies with the objective of developing an irrigation scheme. The scheme started as a pilot project in 1977. The objectives of the pilot project were to investigate the suitability of the area for irrigated crop production and to have the local communities involved in irrigated cropping.
The project started with the development of 121 hectare at Ndlambe in 1977, followed by 109 hectare at Pikoli in 1978, and was completed by adding 106 hectares at Kalikeni in 1981. The land was subdivided as follows:
22 commercial farms of 4ha each
223 compensation plots of 0,25ha for subsistence food production allocated to persons who held dryland arable allocations before the scheme
3 tribal farms totaling 183ha operated by Ciskei Agricultural Corporation on behalf of tribal authorities
66 allotments of 0,16ha each leased to persons who had no land rights but who wished to augment their domestic food supply.
The tribal farms were managed and farmed as commercial estates by the Ciskei Agricultural Corporation (CAC) on behalf of the tribal authorities. Profits from these were channeled to the tribal authority for the upliftment of the living standard of the community. CAC provided a comprehensive range of services to these farms, including the supply of irrigation water, transport, production requisites, marketing and training. Bembridge (1999) notes that since its inception the scheme has been expanded gradually from 336ha in 1981, 473ha in 1984 to 664ha in 1996, and its structure has also been changed to a degree. Farming using the Tribal farms has been discontinued and some of the land that became available has been subdivided into 0,2ha food plots and 0, 16 ha allotments. Bembridge (1999) notes that relocation of land right holders has always been a sensitive issue. Following the Tomlinson Commission Report in 1955, attempts were made to relocate people at Tyefu by introducing Betterment planning, a decision which was
93 strongly opposed by the residents. Meetings were held with tribal authorities and with the community in order to inform them about the potential benefits of an irrigation scheme to the community. Initially, residents from Ndwayana were opposed to the implementation of the scheme, but the response from Pikoli and Ndlambe communities was more positive.
In a combined meeting with all the residents of the area, an agreement was reached on the voluntary transfer of the land rights of the residents to the Ciskei Agricultural Corporation in exchange for farming support services and the allocation of irrigated land to residents as well as the relocation of residents residing on land targeted for irrigation development. Bembridge points out that over the years a number of controlling bodies such as Residents Associations (RA), Residents Consultative Committee(RCC), Agricultural Steering Committee(ASC), LFRDP Co-ordinating Committee have been established to coordinate the scheme and facilitate communication between all interested parties. In 1997 the Eastern Cape Provincial Government made the decision to close Ulimocor. At this stage it is not clear what the future holds for farming at the scheme.
5.1.3 Crops and land-use
Over the years a number of crops have been tested on the scheme and a narrow range of options arrived at. These include baby carrots for freezing, cabbage, potatoes, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, dry beans, durum wheat, cotton and maize.
5.1.4 Problems facing the scheme
Van Averbeke (1999) highlights the major problems that faced the scheme after the withdrawal of management by Ulimo Cooperation (ULIMOCOR) in 1995 resulting in partial closure in terms of the termination of water supplies and withdrawal of service to the scheme. The project was running at a large operational loss prior to management withdrawal in 1995 due to the following:
high electricity pumping costs at Ndlambe, Pikoli and Kalikeni made irrigation under present systems completely uneconomic.
94 later quality from the Great Fish river has been a major problem which has affected yields on Ndlambe, Pikoli and Kalikeni sections.
withdrawal of management has resulted in unemployment on the central unit, as well as lack of self-employment on the scheme itself.
the community was divided between two rival farmers associations, Eastern Province Agricultural Union (EPAU) and Eastern Cape Disadvantaged African Farmers Union (EDAFU)
Only commercial farmers were able to easily obtain credit for inputs because they had a greater chance of repaying loans.
marketing of crops, including transport, has always been a problem on the scheme.
local extension staff are ill equipped to provide sound training and advice on irrigation farming and farm management.
due to the 'top down' nature of the project, there has been inadequate training and development of local institutions
5.2 Pineapple Production
Pineapple production has historically occurred along the coastal belt between Bathurst in the west and East London in the east and dates back to the First World War, when local farmers took advantage of ideal growing conditions and rising demand for canned pineapples in Britain and Europe (Bank, 2003). The most successful pineapple estates are located in the Bathurst area, where commercial profits have been reinvested in production over an extended period of time.
5.2.1 Background of the Pineapple project at Benton
The South African Development Trust bought the land on which the Peddie pineapple project is situated, from white farmers in 1978, as part of the consolidation of the Ciskei homeland (Bank, 2003). The land was identified as having high potential for commercial pineapple production and was given over to the Ciskeian Agricultural Cooperation, Ulimocor, for development in 1984. The Ulimocor scheme which was the development
95 arm of the government ceased operations in 1997 and the scheme was rejuvenated under community ownership and management. The key stakeholders in the project are the Peddie Local Authority, traditional leaders, farmers' organizations, former project workers, the Peddie Development Forum and the 21 villages adjacent to the pineapple lands.
These stake holders set up a trust to revive the pineapple production. The trust represents 40% shareholding on behalf of the secondary stakeholders. Workers trust holds 40% on behalf of workers who are classified as primary stakeholders and the 20% stake is in the hands of the Pineapple Association. The government has provided the land. The Managing Director of the project is Lulamile Mtya. Premier Nosimo Balindlela visited the project during the first launch in 1999 and President Thabo Mbeki in 2002 (Mail and Guardian, 2002).
The then Eastern Cape MEC for Agriculture and Land Affairs, Max Mamase in his key note address at the Pineapple project harvesting bash cited that in a persistent quest to commercialize agriculture in the province the Department of Agriculture developed a new approach, the Public-Private-Partnership, where established commercial commodity groups such as the Pineapple Growers Association work together with the emerging commodity groups such as the Peddie Pineapple Trust. This working relationship is based on the premise of a mentorship programme, in which skills, expertise and experience are shared between the two groups in terms of running and managing a successful farming business. The pineapple project supplies two industries based in East London, Summer- pride foods and Collondale canneries.
5.2.2 Dynamics in the project
This project has enjoyed success in its initial phases and the first successful harvest on these community farms took place in August 2002. The Peddie Pineapple Trust had applied for a R10 million Eastern Cape Provincial Government Grant to further capitalize the pineapple project. A further R236 000 investments by Eskom Development Foundation had also been made to facilitate technical and business management skills development. However, there have been other dynamics influencing the project from
96 2005. These dynamics include labour issues, corruption, exclusion, conflicts, institutional weaknesses, lack of participation, and a lack of transparency and capacity.
5.2.2.1 Participation in the project
According to Bergdall (1993), participation with regards to rural development includes peoples' involvement in decision making processes, in implementing programmes, their sharing in the benefits of development programmes, and their involvement in efforts to evaluate such programmes. He further argues that people's participation is a popular theme in development circles. Very few development programmes would today fail to claim some emphasis for encouraging local participation, yet for all its theoretical popularity, participation often remains elusive in the realm of practice. In the pineapple project, everything started well with steering committees from the 21 beneficiary villages. The representatives of the villages volunteered as the project was not yet funded. They prepared the land for cultivation and they all felt that they owned the project. The project received funding in 2000 when the pilot projects were initiated with the planting of pineapples on 188 hectares. One of my key informants who volunteered to give information about the project worked as foreman in the project. The community also elected him so that he could be a link between the manager and the community. He told me that things started to go wrong when two men, Mr Siwani and Mr Madolo who were the coordinators of the project, passed away. What followed was that people were not given information to which they had a right.
The Manager of the project did away with the steering committees and people started to feel that they were being denied an opportunity to participate and as such were not able to account to the community they were representing on what was going on in the project. The workers were kept out of all the processes related to the design, formulation and implementation of the project. Mr Mtati, the key informant, recalled that they last had a general meeting in 2003. The project members did not have access to information pertaining to financial reports or the price of a load and a bin of pineapples. There was no accountability and transparency especially on financial matters. What this case study is trying to reveal is that one of the weaknesses of this project has been lack of participation, where the members of the project were not involved in decision making processes,
97 implementation and evaluation of the project. Mbaku (2004) asserts that effective consultation encourages and enhances ownership and, as a result, increases the chance of compliance and such a participatory approach improves the relationship between the various actors. In this project, lack of consultation led to tension among the various actors.
5.2.2.2 Opportunism and corruption
Opportunism is defined as behaviours designed to enhance or improve the welfare of an individual at the expense of other members of the society (Mbaku, 2004). Opportunism and corruption have been identified as one of the causes of the failure of the pineapple project. As has been mentioned previously, the pineapple project supplies two industries based in East London, Summerpride foods and Collondale canneries. Mr Mtati, the key informant, remembered that on the 12 th of December 2002 to the 14 th of January 2003 pineapples were sold locally at R1 each. These were pineapples that covered 15 hectares of land. Mtati recalled that these pineapples were sold at the beaches as it was the festive season and some were sold in the villages. When Mtati tried to enquire about the issue and the money from the sales of the pineapples, he was told that the money was deposited in the bank and when he asked for proof, he was told that he would no longer be a foreman, but a driver. A woman, whom he identified as the manager's favourite, was appointed in his position.
What Mtati was telling me reminded me of a man I talked to when I visited the pineapple project. The man was in one of the trucks parked in the fields. He apparently hid himself when he saw my car and I really thought there was no one inside the truck and so I drove on. I was looking for anyone I could talk to about the project. I met four men just outside the fields who were erecting a fence and they actually told me that there was someone in the truck I had passed. These men asked if I was a 'scorpion' and were so inquisitive wanting to know the reason for my visit. Clearly, they knew things were not normal in the project. I drove back and when I approached, the man came out of the truck to meet with me. After introducing myself I asked some questions about the project.
98 The man told me that he was just a newly appointed driver and knew nothing about the project. When I asked him to refer me to someone who could help me, he just showed me where to find the workers and told me to talk to anyone I came across. I was so disappointed and quite scared because I could feel that the tension. When I drove in the direction I was given, a tractor stopped in front of me and a man who happened to be the key informant, jumped off to meet me. When I told him about this man, he told me that he was one of the people who benefited from the pineapples sold during the holiday. He told me that it came to their attention that this man bought a new bedroom and cellphones for his children while everyone knew that such things were unaffordable, on the salaries they made.
