Paper short abstract:

The repercussions on black farm dwellers of the changed use of large tracts of private farmland for luxury wildlife-based tourism have intensified existing conflicts over resources, jobs, failed land reform and the state’s growth path that prioritises large-scale production and large landholdings.

Paper long abstract:

The concentration of private farmland for expanded wildlife production - for animal sales and for hunting and private game reserves aimed at mainly wealthy international clients -- has had significant repercussions on land usages and local farm labour communities. This aspect of the 'land grab' and land consolidation in South Africa results primarily from commercial farmers converting to game farming, partly because of greater global pressures on agriculture since market deregulation. Based on research in the Eastern Cape, this paper discusses the conflicts surrounding the change in land use for the purpose of private luxury safari tourism. Black farm dweller families are commonly removed or compelled to leave the commercial farms by one means or another in order to make way for big game animals and the creation of a 'wilderness' territory without humans. Usually migrating only short distances, they often lose access to farmland and must compete for a shrinking number of increasingly casualised agricultural jobs. These conflicts exemplify the societal question of how nature - and land -- should be developed and for whose use. But they also reflect sharper political frictions over failed land reform and the apartheid ownership system with its deeply-rooted inequalities in the countryside, over control of related resources such as water, as well as the state's plans for rural development. While the state still promises to redistribute white-owned farmland to the black rural population and accelerate land restitution, its 'new growth' path prioritising large-scale production and large landowners (including game farmers) may fuel these tensions..