Collapse, Conflict Or Social Cohesion? Learning from Livestock Dipping Associations in Kwazulu-Natal
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COLLAPSE, CONFLICT OR SOCIAL COHESION? LEARNING FROM LIVESTOCK DIPPING ASSOCIATIONS IN KWAZULU-NATAL TIM GIBBS WORKING PAPER 62 JUNE 2020 Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences University of the Western Cape Private Bag X17 Bellville 7535 Tel: +27-(0)21-9593733 Fax: +27(0)21-9593732 Website: www.plaas.org.za Email: [email protected] Twitter: @PLAASuwc Facebook: www.facebook.com/PLAASuwc PLAAS Working Paper 62 The PLAAS Working Paper Series is designed to share work in progress. Please send any suggestions or comments to Dr Tim Gibbs at [email protected]. ©Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, June 2020. Author: Tim Gibbs Cite as: Gibbs, T. 2020. “Collapse, conflict or social cohesion? Learning from livestock dipping associations in KwaZulu- Natal.” Working Paper No. 62. Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, Bellville, South Africa. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION: WHY LIVESTOCK DIPPING MATTERS — COLLECTIVE 5 ACTION AFTER APARTHEID 2. LIVESTOCK DIPPING UNDER APARTHEID — EFFECTIVE, AUTHORITARIAN, 6 UNSUSTAINABLE 3. ‘THINGS FALL APART’ – VET SERVICES DURING THE DEMOCRATIC 8 TRANSITION 4. REBUILDING POST-APARTHEID RURAL INFRASTRUCTURE – A KWAZULU- 9 NATAL EXAMPLE i. A fragmented bureaucracy rebuilds the dip tanks 9 ii. Civil society renewed – The local Livestock Associations 10 5. RECOMMENDATIONS — PROBLEMS AND OPPORTUNITIES 11 i. Securing animal health — Linking Livestock Associations to government 12 ii. Dipping goats — To include poorer and female headed households 13 iii. Livestock auction — Encouraging the R4.2 billion invisible economy 14 iv. Empowerment — Bringing women into the Livestock Associations 15 6. CONCLUSIONS 16 7. REFERENCES 17 8. APPENDICES 18 Appendix One: Bantustan Government expenditures 18 Appendix Two: Post-apartheid department of agriculture expenditures 19 Appendix Three: Marketing value chains 20 ABSTRACT This working paper is about the revival of communal cattle dipping in post-apartheid KwaZulu-Natal, which has improved animal healthcare and strengthened the livelihoods of the black rural households that keep cattle in the province. Given that the authoritarian system of apartheid era livestock dipping fell apart during South Africa’s democratic transition, this is a remarkable achievement. Other provinces have struggled to revive dipping – such that tick borne diseases are endemic along the Wild Coast of the Eastern Cape, for instance. By contrast, perhaps 90-95% of the 1600-odd dip tanks in KwaZulu- Natal are run relatively well by local Livestock Associations, which organise regular cattle dipping in conjunction with the provincial government’s vet services department. There are opportunities to strengthen and expand the remit of the Livestock Associations: these remarkable organs of civil society which might be collectively collecting R450 million in membership fees each year. There is also much to learn from KwaZulu-Natal’s example. At a time when much is written about the weakness of government institutions in rural South Africa, here is a quiet, largely unnoticed, ‘success story’ of an effective relationship between the state and civil society that we would do well to understand. Keywords: vet service; cattle dipping; civil society; rural livelihoods; local government WORKING PAPER #62 ǀ 5 1. Introduction: Why livestock dipping matters — collective action after apartheid The livestock held by black South Africans—cattle, goats, sheep and fowl—are a crucial part of the national economy, providing assets and security to anything from 1.4 to 2.4 million smallholders living on communal land and land-reform farms across the country (Cousins and Hornby, 2016). Perhaps 40% of the national cattle herd—some 5.5 million of the 13.8 million—grazes on communal land (Kenyon 2014). This percentage of small stock held on communal land (as opposed to commercial farms) is even higher—maybe 76% of goats in KwaZulu-Natal are on chieftaincy land and land reform farms (KwaZulu-Natal 2010:2). There is a relatively small core of more commercially minded, ‘emerging farmers’—for instance syndicates of teachers and taxi owners, who bring together 200-300 head of livestock. Yet the vast majority of smallholders hold small numbers of livestock, making occasional sales of their goats and fowl to pay for school fees (for instance) each year.1 These transactions are often missed in official reports and statistics; but they form a vital part of the ‘informal’/’invisible’ economy. One estimate conservatively places the offtake of cattle in the Eastern Cape to be worth R2.1 billion per annum.2 The cash value of goat sales in