Mtati also mentioned that five tractors were sold secretly some of which belonged to Ulimocor: two were bought by two men working in the pineapple project. On the subject of salaries, there were complaints over and above the salaries that everyone received; there were cheques that certain individuals received secretly. That has created divisions and enmity between the workers; subsequently some were labelled as the manager's favourites and some as his enemies. The project members also knew that the processed pineapples were exported to Holland and Switzerland and the tins that came from their project were marked and bought at an extra cost as a way of supporting them as emerging farmers. Mtati cited that they were advised to open a separate bank account for this extra money. The account was opened, but certainly not in Peddie and the signatories were not from the project; this information made them believe that the money was being used for personal purposes. In May 2006, Mtati enquired about the shares that the stakeholders were entitled to, trying to find out when they would be released to the relevant stakeholders. He was told that he would receive the response at the next meeting. However at the next meeting he was given a letter of dismissal. What we have seen in this case is an authoritarian kind of rule where no one was supposed to question this authority.
99 5.2.2.3 Labour issues
Due to dissatisfaction concerning working conditions in the pineapple project, the majority of workers decided to join the union. There were about 76 workers in the project; 63 of them decided to join the Food and Allied Workers Union (FAWU) and the remaining 13 decided not to join. That created tension and enmity between union and non-union members. Those who joined the union were told that they no longer had any claim to the project; the project now belonged to those who did not join. About the meetings held, one informant described them as disgusting due to the obscene language exchanged between the opposition groups.
On June 2006, the Managing Director of the project called the workers together to tell them that the project was experiencing financial difficulties, due to the depreciation of the rand. A major consequence of the devaluation of the national currency is the change in the price of imports and exports. Imported goods become relatively more expensive and exported goods become relatively cheaper. In the case of pineapples, it meant that their exports were bought cheaper which affected the profit. Employees were told that this would affect their salaries as they would be going on to work short time and therefore only receiving half of their normal salary. That meant that they were going to work eleven days a month. Those who were preparing the land for cultivation were receiving R700 but now were to receive R350 and those who were doing the actual planting received R800 and would now receive R400. Problems continued because although they worked short time, there were certain months when some did not receive their salaries and that created more tension. The workers and the Managing Director agreed on working short time but there was considerable work that needed to be done in the fields because of weeds and rotting pineapples. He again asked the workers to volunteer on the days that they were not supposed to work telling them that they would be compensated when funding became available. The union members refused to volunteer and it was made clear that no one should volunteer.
100 5.2.2.4 Conflicts between workers
On the 7 th of September 2006 there was conflict in the project. Some of the non-union members went to work in the pineapple fields on the day they were not supposed to work. The Managing Director was with them in the fields. The union members happened to receive this information and informed each other throughout the different villages. They went to the project to find out what was happening and as they approached the fields, the Managing Director drew a gun, assuring those who were working that they were safe, and that he would take care of the union people. The victims could not be stopped by the gun; instead they went straight to Makhi and attacked him. They drew their knives and the Managing Director had to run for his life leaving the non- union workers behind. They were severely attacked and one of them was hospitalized. The sad part was that they were mostly women. The attack was more concentrated on those who were viewed as being close to the Managing Director. This was the day I visited the non-union members of the project at Benton. When I arrived they also had just arrived, and I had no idea that there had been a fight in the project. They were four ladies I really had difficulty interviewing as they were angry and they were also not sure of how to respond. I greeted them several times without eliciting any response. I was quite apprehensive not knowing what to do, but I decided to shake their hands so as to be more humble and this was successful. One of them, much more talkative than the others in the group came inside the house to talk to me.
The other three ladies were still angry and remained outside cursing their attackers. I introduced myself to the one lady who came inside and she was now calm. As we began to talk the other three ladies joined us and by now they had released their anger and were ready to talk to me. They were still wearing their gumboots and work suits. The way they suddenly cooperated indicated that they thought help had come. I found out from the conversation that the more talkative lady was the one who took Mtati's position as foreman when he was demoted to driver. The ladies talked at the same time telling me how they lost their cellphones, showing me bruises on their bodies and how their Manager was beaten by the union members. When I asked why they went to work on the day they were not supposed to, they told me that they owned the project and felt that there was much work to be done and thought that they should do something. They
101 sounded so passionate about the project and they defended their Manager praising him for the good job he was doing in the project, such as attracting funding for the project.
The ladies told me that they went to the police station together with their manager to open a case, but the station master advised them against it although they had been attacked. When I asked why they were advised not to open a case, I could not receive the answer but found out later when I talked to Mtati that the station master told the Managing Director that since he was the first to draw the gun, he had no case. These ladies did not make mention of that. One man from the union members was arrested out of the doctor’s advice but was out on bail.
5.2.2.5 Institutional weaknesses
Institutions are defined by North (1990), as the rules of the game in a society, or more formally the humanly devised constraints that shape human interaction. North argues that existing institutions in many African countries discourage entrepreneurship and provide perverse incentives, which encourage civil servants and politicians to engage in opportunistic activities such as rent seeking and corruption. State custodians are able to successfully pursue their self interests and in so doing impose significant costs on society, including especially the stunting of entrepreneurial activities. This is what has happened in the pineapple project. Mr Mtati and some members of the union reported everything that was happening in the project to the Municipality, Department of Agriculture, and Department of Labour, but no action was taken. The matter was also brought to the attention of the MEC for Agriculture, who promised to talk to the Mayor and Mtya and encourage the Mayor to visit the project, but that also did not happen.
When Mr Mtati was given a letter of dismissal, he went to the CCMA( Commission for Conciliation Mediation and Arbitration) in Peddie and the attorneys advised him to go to work but promised to recover all his outstanding wages. They told him that the process would take fourteen days. It was so surprising that the Manager never attended a court hearing when he was summoned to go to court. There was just no progress in the case and nothing was done to effect a follow up. Attempts by the Mayor to invite the Managing
102 Director of the pineapple project so that they resolve the issues in the project were in vain. Makhi claimed that he forgot about the appointment. When I talked to one official from the Department of Agriculture, he first behaved as if he knew nothing about the problems in the project but later told me that they did not want to interfere. Whilst the issues were unresolved, the situation was becoming more complicated. Mr Mtati and his followers planned to have a meeting with the key stakeholders on the 26 of September, but three days before that meeting he received a court interdict, restricting him from going to the project. The police told him that they would have no choice but to arrest him if he went to the project unless he brought a letter from the attorneys allowing him to be at work. Apparently Makhi told the police that Mtati was no longer supposed to work as he was dismissed and that he was causing unrest and conflict in the project. When I visited Mr Mtati after the 26 th when they were supposed to have the meeting, I was disappointed to find him at home; as I was hoping to find out about the outcome of the meeting and that things were working out for him. Whilst at home he visited the human rights office to acquire some advice on what he should do. Meanwhile the union workers were also fighting for his return to work. On the 30 th of October they finally decided to go on strike demanding that their Manager leave and be investigated. By this time there were no salaries for union members. As for Mr Mtati, he last received a salary on May 2006 and so he was on the fifth month without a salary, but was determined to fight for the people.
On the 13 th of November the Manager called a meeting in which all the members of the union were dismissed and the non-union members started to work. The workers went to the Municipality to report the matter to the Mayor. The Mayor gave Makhi from his cellphone and confronted him. Makhi denied that he dismissed some workers, but when he was told that the workers were in the Mayor’s office, he claimed that he was just scaring them because he hated that they were talking about the project everywhere. The Mayor told the workers that they would have an important meeting on the 20 th of November which would include the Board, the Managing Director, the beneficiaries, the workers and the Premier. That meeting did not materialize. In August 2007, when I visited the municipality and inquired about the project, I was told that nothing was happening and, funding had been withdrawn due to conflicts with the stakeholders.
103 Attempts to meet with the Managing Director of the pineapple project failed. I called him with the intention of setting an interview with him. He asked me to fax my questions which I did, and when I made a follow up he made excuses that he will not be available because of his commitments. I ended up giving up because even when I visited the project, he was always not there. In order to acquire information from the third party I interviewed the Manager responsible for the resuscitation of irrigation schemes in the Eastern Cape. Mr Falakhe could not directly respond to the pineapple project but gave general statements to all the projects that were managed by ULIMOCOR. That meant that I had to draw conclusions from his statements about all former ULIMOCOR projects. Mr Falakhe attributed the failure of former ULIMOCOR projects to the lack of capacity and management skills by the former employees of this parastatal who were expected to take over after its closure. He stated that these former employees did not receive any mentorship from ULIMOCOR but they were expected to manage these projects. He further cited citrus farming near Keiskamma River as one of the projects that failed in Peddie after the closure of ULIMOCOR.
Pineapple project at Benton (2006)
104 5.2.3 Household experiences
5.2.3.1 Nosethu Bonani
The first person I met before visiting the project was Nosethu Bonani, a forty three-year old woman. Nosethu lives at Prudhoe and works in the pineapple project. The day I visited this household, she did not go to work and was busy doing her washing. The reason she gave for not having gone to the project was that they were working short time, three days a week, because the project was experiencing financial problems. Nosethu lives with her husband who receives a pension, because he suffers from TB. Mr Bonani, popularly called by his clan name, Jwara, worked in Port Elizabeth for a company called Exide. He told me that in this company they worked with batteries. They were not allowed to bring their lunchbox into the premises as they were supposed to eat certain types of foods because of the environment they were working in. Jwara believes that the powder from the batteries affected him and that led him contracting TB.
