Paper short abstract:

The paper argues that land redistribution from below, access to the commons and socially embedded tenure arrangements, enable the 'surplus population' to engage in subsistence crop production and petty commodity production of livestock. These land uses are being reconfigured the 'peasant' way.

Paper long abstract:

The dominance of corporates in South Africa's agro-food system has progressed at the marginalisation of small-scale food producers. This marginalisation coupled with declining employment on commercial farms, and the slow pace of land redistribution has exacerbated the crisis of social reproduction of many rural working class households. Drawing from empirical evidence collected through household surveys, in depth interviews and life histories in Mhlopheni village of former labour tenants, in Kwa-Zulu Natal province in South Africa, the paper shows that access to land and natural common resources through socially embedded tenure arrangements enable households to produce crops and keep livestock to reproduce themselves. Using unpaid gendered family labour, simple farming tools and low cost farming techniques such as seed saving and fertilising the soil with animal manure, and selling livestock through informal local markets, the people of Mhlopheni are reconfiguring farming the 'peasant' way. This is despite the fixation of the state on seeing land reform primarily as a vehicle for small-scale capitalist farmers to become large-scale commercial farmers, an attempt that continues to fail to address livelihoods challenges of many marginalised working class rural households. Evidence from Mhlopheni invites us to ask different questions about what land reform is for and take seriously the possible answers we arrive at and their implications for agrarian change.