KwaZulu-Natal alone might be worth R3 billion per annum.3 ‘Consequently and perhaps counter-intuitively to a society that has urbanised rapidly over the last century, animal health is of growing importance and interest to a greater number of people’ (Beinart and Brown, 2013:5). Yet in recent decades, there has been a crisis in animal healthcare. In many parts of South Africa, vet services, in particular the collective livestock dipping practiced on chieftaincy land, collapsed during the tumultuous years of the democratic transition. Many provinces have struggled to revive collective dipping—such that tick borne diseases, which have not been seen for generations, are endemic along the Wild Coast of the Eastern Cape, for instance. This paper focuses on the community organised, livestock dipping tanks, which historically have been the cornerstone of the state-organised veterinary services for black farmers. The dip tank plays three important roles here. First, regular dipping helps remove the ticks and parasites, in particular guarding against are heartwater, redwater, gallsickness and sweating sickness. Second, the dip tank is the place where government veterinary officers (animal health technicians) support livestock owners: each year vaccinating livestock against the controlled diseases of anthrax and Blackquarter, and doing checks for foot and mouth and contagious abortion. Thirdly, and more broadly too, dip tanks are places where animals are counted and checked, allowing the government to effectively survey the health of the national herd. The central matter is the question of collective action: how can the government empower rural communities, working together, to run their dip tanks effectively? For unlike large commercial 1 Statistics are very uncertain because no systematic data is collected at a national level. A larger estimate based on Labour Force surveys suggested there are 200,000 ‘surplus producing smallholders and 4-4.5 million ‘semi-subsistence’ households – cf. Aliber et al (2009: 141). 2 Kenyon (2014: 10) estimated 14 per cent of 2 million cattle at about R5 000 per head = R1.4 billion. Cattle prices are more like R7500 per head today, leading to the higher figure quoted in the text. 3 See footnote 23 for the details of the calculation. WORKING PAPER #62 ǀ 6 farmers that have large enough herds to organise dipping on an individual basis, 95% of black cattle owners have less than ten cattle per household, and so must dip collectively as a community. (A dip tank needs to be dipping around 500-600 cattle to be working cost-effectively.) Focusing particularly on KwaZulu-Natal, this paper outlines: A. How the authoritarian, albeit a relatively effective, system of livestock dipping run by the apartheid government operated. B. Why this system fragmented and collapsed around 1994. C. A KwaZulu-Natal success story: how cattle dipping was rebuilt and reorganised in the 2000s, this time along more decentralised, collaborative and voluntaristic principles. D. Nonetheless, I conclude by noting there are opportunities to improve the current dipping regime. Briefly these are: i) Increase the number of well-resourced animal health technicians who provide a wider range of free vaccinations and animal healthcare services. ii) Building on KwaZulu-Natal’s relatively successful cattle dipping regime, introduce free dipping for goats/small livestock, particularly benefiting poorer, female-headed households. iii) Working with Livestock Associations at a municipality level, pilot livestock auctions/sales to stimulate the entry of emerging farmers into commercial markets. iv) Strengthen the voice of women by encouraging female participation in the livestock associations that run the dip tanks. 2. Livestock dipping under apartheid - effective, authoritarian, unsustainable Touch a man’s livestock and you touch his manhood Today, there are many state vets who look back to the old system of livestock dipping with nostalgia. They remember this as an era when the health of the herds in the communal areas was properly maintained because a well-resourced state vet service (which has suffered budget cuts since the end of apartheid) had the power/authority to compel livestock owners to bring their animals to the dip tanks. In the communal areas ‘today, dipping is optional! We do not even know the number of livestock!’4 These vets have a point; but they miss something more important: that livestock dipping was authoritarian and unsustainable, because the history of cattle dipping in South Africa is linked to the histories of conquest and colonisation. For cattle dipping was first established in South Africa in the 1900s to counter an outbreak of East Coast Fever, just years after the last of the independent, African kingdoms had been annexed and conquered. In the north-eastern