He left the company due to illness and worked at the Casino in Peddie. Jwara told me that his wife was able to conceive although his health was not good; he has three children born while he was diagnosed with TB. He counts that as a blessing. There is a huge age gap between him and his wife and when I first saw them I thought he was the father to his wife but I soon discovered from the conversation that he was actually a husband to Nosethu. His health continued to deteriorate and he had to leave the job for good to look after his health. He now receives a grant with the recommendation of a doctor until he reaches sixty five years when he would be able to receive his rightful old age pension. Fortunately Jwara is already in his sixties. His first child Akhona is only eighteen, in grade twelve, the second one; Thulethu is fourteen and in grade seven and the last born, Mawethu is eight years and in grade three. Jwara does not have a home of his own, but stays in his parent's home; they passed away long time ago.
This household is struggling to make ends meet as they found themselves having to rely on Jwara's grant and R300 rand that Nosethu was earning from the pineapple project. In addition, Nosethu would sometimes not receive her salary and that worsened the situation. She was unable contribute to the burial societies and grocery clubs. Jwara was worried that with Christmas approaching and the children expecting to receive nice food
105 and clothes that there would not be enough money to buy all that. Jwara was also involved in a cash crop production project at Prudhoe as he owns a field. However he complained that they had received nothing from all their hard work, but he remained positive that they would get something as they had just harvested cotton. He was hoping that they would receive their cheques before Christmas and that hope was strengthened by the fact that Da Gama was responsible for the cotton and not the Department of Agriculture.
Nosethu, his wife, informed me of all that was happening in the project. In the process, she encouraged me to visit the project so that I could see for myself. She mentioned that it was unbearable for her to sit and listen to the proceedings of meetings held at the project to experience the tension between union and nonunion members. She was in the minority group that did not join the union because she was afraid of losing her job even though she was not satisfied with the way their manager was managing the project. She mentioned that she was trained in first aid and so was responsible for anyone becoming injured at work. She was promised that she would be paid for this extra service, but never received a cent. Nosethu continues to work in the project although she is not satisfied with the working conditions.
5.2.3.2 Lumko Mtati
Mr Mtati is a middle-aged man with six children. His wife is a witchdoctor and so Mtati is the breadwinner. He lost one of his daughters in May 2006 during the time he was experiencing problems in the pineapple project. Before working in the pineapple project he worked in East London in a canning factory which is now the Collondale cannery but then it was called Langerberg. He worked in the factory for six years and was retrenched. Working in that factory gave him knowledge of the type of pineapple needed; this motivated him to work on the pineapple project in Peddie. Mtati struggled to make ends meet as he continued to work in the project despite that he was not receiving any salary. He told me that he received calls from every corner where he had opened accounts not knowing what excuse to make for not paying his accounts. He only receives a grant for their youngest child, which was not even enough for the groceries. Some of his children
106 are still looking for work in Port Elizabeth. They now depend on the money that his wife receives when she performs rituals in the villages. Mtati also told me that he resented the fact that he was uneducated, saying “maybe things would have been different if I was educated; maybe I would not be experiencing this difficulty in the project”. He had standard six and also had an opportunity to study two courses, one in farm management and the other in negotiation skills. The course was sponsored by Eskom. Mtati did everything in his power to fight for justice in the project, but to no avail.
5.2.3.3 Nophumle
Nophumle lives with her sister and two brothers. She also worked in the pineapple project. She lives at her parent’s home as she is unmarried. Her brothers are not working and her sister sells vegetables and fruit both in town and at home. She has two children and receives a social grant for one child. One of her desires, she told me was to have a house of her own. Working on the pineapple project was to fulfill her dream of building her own home, but all was in vain. Nophumle told me that the problems they experienced in the pineapple project made her life difficult as she was unable to pay for her accounts and to buy groceries. She was one of the women who joined the union as she was sick and tired of what was happening in the project. When I talked to her she was so furious remembering how much time she had dedicated to the project before it received funding. She told me that she thought the project belonged to them, but it was all lies. Nophumle was determined to fight for what she believed was her right, but when she realized that there was no support from the government departments, she gave up. When she found there was no resolution to her problems, she decided to look for a job in Grahamstown.
107 5.2.3.4 Conclusion
It is worth noting that no single factor accounts for the failure of development. The first challenge with commercial projects is their history. The projects were launched in an environment of serious structural problems. They had been run with a top-down approach. Farmers were not empowered. Their history of underdevelopment made it difficult for them to succeed. People with expertise disappeared leaving the small farmers to run these farms. They did not know the market and that led to the failure of these projects. The second challenge of the pineapple project was that people were desperate for income and they saw this project as an opportunity for employment. Mr Mtati, for example, worked at Langerberg, and used to receive a regular income and got retrenched. Surely for him this was another opportunity for employment in a rural area. People in this project had high expectations and they were disappointed when they found that they received no regular income. The struggle for cash is the main issue in the project. Although the project is broadly intended to address rural poverty it is not a standard poverty alleviation project but intended mainly as an entrepreneurial project within agriculture.
It is clear that the failure of the project impacted negatively on the lives of the people who depended on it. Instead of changing their lives for the better it left them poorer. Another point worth noting is that raised by an official working with the irrigation schemes in the Eastern Cape, Mr Falakhe. He pointed out that former employees of Ulimocor were expected to take over the business of farming after the closing down of Ulimocor in 1997 without any mentorship; unfortunately they lacked management skills. Mr Falakhe strongly believed that this was the reason why many projects failed, citing the example of citrus farming near Keiskamma river in Peddie. He mentioned that citrus farming was successful while it was under Ulimocor, but when Ulimocor closed down, and the former employees took over, the project failed. Another key requirement for sustainable development, which has been demonstrated time and again in South Africa's recent past, is the need for citizens to participate in decision-making. This has been lacking in the pineapple project, where power has been monopolized by the powerful.
108 5.3 Cash crop production at Prudhoe
Prudhoe is no different from the other five villages as far as livelihood options are concerned. Livelihood strategies include diversifying with many families attempting to access multiple sources of income. The emphasis on poverty eradication programs in the Eastern Cape seems to rely more on cash crops rather than encouraging farmers to grow crops to feed their families first and then sell the surplus. The pressure on farmers is to grow cash crops and become top exporters, top producers for national and informal markets.
Citing an example of Cameroon, Mbaku (2004) warns of the dangers with the obsession of producing for export. He cites the example of Cameroon where in the implementation of structural adjustment programmes, the government policies have often favoured producers of cash crops and placed producers of food staples at a competitive disadvantage. Mbaku points out that the production of food was neglected endangering food security for many and that also forced them to depend on imported food most of which was not suited for local dietary needs and brought health problems such as tooth decay that the local medicinal establishment was unable to deal with effectively. Rural people are in most cases excluded in these development processes either by the development agencies, the elite and those in authority, yet their contribution to agriculture and farming cannot be ignored. This has been the experience in this area where a variety of cash crops had been tested.
The people who were involved in the projects were uninformed, but just worked very hard. I had to ask the details from the coordinator of the project who was not transparent about certain issues. What I noticed was that the people who were involved in these projects were old and illiterate. Rahnema (1998) argues that the overwhelming majority in the world still shape and satisfy their needs thanks to the network of human relationships they preserve within their vernacular spaces, and thanks to the many forms of solidarity, cooperation and reciprocity they develop within their communities. Their activities are generally concrete responses to concrete and immediate problems, enabling people involved to produce both the changes and the things they need. Rahnema argues that the modern economy disvalues these activities and presses, or forces people to abandon them reducing everyone into becoming the agent of an invisible national or world
109 economy, geared only to producing things for whoever can pay for them. In the name of poverty alleviation people are forced to work for others rather than for themselves.
5.3.1 Crops grown
As from 2002 a number of crops have been tested on the seventy hectares of land that belong to the villagers at Prudhoe. The following were the most important crops grown: Maize, Chicory, Canola, Soya beans and Cotton. The owners of the land were persuaded to give up their fields for the project because it would be to their benefit. Few villagers planted their fields because domestic livestock destroyed their harvest; therefore the morale for cultivating the land was low. That gave an opportunity for the Department of Agriculture to persuade the local people who own fields, to incorporate the fields for cash crop production. The Department of Agriculture took responsibility for supplying the local people with input. Some did not willingly join this collective venture. Those include the few elders who still wanted to make use of their land for subsistence purposes; but they had no choice as the majority of the people agreed to this arrangement. I visited the projects at Prudhoe more often to observe what the people were doing. One time when I took a trip with the coordinator of the projects, we met a middle aged man who confronted the coordinator, Mr Tele, asking him when the canola on the fields would be harvested because he wanted his field to plant maize. That was evidence that some still wanted their fields back to produce food for their families.
Complaints had been raised by projects members, concerning the input supplied by the Department of Agriculture. Project members complained that the tractor was not sufficiently equipped and so they were unable to use it. The maize project started in 2003. Up to 2007 the project members had not shared any profit because they hired a tractor for cultivation and a harvester and so instead of making profit they ran at a loss. They also complained that the Department of Agriculture always approved their budget late. The terms of the project were that the Department of Agriculture supplies them with input and help them with marketing until the project is self-sustainable, but seemingly the Department failed to supply them with the necessary input. Looking at the fact that the project started in 2002 and by 2007 the people had not shared any benefits, it is clear that these projects intended to alleviate poverty do not address poverty.
110 The people involved in this project are old and poor; it is very sad that they have not benefited. When I asked why they continued to work on the project despite any benefit, they said they were passionate about the project and were hoping that in future they would get something out of their hard labour. The belief was that you work hard in order to obtain something. The respondents understood the original objectives and expected benefits to include food security, employment, overcoming poverty, farming skills and a general development of the area, but unfortunately that has not happened.
Young people are not involved in these projects because they say they cannot work for ‘mahala’ (free); they need money. Besides maize, soya beans were planted in January 2006 and harvested in May the same year, but by October 2007, they were not sold. The soya bean harvest became a burden to one of the project members as they were kept in her house. That proved that the Department of Agriculture failed them once more concerning the market for their production. The Department of Agriculture has promised to look for a market for the soya beans because they did not want them sold cheaply, but up until 2007 market has not been found. What I have also noticed when interviewing the coordinator of the project was that he was young and secretive about certain aspects pertaining to financial issues, including benefits from the project. No benefits have been realized from these projects simply because there was no market for the products. One of the major problems with income generating projects is that people who are involved in developing these projects in rural areas, be it government or Non-Governmental Organizations often themselves lack a background in business. They lack skills in market research, accurate costing of inputs, organizational structures and processes, financial management and technical skills.
