Paper short abstract:

This paper considers the impact of various land reform-cum-development projects over time on a (black) rural settlement in South Africa, looking at how these interventions have altered the local people's attitudes to, and evaluations of, land - as well as their political and economic behaviour in relation to that land

Paper long abstract:

This paper considers the impact of various land reform -cum-development projects over time on a rural settlement in a former bantustan in South Africa. It looks at how these interventions have shaped and altered local people's attitudes to and evaluations of land - as well as at their political and economic behaviour in relation to it. The paper traces three major phases of the history of land relations in a settlement established under British colonial rule in the 1850s. It examines the use and evaluation of land under 'communal tenure'. It then considers the transformation of that system by a programme in the 1960s which led to the entire community being resettled, the land use system being fundamentally reorganised, and most people losing much of their arable land in the process. With the democratic government's land reform programme, members of the settlement were in 2000 awarded monetary compensation for the injustices suffered under the 1960s programme. Part of that restitution process has also been a new land use-cum development package. Using detailed case material gathered over three decades, the paper argues that each of these three government interventions has cumulatively constituted and shaped local attitudes to and evaluations to land, including claims to ownership and attempts to exercise control over it. The paper will appeal to literature on the theory of value to develop its argument.