Farm Workers and Farm Dwellers inLimpopo Province,SouthAfrica

Abstract

One of the less studied legacies of settler colonialism and agrarian dualism inSouthAfrica is the substantial population of people living and working on (still mostly) white‐owned commercial farms – a feature distinct from most other countries inSouthernAfrica. Many farm workers and farm dwellers inSouthAfrica experience precarious tenure, and poor housing and labour conditions. This paper explores what is happening to farm labour and to agricultural capital inLimpopo province. Findings from field research on four horticultural and livestock/game farms illustrate how economic pressures, combined with land restitution and labour migration, have produced new and contested trajectories of agrarian change – largely cementing a historical shift from independent land tenure to wage labour but also prompting diversification of livelihoods. We explore the ways in which actors on farms – workers, dwellers, owners and managers – have responded with regard to three spheres of contestation: ownership, production and employment; tenure and livelihoods; and family, gender and children. We argue that, contrary to official visions of reform, long‐term processes of agrarian change predating political transition – proletarianization, casualization and the externalization of farm labour – are being accelerated. These processes, and the ways in which they are producing new contours of social differentiation, are illustrated at farm level.