111 Soya bean harvest with its proud member at Prudhoe village (September, 2006)
When I visited the project in November 2007, the soya beans were ultimately bought by Rocklands in Port Elizabeth, a poultry keeping industry, and I was told that the money was used to buy the harvester for maize. During my visit the project members were busy harvesting maize in the fields. The old men and women were just happy to know that they were had money in their bank account although they did not know exactly how much was there. They were also excited to have bought a harvester and not too concerned that they had not yet shared in any profit for their hard labour. The point that this case study is trying to make is that people are not encouraged to work for themselves to maintain their own livelihood but instead are forced to work for others.
112 5.3.2 Canola pilot project
After the soya beans were harvested canola was planted. Canola is a plant used for various purposes such as in the manufacturing of cooking oil. What remains after the oil is extracted from the seed is used to make a meal. Canola meal is used as feed for livestock, poultry and pets. The coordinator of these projects indicated that this was a pilot project and again they did not know where they would sell their production. They were looking to the Department of Agriculture to find a market for them. I have noticed that there was a conflict of interest between the young and the old. The young generation is so excited about the modern farming methods because they do no manual weeding; they just have to spray chemicals to prevent the weeds from growing up and fertilizers to make the land fertile. When I visited the project in August 2007, the canola was harvested and maize planted. The coordinator told me that it was sold in Cape Town and the money was deposited in the account belonging to the project members.
Canola field at Prudhoe September (2006)
113 5.3.3 Chicory project
The Chicory project has its own chairperson, Loyiso Simanga. The project started in 2002 and it only survived for two and half years. Simanga, the coordinator of this project started the project with R88 000 which they received from the Department of Agriculture. They started as 15 members but now only nine members remain in the project. They had a contract with Chicory South Africa that they would be the suppliers and a five year deal was made with the Department of Agriculture as surety. The project is composed of the youth received R30 a day, R600 a month. The Department of Agriculture also supplied them with seeds, fertilizer and medicines. This group, like the maize project group, struggled with tractors and also had to hire from other companies. In 2004 they experienced a disaster due to heavy rains. The heavy rainfall washed all their seeds and fertilizer away. Chicory seed is like carrot seed and is planted below the surface and so it is easily washed away when heavy rains come. As a result loans were made from Land Bank to which they are still indebted. In 2005 they received no support from the Department of Agriculture. The project members were so worried about accumulated interest and that they could not afford to pay the bank. Already they owed R5700 in 2005. In spite of everything that had happened they were still hoping that they would get support from the Department of Agriculture and carry on as before.
114
Loyiso leaning against the machine for harvesting Chicory (September 2006)
5.3.4 Conclusion
The same trend that applied to the pineapple project also applies to the cash crop production in Prudhoe. The intentions of the government are to address rural poverty but the projects are intended mainly as entrepreneurial projects within agriculture. Agrarian activities continue to constitute a vital component of livelihood activities. At the same time they are increasingly marginalized and undermined by other dynamics. The challenge that the project members are facing is a lack of support from the Department of Agriculture. The youth involved in this project left when there was no more income. The fundamental struggle for income remains. The cash crop projects are not strong enough to supply an income. There is no market for the products. it has also been evident that
115 most households in the area derive their livelihoods from multiple sources of income, of which agriculture generally contributes a relatively minor part compared to wages and pensions, however the assumption has been that people in rural areas are agrarian, hence the concentrated focus on agriculture. The discussion above has highlighted the diversity and dynamics of rural livelihoods in this area. It has been evident that livelihoods are embedded in complex and contested governance context, where politics and power relationships are at the centre of any analysis. Simple models imposed on complex settings do not work no matter how polished the rhetoric. Cash crop projects have proved that in practice, community-private partnerships are not straightforward. Uncertainties, conflicts and power dynamics are inevitable. Development projects regularly commodify among other things rural people’s time, income, social capital, imagination and creative energies. Rural people derive their income from multiple sources of livelihood and so specialization does not work for them. Social capital plays a vital role to the poor and is accumulated and mobilized through engagement in complex patterns of reciprocal exchange and social networks.
116 Chapter Six:
Social Welfare Projects
6.1 Introduction
The small-scale poultry industry has been encouraged in the Eastern Cape by government programs for several years but has been facing difficulties for some time. The market for live birds is relatively small and probably shrinking rather than growing. Consumers seem to prefer processed chicken from grocery stores to live birds for reasons of convenience. Processed chicken is often cheaper than live birds because of the high cost of raising small numbers of broilers.
6.1.1 Poultry keeping projects at Sigingqini village
Projects that took place from 1998 in this village involve mostly poultry keeping for meat production. In 2000 there were five groups of poultry keeping projects. All of them failed due to conflicts between members, witchcraft, lack of support from the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Social Development and corruption by government officials.
One group told me that an official whose name they could not remember visited their project and asked them to give her money from the sales of their chicken and promised that she would bring more chicks. They gave her an amount of R300 and she never came back. During the time when I conducted interviews in the village, there was not a single poultry project. All that was left were structures built in support of these projects. Most of those who were previously involved in the projects are not interested in joining the project again. The few that want to try again are old women as long as there would be funding available. I was also regarded as an outsider involved with development. Those who were onlookers, tell of the terrible consequences of the projects. I interviewed a household that was never involved in any project and they told me that people died in these projects because of jealousy. Consequently, unusual deaths, believed to be associated with
117 witchcraft, occurred. Witchcraft has been mentioned over and over again by respondents in the village. Witchcraft is believed to be the evil forces operating in a person and which control other people's lives negatively. Women are believed to be the ones mostly involved in witchcraft although some men are also implicated on a small scale. Witchcraft develops where there is jealousy and hatred. The respondents testified that many residents left the village to settle in other villages in fear of witchcraft. One testimony is a man that I interviewed in Prudhoe who was a resident in this village but left three years ago. He mentioned other families who left this village for the same reason.
6.1.1.1 Case studies of household experiences
6.1.1.2 The Goqwana household
During my first visit in September 2006, I met an old woman who was picking wild vegetables (imifino) from her garden. When I started talking to her she started crying and told me that she was mourning for her husband who was buried a week ago. Whilst she was mourning for her husband she lost her three-year-old grandchild who just went missing after she had sent her to her relative. The relative told her that she never arrived at her home. People in the village went searching for her everywhere but to no avail until after a week when the villagers decided to go to town and toy toy, a dead body was found near the dam in a black plastic bag with the baby and her clothes inside. The villagers say this is the second time an incident like this has occurred in the village. I had difficulty interviewing people about the projects because they were still in shock and fear. I was also told that people were leaving this village to settle in other villages. The only successful project in this village was an individual project run by Mrs Gatya. She was sewing traditional outfits worn especially during initiation ceremonies.
6.1.1.3 The Gatya household
My interview with Mrs Gatya was tense as she was not prepared to disclose any information about the projects in her village. I suspected she was also in shock and fear due to what had happened in the village. She also avoided mentioning people's names. Mrs Gatya is a middle aged married woman living with her husband in Sigingqini village. His husband is on a sick pension. They have two sons and three daughters who are
118 working in urban areas. They own quite a number of sheep, cattle and chicken. Mrs Gatya is makes traditional clothing, and specializes in ‘imibhaco’ (traditional garments). This attire is a ‘must have’ in rural areas especially for certain traditional ceremonies like imigidi, and ‘imiphumo’ (when the boy comes home after initiation); in fact it is a requirement for a married woman with sons to have it. The whole set of attire is made of ‘isikhaka’ (headbands), ‘ibhayi’( shoulder wrap) and ‘incebetha’ (breast cover) and costs R1000. Mrs. Gatya was so confident that she will never stop this livelihood strategy unless she has a problem with her sight. She mentioned that the festive season is the best time when she makes a large amount of money as there are many initiation ceremonies. While I was interviewing her young woman whose son was at the initiation school, came in to fit her traditional attire (umbaco). She was also not interested in joining any project in the village. The market for traditional attire is large as Mrs. Gatya has customers even from the surrounding villages. In rural areas like Peddie where tradition and rituals are still maintained, umbaco is essential for a married woman.
Mrs. Gatya with her client fitting umbaco (September 2006)
119 6.1.1.4 Siyakhula poultry project
Nominishile is a pensioner who initiated siyakhula poultry farming project in 2002. Seven other women joined her forming a group of eight members. The members contributed R30 each towards membership fee. Nominishile stated that they bought their first set of fifty chicks in September 2002. In order to make sure that the chicks are well cared for the members took turns to make sure that the chicken run is clean and the chicks are fed. Nominishile reported that they did receive support from the Department of Labour, but that was not the kind of support they expected. The requirement from the Department of Labour was for them to open a bank account, with an amount of not less than R1000. The complaint that Nominishile raised was that the service provider that the Department of Labour appointed to support and advise them did not do much to help them. She recalled that the young man from the Department only came with one bag of feed, lightning and warming equipment, two pairs of gumboots and two dishes for water. The young man promised to come back with more equipment and constant support on how to use the equipment but never came back. They struggled to use the lighting and warming equipment, which seemed not to be the correct one, as a result ten chicks died due to exposure and cold because the run was not warm enough for the chicks to survive.
