Fani Ncapayi

Land Demand and Struggles in Rural Areas of South Africa: Proletarianisation and De-agrarianisation? Fani Ncapayi

This book investigates demand and struggles for land in communal areas of South Africa partcularly Luphaphasi in the former Xhalanga district, in the Eastern Cape. I argue that contrary to assertions that the proletarianisation and conversion of rural land users into wage labourers resulted in declining interest in land use by rural people, there is an has always been demand and struggles for land in communal areas such as Xhalanga. Migrant and former farm workers were at the forefront of this demand for land. The book shows that this was the case even before the advent of democracy in 1994. In Xhalanga, some of these land-seekers were quitrent titleholders who wanted land for residential sites, and grazing purposes, which they could not get access to in the villages due overcrowding and land shortage. This situation contunues into the present, where people who need land for residential and grazing purposes primarily drive the demand for land. The overall conclusion is that the current land demand and struggles are not a new phenomenon, caused by unemployment and joblessness, as some argue. They illustrate existence of Africans with attachment to land.