Towards a United South African Agriculture: A Review of Social Networking Between Black Smallholder and White Commercial Farming Communities Through Farmer Organisations

Abstract

This review study takes a first step towards understanding the extent of social cohesion in South Africa’s farming landscape to contribute to the scant literature in this area. A socially cohesive society is a society in which all forms of inequality, exclusion, and disparity based on ethnicity, race, gender, class, religion or any other divisive distinction that causes distrust and conflict are sustainably reduced with a view to eventual eradication. This ideal is examined through social networking among the different farming communities within South African agriculture. Farmer organisations are identified and reviewed through their websites and discussed together with other relevant literature, searched through traditional and snowball literature reviews. We found very little evidence to suggest that the social cohesion ideal has been achieved in South African agriculture. The implications of this are discussed in light of the transformation agenda of the agricultural sector through land reform.