Nominishile stated that despite the problems they were experiencing, the project continued to survive until June 2003 and their most reliable customers were the pensioners. Fully grown chickens were sold at R25 both on credit and for cash to the villagers. The project experienced problems with people who bought on credit as they would make excuses of being unable to pay at the end of the month. Also, the fact that they were no longer receiving any support from the Department of Labour, except for that once off help, the financing of the project was not running smoothly, as a result they had to raise money every time the feed got finished. Most of the members were pensioners and could not afford to contribute towards buying the feed for the chicks and as they grew, they ate more. By October 2003 there were only three members remaining as four members withdrew from the project due to conflicts emanating from non-payment of fees. These members felt that instead of sharing profits and gaining financial independence they were experiencing loses. By 2004 this project did no longer exist. The scenario of these projects in these villages resembles the kind of development that Bank (2004), present in his paper. Bank notes that rural residents in Mooiplaas have
120 embarked on a process of inward-looking development. He states that local residents, especially women in Mooiplaas, have been forced to intensify their exploitation of local resources, including manipulating gender identities to gain access to village –based development project funding, as a means of survival. Bank also shows that many of the new commodity groups created via development resources are not sustainable and their survival depends on continuing support from outside the area.
6.1.1.5 Dynamics at Sigingqini village
The conclusion I have drawn from what was happening in this village was that the environment was not conducive for development to occur. There were powerful forces of darkness. There was jealousy and envy between people. There were low levels of solidarity and trust among the people. Encouraging people to talk was very difficult indicating a level of distrust. The mentioning of names during my interviews was avoided as far as possible because of a fear of being bewitched. The fact that people were leaving this village to settle in other villages was also an indication of a general unhappiness. Witchcraft, which involves the use of the forces of darkness or evil spirits to manipulate other people’s lives, was prevalent in this village. In the case of poultry projects, corruption by officials was evident in one case where an official came and took the money raised by the project members and absconded.
6.2 Poultry keeping and community garden Projects at Mthathi Village
In this village there were two projects, poultry keeping and community gardening. The community garden was still being developed and likely to receive funding from Social Development. Concerning the poultry project I met Nolusindiso Mjila, a married young lady with three children. Her husband is a mineworker. She told me that their project started in 2002. They were ten members composed of six women and four men. They received an amount of R5000 start up capital from the Department of Agriculture. A structure was also built for them. They were also involved in the piggery project in the same year but as time went by they decided to concentrate on one project as food for pigs cost too much.
121
From all the projects started in 2001 and 2002 in these villages, this is the only project that has survived and has an element of sustainability. They received training from the Department of Labour in 2004. In 2005, they received additional funding of R5000 from the Department of Agriculture. They buy two hundred and fifty chicks every month and order them through the Department of Agriculture. The chickens are ready to be sold at six weeks. Out of two hundred and fifty chickens they earn R8000. They use R5000 to buy food, medicine, sawdust and another set of two hundred and fifty chicks. They deposit three thousand rands in the bank. They sell during pension days to the surrounding communities. When people have funerals they buy chicken from them. They have customers from the Municipality and Lewis stores in town. They approached Spar to be their suppliers, but did not succeed; as their price was too expensive. The cost of a chicken was R35 in 2006 but ten chickens and above, sell at R30. In 2007 the price had risen to R40 a chicken, and ten, sell at R35. During December when people who are in credit societies share their monies, their business flourishes because people buy from them.
They save the money and only pay out the profit at the end of the year. They have also been able to form a burial society out of this project, so that whenever a member loses a family member, they give out a contribution of R500. Nolusindiso is so excited; when they first shared, each member received R1000 but now they will receive R2000 at the end of the year. She even mentioned that she was able to buy a bedroom, suite while some members bought tanks. They were so positive that they would be able to create jobs for other people in the community if they secure a market. When they have enough people to buy they would be able to appoint more people to slaughter the chickens before they are sold.
An amount of R500 000 has been budgeted by the Department of Social Development for this project. The major challenge for this project is the market. They are over producing and they can only sell locally. When it was launched in 2007, the Department of Social Development donated an amount of R5000. Nolusindiso mentioned that one of their intentions is to create jobs for people in the area.
122
Chicks from Masakhe project at Mthathi (September 2006)
6.2.1 Conclusion
As far as poultry farming projects are concerned, we can say that so far this project has an element of sustainability although it has not yet reached that level because members can only share revenue at the end of the year. The sustainability can be attributed to continued funding. Another reason is that members have access to cash income and so are not dependent on the project for survival. One of the challenges is that the market for chickens is limited. The project members sell their chickens locally. Attracting more customers is a challenge they are facing. The project members also lack bookkeeping skills and that could have a negative effect on the life of the project.
123 6.3 Baking project at Mphekweni
This project is made up of 20 members. It is a mixture of men, women and youth. During the day of the interview as I passed by but then I saw a number of people gathered together in a building used for a clothing business but due to unavailability of market, and lack of capital to purchase material, it had closed down. This group was waiting for their councilor who had organized baking equipment for them. He was supposed to bring a service provider from Johannesburg to train this group in baking. They were so bored because they had been waiting since morning and it was getting late. When I arrived they thought I was the person in question.
I started cheering them up encouraging them not to panic. That worked for me as I was curious about the gathering, and so I started interviewing them. I did not succeed to interview men as they seemed shy and not wanted to be associated with baking. I was not surprised by the reaction as men in rural areas associate household work with a woman; that is how they are socialized. I knew that I will not be successful interviewing men and so I went to the group of women.
They told me that their councilor organized baking equipment for them. They would be trained in baking all sorts of bread and supply the surrounding rural areas. The money for the equipment would have to be repaid in three years. Their trainer did not arrive that day but came the next morning. Again they could not be trained in their building because of electricity problems, and so the equipment had to be taken to town where they were trained. They were trained for four days from the 6th of September and they were so confident and excited that they could make rolls, buns, scones and loaves of bread. The unfortunate part is that when I visited them again in October, the project had not started because the necessary electricity for the heavy machinery had not been installed. Their councilor had promised that this issue would be taken care of immediately but until the end of 2006 was still outstanding.
When I asked them why they do not talk to the councilor, they said they are afraid of him because he is short tempered; he does not want to be pressurized. They also complained that they are forgetting what they were taught so by the time they start they will not know
124 what to do. It is so sad that people are so eager to do something but do not have the means. This group also mentioned anticipated problem of having the ingredients to start baking because they are all not working and so cannot afford to buy the goods.
Women waiting to be trained for baking (Mphekweni 2006)
125
The Craft centre is now used on a bakery (Mphekweni 2006)
126 6.3.1 Conclusion
In this village people have been promised that their standard of living would be uplifted by way of creation of jobs. An official from the government promised a bakery business for the people in this community, but has never materialized. What this case study reveals is that it is easy to give in to the temptation of providing short term benefits for the purposes of extracting political mileage from one's development agenda.
6.4 Projects at Gwalane Village
All the projects initiated by the Department of Agriculture in 2001 ceased to exist. The projects varied from leather bag making, poultry keeping, beadwork, and clothes making. Members were trained and received certificates from non governmental organizations such as Anglogold, Tripple Trust and Stutterheim Development Foundation. These projects died because they were starved of capital. People were only given training or skills to do the job and not to initiate capital. One member from the leather bags project told me that they had to buy the material from East London, and that involved money for transport and insufficient money to buy in bulk. The members depended only on pensions and social grants for the children. Another problem they experienced was a market for the bags. They were to sell them on credit to teachers and nurses who would pay for them over two months, sometimes three months. Others ended up not paying at all. The same problem was experienced by the sewing group. They had the skill, no capital to purchase the material and no market for the products. They also mentioned that people in rural areas do not have money to buy in cash; they have to purchase on credit.
The Department of Labour trained those who were involved in poultry keeping. The members of poultry keeping projects complained that the service provider did not provide the equal capital and equipment for the different groups. There were four groups of poultry projects in this village. Sometimes the service provider would borrow equipment from one group and use it for the next group and never return it. For the poultry projects, the Department of Agriculture supplied the members with fifty chicks and two bags of feed. Unlike at Mthathi village, the level of support from the Department of Agriculture has
127 been low as a result the projects here did not last for long. The members of the project also depended on Social Welfare grants.
Consequently, conflicts arose because some members could not afford to contribute to buying food. They ended up taking loans they could not afford to pay. Members complained about the chicks eating throughout the day and night. One respondent told me that feed is expensive and they end up giving them crushed maize (umgrayo) and mealimeal mixed with water (umphokoqo). She said these chicks, locally called machine chickens (inkuku zomtshini) are different from the local ones (imileqwa). Giving them traditional food slows down their growth, but they become strong; they need their special feed in order to grow fast. However they also explained that the meat for imileqwa is tasty unlike the machine chicken meat which one respondent referred to it as amalaphu (cloth).The chicks should be given different types of feed according to stages of their development. The respondents stated that the first phase is the crucial stage and the feed (growing mash) for this stage is expensive. Like in other poultry projects people buying on credit and being unable to pay at the end of the month complicate things for the project members.
The other problem faced by these women in the poultry project was that they did not have a chicken run; they were using sheds to keep the chicks. Although they did have electricity supply these structures were cold and so chick fatalities were prevalent leading to significant loses. Theft was also mentioned as a serious problem especially when the chickens are fully grown and ready to be sold. These sheds are not secure enough and the thieves find their way and steal the chickens. These chickens are sold locally with pensioners as reliable customers. Poultry projects in this village received the lowest level of support from the Department of Agriculture although they were promised structures for their chickens, information and financial help. Members withdrew from the project until 2006 when there was no longer any project in the village. Some women still want to get involved in projects but they are waiting for the government to take an initiative.
128 6.4.1 Conclusion
Although the policy makers present the commodity groups in rural areas as the solution to poverty alleviation, they are poorly resourced and generate very small profits for the participants. No sustainable livelihoods have been generated for the group members. The groups themselves depended on the state and the donor community rather than the market for income. Funding from NGOs and donor organizations proved to be critical to the ability of the projects to function with any level of success, confirming that state transfer and resources are primary sources of livelihood income in many rural areas. It has been evident that these groups exist only to satisfy the demands of funding by outside agencies and that they have little resonance locally. Additionally, their existence palpably places local relations under incredible pressure, for example at Sigingqini village. Such pressures include accusations of witchcraft and jealousies that are fed by the stresses of not being paid by those who buy on credit and those who are unable to pay membership fees of these groups.
Numerous problems exist in the development of rural projects ranging from funding, training, education, marketing and support. Most of the poultry projects receive little funding and sometimes funding is withdrawn before the projects become established and self-sustainable. Some members do not have the adequate skills to run the projects. The most prominent constraints facing these projects were related to record keeping, access to capital and product marketability. Record keeping is an important aspect in any business so as to be able to evaluate the performance of any organization.
Additionally, funds channeled to these projects did not reach the intended beneficiaries; project members complained that they would be given only one bag of feed, one set of chicks and little equipment with the service providers promising to come back but never did. The initiation of bulk buying schemes, or collective selling is rarely implemented without difficulty. Groups typically remain small, are short lived, and characterized by participation of mainly older women and exhibit a high turnover of membership.
Conflict within groups is often based on existing income disparities between members, and manifests itself in arguments and bad feeling, particularly over the payment and non-
129 payment of joining fees. A consequence of the non-viability and organizational weaknesses of rural producer groups is that they often seek and may eventually become reliant on an outside agency for some level of support. Indeed, part of the rationale for cooperative endeavor may be accessing the benefits from outside agencies. Precisely what the objectives and capacities of such outside agencies in supporting producer groups are, is consequently of crucial importance in determining the organizational form which the groups eventually take. What was clear with these projects was that when the members lacked access to extra income, such as urban wages or other sources of extra income, projects suffered. Members inevitably depend on external funding for the survival of the project.
130
Chapter Seven:
Craft-making project
7.1 Introduction
Mulinge and Mufune (2003), argue that poverty of a community may be assessed in terms of illiteracy rate that pervades it, from mortality rates, the incidence of crime, dearth of communications, infrastructure, low agricultural productivity, high levels of unemployment and so on. They point out that a scheme that purports to address the poverty concerns of a community should carefully consider these conditions singly and collectively, and develop strategies that are perceived to aim directly at redressing them. They suggest that the need for formal education cannot be overemphasized in the fight against poverty. They further suggest that while there are many factors that lead to poverty, non-exposure to formal learning has serious long-term consequences with women being the most affected. The acquisition of knowledge equips one with the necessary amour to successfully fend for oneself on a more informed basis. They further assert that the government should ensure the development of a curriculum that is skill enhancing rather than focused on equipping individuals with mere writing and reading skills.
In this village lack of formal education was prevalent and that has put women involved in the projects at a disadvantage. Projects in this village are again and again captured by the rural elite for their own advantage. A woman popularly known as Manana, who owns a shop in the village is mostly involved in all the projects that come to the village. Manana also works in the Municipality dealing with youth empowerment. More enlightened people in the village noticed that she likes working with old people who have no formal education. Thus the villagers believe that she wants to use them for her own benefit.
131
7.1.1 Nongenile’s beadwork project
This project was initiated by Nongenile with her two friends from Lower Gwalane. The project started in 2004. She claimed that her skills and knowledge that laid the foundation for her special skills in bead-making (ukuhlohla) was passed down by her mother. This was the only beadwork project that I could find in this village. The products they made included bracelets, necklaces, anklets, headbands and waist coats. These women took their beadwork to the Peddie cultural centre in town. They were told that once their products are sold they would be given their money. They found that they would take their bead-work to the cultural centre and had to wait for a long period before their products are finally sold or sometimes wait forever, only to be told that their beads have not yet been bought. That discouraged the group and they ended up splitting and working individually. These women stated that what made matters difficult in this project was that the local demand for beadwork was very limited because local women knew how to work with beads and were able to make their own necklaces, anklets and even embroider their own garments. The cultural centre was their hope of success in this project.
After the split of the group, Nongenile was approached by Manana, the woman who works in the Municipality, dealing with youth development issues. She advised her to partner with her convincing her that she knows the market for the beads. Nongenile was excited about the idea especially after the disappointment from the Peddie cultural centre. She stated that initially everything went well as she was properly compensated for her hard work. As the time went by, she noticed that she tended to have long periods where she earned very little and she felt that she was not getting rewarded according to the items she made.
She told me how she used to go with Manana to Cape Town with her bead-work and they would stay in a hotel and had to sign documents, which, I suppose were contracts but had not been explained to her. Nongenile understood that her beads were for sale overseas, but the reward was getting little with time.
132 Local artistic and traditional skills receive international acclaim and so handicraft products are recognized as a potential source of foreign exchange earnings. The beads would be bought, but she was not involved in the sale process. She would be given a certain amount of money, which the respondent could not reveal. I suspect that the confidentiality was caused by the fact that she could not count the money. I remember that her neighbour came in while I was there to borrow cash. Nongenile had to come with all her money and let the neighbour take the amount that she needed because she could not count the money. When I visited Nongenile after a year, she was no longer involved in bead making and when I asked why, she stated that her life was not improving and bead making was too strenuous on her eyes. Nongenile also told me that she believes that she is supposed to earn more than what she is earning from the beads because she designs many beads. Somewhere somehow she felt that she was being cheated.
Another woman, Mrs.Masimi, who was involved in a leather bag-making project, told me that she was interested in joining the sewing project, which was also coordinated by Manana but was rejected. Mrs. Masimi is more enlightened as she has a std6 education. What she noticed about the members who were involved in the project was that they did not have any formal education. She understood why she was not allowed to join the group as it was a carefully selected group.
7.1.2 Conclusion
What this case study reveals is projects in rural areas are again and again monopolized by the rural elite to their own advantage. People use their positions to wield power. The issue of favouritism is also prevalent, where a certain class of people is preferred over another. Decision making powers on whom to include and exclude in the project rest with the elite. The projects are also never central to the needs of the people. It has also been evident from the previous discussion that there is a problem when the projects depend on external funding for their survival. This is because the funds do not normally reach the intended beneficiaries.
133 7.1. 3 Natural resource use in crafting of mats in Peddie
7.1.3.1 Introduction
Studies in South Africa show that trading of many non-timber forest products exist and is currently developed in many other parts of the country (Cocks & Dold, 2002). This sector is dominated by rural women and is widely recognized as an important element in addressing rural poverty. There is no doubt that these products play a significant and often critical role in providing subsistence and cash income for rural people.
7.2. Case study area of natural resource use in Gwalane
7.2.1 Biophysical background
Gwalane is situated approximately 30km from the town of Peddie. The village is characteristic of a rural settlement in which a large proportion of the community is reliant on a cash income from adjacent urban areas rather than on a subsistence based economy. The community within the study site is made up of amaXhosa and Mfengu ethnic groups.
7.2.2 Land use and tenure
The legacy of the Betterment planning system of the 1970s, in which rural settlements were divided into communal grazing lands, arable lands, and residential areas is clearly evident in Gwalane. Every year the area of arable land lying fallow increases with the ageing of able-bodied men and women whose offspring would rather go to the cities to search for employment.
134 7.2.3 Culture, tradition and recreation
The local community has consistently observed many of the traditions and cultural activities of their ancestors. These include initiation ceremonies for adolescent boys, traditional feasts associated with recognition of the role of ancestors in the spiritual wellbeing of the community, and spiritual cleansing ceremonies performed by traditional healers. Most of these are accompanied by ritual slaughtering of livestock, hence the essential role that livestock has played historically in the community.
7.2.3.1The economy
Many of the households depend on pensions as well as remittances from migrant labour for their livelihoods. Some cropping and livestock keeping is practised but mainly for subsistence purposes . The main crop is maize, which is usually intercropped with pumpkins, melons, potatoes, beans and peas. Some poultry and pig rearing are practised mostly in woman headed households. Pig meat, which is usually sold locally, makes some contribution to the welfare of many households. Besides agriculture, the village boasts some small businesses in the form of shops and shebeens. To supplement household food, edible varieties of wild vegetables (imifino) are harvested and cooked for home consumption. Some women groups in the villages have organized themselves into savings clubs (imigalelo) through which they share either food groceries or cash regularly. These clubs sometimes double up as burial societies. The groups usually start off as extended family members, church groups or simply neighbours or close friends. As in most villages in the province, Christmas and Easter time see an increase in expenditure by households in the village.
135 7.2.4 Resources and the process of mat-making
This section focuses on the dynamics of access to the materials used as well as the crafting processes involved. A completed mat involves several resources and processes. In Gwalane the raw material widely and popularly used in craftwork, is locally known as imizi.
7.2.4.1 Location and access to raw material used
Imizi need a regular supply of water to survive and so thrives in areas that are always moist, including streams and gardens that are watered regularly. It varies according to length and the length determines the type of product to be made. Imizi for making sleeping mats has to be quite long, whereas the shorter lengths are adequate for making sitting mats. At least eight respondents were involved in mat-making in this village. The respondents harvest imizi at Shawpark farm, a privately white owned farm on the way to Port Alfred. It is approximately 80km to travel to the place. Access is sometimes difficult as they first have to negotiate with the owner of the farm; his mood may vary. The respondents also have to hire transport to take them there and that costs R100. They have to stay there for a number of days or a week harvesting as much reeds as possible because they go there once or twice in a year. They bring with them stoves, pots and dishes so that they are able to prepare meals. They normally cook 'imifino', (wild vegetables) which they are able to harvest in their gardens.
Some of the challenges they encounter include not having a place to sleep as some of the farmers would charge them if they ask for a place to sleep. Because they have no money, they sometimes resort to sleeping in the open air and make fire so as to keep warm. The respondents also claim that they encounter snakes during harvesting, which makes this exercise quite hazarduous. All the respondents wear gumboots as the imizi has sharp edges that cause painful cuts on legs and hands.
136 7.2.4.2 The process of weaving
The making of mats requires certain skills (Makhado, 2004). Imizi is used with a twine for holding the mat and for decoration. Materials used include thin ropes, cords from orange or cabbage bags and wool. It takes anything between 1-5 days to finish a mat depending on how fast the weaver works and also taking into account other household chores that need to be done. A weaving frame is used for weaving. These are stands designed to be heavy enough to carry the weight of the mat. The legs of the stand are strong enough to hold it down and to sustain it. The frame has cuts on top used in the weaving process. Torch batteries or stones are used to wrap the twine or string around and then passes back and forth when weaving a particular pattern. The respondents argue that the weaving stand has made the process much easier than in the past, as they used to weave manually with their hands. These mats are made according to different sizes. The smallest size costs R20 and the largest R100.
7.3 Household experiences
7.3.1 Mamngwevu's life history
Mamngwevu is a widow with one child. She lives with three grandchildren. She used to depend on her pension and remittance from her only daughter who works at a restaurant in Grahamstown, but her daughter was retrenched early 2007. She now has to support the daughter together with her grandchildren from the old age pension. She is uneducated but very intelligent. She cannot write or read but can count money. The first project she worked on was the pineapple project from 1982 to 1997 (15 years). Then the company was under Ulimocor. She remembers that their initial salary was R189 and men used to say that was a lot of money for a woman, what they will do with a lot of money. She says they worked under strict rules not even allowed to eat pineapple at work let alone go home with it. The first time they received an increment was when a man called Lizo came in and introduced a union. Their salaries went up to R300 a month.
137 The rules also changed; as they could receive one pineapple after breakfast and one after dinner and go home with two. When the company was about to be liquidated they were earning R500 a month and that was in 1996. When the new Managing Director, Lulamile Mtya under Pineco was about to take over from Ulimocor, he called all the workers and advised them to contribute R50 each month for five months so that when Ulimocor stepped down they would continue to benefit under Pineco. The old lady remembers how instead of benefiting under the new company they lost their jobs. They were given blue cards so they could claim UIF (Unemployment Insurance Fund) but received nothing. They attended several meetings to try to recover their monies, but to no avail.
They continued to hear rumours that their supervisors had received huge amounts of money and that raised their hopes that theirs was on the way. They hired a lawyer who demanded R17 000 and they had to raise that money by contributing R50 each. Mamngwevu remembers that she even borrowed some who did not have these fifty rands with the hope that they would refund her when the lawyer recovers their monies. All was in vain, ‘she said’ hopelessly and the people for whom she borrowed money could not repay her. The last meeting they attended was in February 2005 and since then there has been no progress concerning their enquiry. Now the lady is grieving for all the hard work she did in the pineapple project without fair compensation and the money she borrowed for people.
The day I visited Mamngwevu was a pension day and I noticed that children came in, gave her money and she put it the money under her hat and then thanked the child. There were about four children sent by their mothers. I finally asked what the money was for and she told me that it was for a savings club. I was so surprised that she was not keeping any records and when I asked why, she said she was able to remember by heart every one who contributed. When I interviewed another woman later who was also involved in the club, I discovered that they sometimes experienced shortages when they had to share their contributions and Mamngwevu would assert that she was not the one at fault; she had kept the money safe. She was the treasurer for the club because she had been the founder.
138 In addition to the old age pension, Mamngwevu's livelihood is centred around piggery and mat-making. Mamngwevu and others have organized themselves as a group of twelve members, but receive no support from the Department of Agriculture. Each member is keeps her own pig(s) and when ready to be slaughtered they distribute parcels of meat among the members. One pig gives them R1200. A thousand rand goes to the owner of the pig and two hundred rand is invested in their bank account.
Apart from piggery the Mamngwevu, makes traditional reed mats (amakhuko), a livelihood that she has done for many years although she cannot remember when she began. She leant weaving from her mother inlaw. All that time she was doing it manually. Her husband, who was still alive then, worked in Port Elizabeth and one day when he came home told her of a woman from Transkei who was staying with her husband in Port Elizabeth; she used a quicker method of weaving, employing a stand. She decided to go to PE with her husband so that she could meet this woman and learn from her the quickest way of weaving mats. She boldly said ‘most of the people who are weaving in this village learnt from me’. Initially she and her friend, Mamzena, were the only people making mats, but now the number of people who have joined has increased. Mamngwevu complains that people like to buy on credit but are so reluctant to pay. Her daughter, who was working in Graham’stown, also helps her so that she is able to sell them at the arts festival.
139
Mamngwevu and her friend doing’amakhuko’(traditional mats) 2007
Case Study 2
7.3.2 Nophumlani’s household
Nophumlani is a married woman with seven children. This household is struggling to make ends meet. The eldest daughter is married. Four of her children have matriculated but cannot go further due to financial constraints and are now looking for work in Port Elizabeth. The two girls are still in lower grades, one in grade five and the youngest in grade two. Her husband is unemployed. He takes piece jobs such as fencing and construction of toilets when work becomes available. Nophumlani used to sell fruit and vegetables grown in her garden in town, but gave up because she could not make any profit. She told me that she has been poor for most of her life. She has to see to it that there is food on the table, but only receives R200 social grant for the youngest child.
140 For Nophumlani, mat-making is something she depends on for income. No one has taught her how to make mats. “Hunger and poverty made me to think of something I can do with my hands and the idea of mat-making came up”, she said proudly. She told me that all her children were raised and educated from her mat-making. Her husband and children help her. She taught all her children how to weave and she now has two stands, one for herself and one for the children. Even the youngest daughter can weave. She has been doing this for quite a long time. She cannot remember when she started doing this business, but emphasized that her life changed for the better when she started weaving. She remembered having to borrow dishes of food and soap from the neighbours, not knowing how she would return them, as she had no means to return them; but now she does not borrow as often as she used to and she is able to return what she has borrowed.
She said, “I used to keep the soap that I have borrowed so that it lasts longer, because I know that I will not afford to buy another one”. Nophumlani said” God Himself taught her how to weave as she did not learn weaving from anyone”. She sells the mats from home, in town and also to Nompumelelo hospital in Peddie. She has a relative who works in the hospital and so she makes traditional mats and gives them to her and only collects money when they are finished. Nophumlani also showed me a pile of bricks that she had bought from her mat sales. She is planning to build a three-roomed flat. It was clear that she depended on the sales of mats for an income.
141 Case study 3
7.3.3 Nokholekile’s household
Nokholekile is married with five children. Her husband is no longer employed due to illness. He receives a disability grant for epilepsy. Nokholekile also relies on remittances from her two daughters who work in urban areas. She is also involved in traditional mat making which she has also done for many years though she also cannot remember for how long. She learnt the job from her mother. Sales from the reed mats help her to buy groceries and pay for school fees for her grandchildren. Nokholekile and her friends make one to two trips in a year. For Nokholekile, trading of mats was for supplements her household income. She sells her mats from home.
7.3.4 Nomantombi’s household
Nomantombi is a middle-aged woman who is a divorcee. She told me that things did not work out for her in her marriage as her husband gave her no money. Her husband was spoiled ‘amankazana’ (girls) with the money and he beat her; so she left him and started her own life. She lives in a two roomed flat with her three grand children. She has one daughter who is looking for a job in Cape Town. Nomantombi depends on a social grant for the three grandchildren. When she realized that the grant was not enough to take care of everything, she decided to weave. She learnt weaving from Mamngwevu who is her neighbour. Now she is able to buy clothes for the children and to pay for their fees. She can also buy furniture from the mat sales depending on the amount of effort she puts in to making mats.
142
Mamngwevu, Nokholekile and Nophumlani harvesting” imizi” (2007)
7.3.5 Conclusion
These projects are initiated and created by the community. They are characterised by a traditional market. Indigenous knowledge plays a crucial role in these projects. Their survival does not depend on donor funding. These projects make use of local resources and address local needs. The people in Peddie still shape and satisfy their needs thanks to the network of human relationships they preserve within their vernacular spaces, and thanks to the many forms of solidarity, cooperation and reciprocity they develop within their communities. Their activities are generally concrete responses to concrete and immediate problems, enabling the people involved to effect both the changes and the things they need.
The major problem experienced by the people involved in natural resource extraction is access to the material used. Access to these resources has been marked by a highly politicised historical past. The strong protectionist policy of biodiversity management that
143 emerged during the colonial and apartheid period generated a range of social conflicts that engendered the future of biodiversity (Kepe, 1999). This awareness together with the democratization of South Africa in 1994 which brought about the country's return to the global arena after decades of isolation resulted in the updating of most legislation which articulated the need for the participation of local people in the management of biodiversity both within the communal areas and on state owned land. Unfortunately there are still flaws as the understanding of the relationship between people and biodiversity and the factors that shape the outcome of this relationship are still weak.
144 Chapter Eight:
8.1 Conclusion and Research Findings
This study aimed at identifying the specific problems experienced in development projects and their impact on the lives of the poor in Peddie, a rural area falling within the Ngqushwa Municipality. Specifically the study aimed to investigate a range of poverty alleviation and economic upliftment programmes, projects and initiatives in the area. Data collection methods employed included, survey questionnaires, unstructured in depth interviews, observation and participant observation. The findings of this research have been that development has failed and that no single factor accounts for that failure. The first factor is that poverty in the Eastern Cape has been modernized. There are certain stereotypes that have been constructed, such as disadvantaged rural women, vulnerable groups, black women and so forth. People have been constructed as objects of development. To address that pathology the government introduced some programmes. Local realities were not taken into consideration; instead the following programs were implemented, poverty alleviation projects, social welfare programmes, Local Economic Development projects and commercial projects. The assumption was that rural people seek specialization. However, diversification plays a significant role in the lives of the people in rural areas.
The main perspectives used in this study to understand the failure of development included knowledge and power, institutional capacity and participation and gender approaches. The perspective on knowledge and power focused on the contrast between local knowledge which is often viewed as parochial, irrational and traditionalist and expert knowledge, viewed as progressive, universal and scientific. The perspective on institutional capacity and participation assert that continued poverty has not been caused by the shortage of capital but by the lack of economic freedom, political opportunism by civil servants and politicians and the absence of structures for the peaceful resolution of conflicts. This perspective emphasizes the empowerment of relevant stakeholders and the provision of facilities that allow them to participate fully and effectively in institution building.
145 The gender approach to development hinges on the fact that development strategies need to address the gender power relations operating in households, other institutions, different spheres of government, and society as a whole and only then can development succeed.
The study went on to deal with the main aspects of current rural development discourse, which involve opposed agricultural regimes in the Eastern Cape, underpinned by different and opposed knowledge systems. This involved modernity and science associated with commercial farming practiced by white farmers in the countryside and traditional farming associated with ignorance and backwardness in the communal areas. The study has argued that current rural development discourse directs attention away from the critical role urban wages and state transfers play in the livelihood strategies of people. Rural livelihoods in Peddie combined both agrarian and non-agrarian options and that there has been a long trend towards de-agranisation. There has been a shift away from dependence on agricultural resources to a dependence on cash income and government grants.
There has also been a heavy dependence on projects being initiated and household earning income from these projects. The failure of these projects has critical implication for rural livelihoods because if these projects were successful rural families would be able to find a way out of poverty (at least temporarily). These projects fail when the members do not have access to income and so sustainability becomes the problem.
Sustainable livelihood is used to refer to a livelihood that can cope with and recover from stresses and shocks, maintain or enhance its capabilities and assets both now and in the future, while not undermining the natural base. Sustainable livelihoods approaches have their roots in path breaking entitlement approaches to the understanding of poverty (Bank, 2004). The sustainable livelihoods framework starts by investigating how people use resources to construct a livelihood at the local level. The approach seeks to establish what sorts of assets and resources exist at the household and community level and explores what combinations of these are required to protect households from poverty and to reduce their levels of vulnerability. Against this background on sustainability, this study has indicated that the various development interventions in Peddie are not sustainable as they continually depend on external financial injection to get through.
146
The main problem in as far as the cooperative groups were concerned, was that there is often a limit to the degree of co-operation possible within producer groups. Within most of the producer groups I visited, what was important in determining full and long-term success in these cooperative activities was the ability of the group to obtain and maintain investment funds for the purchase of raw materials. That depended on members being able to divert cash from income sources, such as migrant resources or pensions, for investment in these co-operative activities. Due to differentiation, particularly in terms of access to remittances, many households are only able to participate in groups when surplus cash is available. Without a regular income, the groups find it difficult to plan and sustain their co-operative ventures.
The livelihood section has emphasized the vulnerability of women in Peddie and that revealed the possible role that these projects can play in helping this group. The next chapter has dealt with the dynamics of traditional authority and local government and the negative impact they have on development. This acts as a general impediment to successful development and service delivery and has a negative impact on all projects and initiatives in the area.
Agricultural projects in this area fail dramatically. The main challenge faced by these projects is that although they are broadly intended to address rural poverty they are not standard poverty alleviation projects but intended mainly as entrepreneurial projects within agriculture. However this thesis has highlighted the diversity and dynamics of rural livelihoods in this area. It has been evident that livelihoods are embedded in complex and contested governance context, where politics and power relationships are at the centre of any analysis. Simple models imposed on complex settings do not work no matter how polished the rhetoric. The agricultural projects have proved that in practice, community- private partnerships are not straightforward. Uncertainties, conflicts and power dynamics are inevitable.
The social welfare projects are more welfare oriented and more RDP focused. These projects fail because they are dependent on external funding for their survival. The aim of
147 the Department of Social Development is to shift its focus from dependence on grants to social development. The failure of these projects means that this shift is not occurring and that the vulnerable groups that are targeted are not able to claw their way out of poverty.
The more individual projects tended to be more sustainable. The other project that was more sustainable was the weaving of mats. Harvesting of natural resources has been proven to be one of the livelihood strategies that rural people engage in as has been indicated earlier by a number of researchers. Middle-aged and old age poor women, who have no formal jobs and no formal education qualification, dominate this trade.
These projects are more organic in nature. They are individual initiatives, using local knowledge. They make use of local opportunities and address local needs. Craft projects that use natural resources receive the least support from external agencies yet they are the most successful and sustainable projects. The reason for this is that the material used are locally procurable and the knowledge and networks involved are well established. These projects suggest that development might be most successful if it builds on local knowledge and initiatives and does not depend so heavily on innovation and enforced change from outside. This means that local projects should be locally embedded in local resources, networks and capacities.
This thesis has also highlighted that there is a problem when development policy and initiatives are constantly changing. This confuses local people and it does seem that there has been a very rapid change without a well structured overall rural development policy. Local Integrated Development Plans (IDPs) do not provide very much direction. Focus on service delivery does not mean development- people can have taps and electricity but this does not mean they will be able to develop sustainable livelihoods in the rural areas. The cost recovery service delivery model often just means extra cost for rural household who least can afford them. More sustainable service delivery models are needed in rural areas which reduce the financial cost to households.
The message that is conveyed by the case studies is that there is a need for prioritizing policies which enhance the asset base of the poor, to broaden the livelihood strategies
148 that they adopt, improve their ability to adapt and cope in times of difficulty, and increase their ability to act and voice their needs. According to Rahnema (1993), present obstacles to people’s development can and should be overcome by giving the populations concerned the full opportunity of participating in all the activities related to their development. There is also a need for development practitioners to support what is already there in its various forms. The success of rural development will depend on the extent to which participation of the rural households can be expanded. Poverty alleviation must be more than promoting subsistence, but provide opportunities for rural households to improve and diversify their livelihood options, support services and effective access to markets for inputs and outputs.
Policies and programmes of intervention should be aimed at supporting what poor people already do, with targeted and well co-ordinated interventions. The state is not a good manager of natural resources. All the evidence points to the need for active involvement of local people in managing the resources they depend upon, and in planning their own development, but they need institutional support from various levels of government. There is a need for platforms for decision-making at local and district level where stakeholders can meet on equal terms to negotiate development goals and the allocation of resources.
At the local or community level, there is rarely any institution with a mandate for development planning and, consequently, little or no capacity or experience. However there are many examples of good management of resources such as irrigation water, pastures, forest and wild life by local communities and it should be possible to build on these existing management structures. Developments which generate livelihoods, which create new demands for rural labour, which provide services to which all have effective access, or which enable the poor people to support one another and to organize themselves into groups, will usually be preferred in poverty-focused approach. Participation of the poor needs institutions that facilitate rather than dictate the course of rural development.
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Wiersum, K.F. and Shackleton, C.M. (2005). Rural Dynamics and biodiversity conservation in Southern Africa.Lewinston: Edwin Melon Press.
158 Wolpe, H. (1972). Capitalism and Cheap Labour-Power in South Africa: From segregation to Apartheid, in Economy and Sciety, Vol No1 No. 4 pp425-456
World Bank. (1995). Key indicators of poverty in South Africa. An analysis prepared for the office of the Reconstruction and Development programme by the World Bank. UCT.
World Bank. (1999). World Development Report 1999, Oxford University Press: Oxford.
World Bank. (2000). World Development Report, 2001/2. Oxford University Press: New York.
159 8.3 APPENDIX 1
Questionnaire used for structured interviews
Section 1.
Part A. Personal details
1.1 Name………………………………….
1.2 Sex. Male □ Female □
1.3 Number of children if any □
1.4 Give a brief account of your employment history.
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160 1.5 What made you join the project?
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1.6 How long has been the project operating?
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1.8 Has the project secured markets to stimulate demand for your crops?
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1.9 Is the project an independent economic venture?
Yes/No
161 1.10 If not, what level of support does it receive from the government? ………………………………………………………………………………………………
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1.11 What form of land tenure has been obtained for the project?
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1.12 How does the surrounding community benefit from the project?
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162 ……………………………………………………………………………………………… 1.13 Are you able to derive a livelihood from the project? Explain.
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……………………………………………………………………………………………… Part B. Responsibilities
1.1 What are some of your responsibilities at home besides engaging in the project? ……………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………. ………………………………………………………………………………………………. ………………………………………………………………………………………………
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1.1.1How many hours do you spend on the project per day?
One hour
Eight hours
Six hours Four hours
Other 163 Section 2. Farming
Part A. Land
1.1 Who is the owner of the land?
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1.2 Describe briefly how you started farming on that piece of land.
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1.3 What is the size of the land?......
Less than 50 hectares
More than 50 hectares
More than 100 hectares
Others
Part B. Crops grown
1.1 Name the crops you grow
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164
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1.2 Do you grow your crops throughout the year or part of the year?
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APPENDIX 2
QUESTIONNAIRE TO THE GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS
Section 1
Part A. Personal details
1.1 Name…………………………………………..
1.2 Working experience……………………
1.3
Responsibilities……………………………………………………………………………
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1.3 How do farmers acquire land for farming? …………………………………………………………………………………………..
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1.4 How do you assist them to acquire land?
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165
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1.5 How do farmers obtain capital to run the projects?
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1.6 How do you assist the farmers to produce quality crop products that are on demand?
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1.7 Do you assist the farmers in marketing the products?
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1.8 When there are problems in the projects and they are communicated to you, how does your office respond to the problems?
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1.9 Give examples of the problems that are directed to you
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166 ………………………………………………………………………………………..
1.10 Can you say that agriculture is a good strategy for alleviating poverty?
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167 APPENDIX 3
HOUSEHOLD QUESTIONNAIRE
Section 1
Part A. Personal details
1.1 Name…………………………………….
1.2 Sex. Male □ Female □
1.3 Number of children if any □
1.4 What are the main activities that you rely on to make a living and how are these changing over time?
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1.5 What are the most important assets and resources that you use to make a
living?
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168 1.6 Which human capabilities enable you to turn these assets into livelihood
strategies or enable you to benefit from other sources?
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1.7 What are the formal and informal systems that enable you to gain access to assets and control how they are used?
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1.8 How does the external environment influence livelihoods in a positive or
negative way?
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1.9 What are the most likely shocks and stresses to the main sources of
livelihood? …………………………………………………………………………………….
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169
1.10 What are the best opportunities for you to have more secure and
sustainable livelihoods?
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1.11 What are the economic and social impacts of poverty alleviation projects for
your household?
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1.12 What forms of income do you have access to?
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1.13 What is the direct -use value of arable production for your household?
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170
1.14 What is the direct –use value of wild natural resources to your household?
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171