Alan Terry

Extending Participation in the Swaziland Sugar Industry to Small-Scale Growers: Patterns and Prospects

Since its inception in 1956, the Swazi sugar industry has been dominated by large-scale estates. In 1991, due to a combination of political and economic factors, steps were taken to allow the industry to become more accessible to small-scale Swazi farmers. The paper considers the scale and nature of this newly emerging group and discusses its likely impact on employment. Although these developments have been introduced to enable the benefits of the industry to trickle down more effectively to the rural poor, evidence suggests that better off or more organised groups or individuals are best placed to take advantage of the new opportunities. Further growth is now limited by a lack of water and it is likely that the recent rapid increase in this sector will now slow down. Some concern also exists over the impact of sugar cane monoculture on soils.

Evaluating the green revolution after a decade: a Swaziland case study

This paper analyses the impact of the Komati Pilot Project (KPP) upon members and their neighbours. The KPP was a Government of Swaziland (GoS)-financed irrigation scheme that enabled 43 subsistence and semi-subsistence farmers to change from rain-fed maize and cotton to irrigated sugar cane. It provides an opportunity to evaluate the impact of Green Revolution technology upon an African rural community where adopters and non-adopters live close together and where little income differentiation existed prior to the development because the common experience was poverty. A baseline survey of the KPP was carried out in 1997 in advance of the Komati Downstream Development Project. Of concern are the extent and direction of any trickle-down effects from the KPP participants for their neighbours and the consequences of any such impacts 10 years after the project started producing sugar cane. The expectation of the GoS was that sugar cane would benefit KPP participants and neighbours creating a multiplier effect through increased demand for services and increased demand for agricultural labour. Ten years later, these expectations are unrealized.

WHO BENEFITS FROM RURAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS? A CASE STUDY OF THE KOMATI PILOT PROJECT, SWAZILAND

ABSTRACT The Komati Pilot Project has been developed by Swazilands Ministry of Agriculture and Co-operatives to act as a learning experience prior to the major expansion of smallholder farming on the Maguga and proposed Bovane irrigation projects. Because of the failure to address the question of traditional land tenure and the very high level of public subsidy for the participants, doubt is cast over the value of this project to provide replicable lessons in advance of the main projects. There is some evidence that the scheme included already relatively advantaged smallholders, but this is not clear and the KPP has included some of the poorest smallholders in the localities. Potential changes to the EU sugar trading agreements with other developing countries may affect the long-term viability of small-scale sugar production.

Restructuring the Swazi Sugar Industry: The Changing Role and Political Significance of Smallholders

Since Independence, the contribution of Swazi smallholder farmers to sugar production has grown greatly. This is in part due to a change in the political support that the farmers have received from the Swazi state. Initially viewed with suspicion and as a challenge to royal hegemony, smallholder sugar cane production is now seen as a crucial means of overcoming rural poverty in Swaziland’s poorest region, the semi-arid lowveld. Provision of irrigation water is vital for successful sugar cane production on the co-operatively managed farms that are necessary to achieve the economies of scale in irrigated sugar production. Threats to their profitability arising from increasingly volatile markets facing Swaziland’s sugar industry since changes to the EU Sugar Protocol in 2005 undermine their capacity for co-operative governance and challenge their long-term viability. EU support to facilitate adjustment to the new sugar market has led to increased sugar cane production by smallholders. The paper argues that the two big dam projects that are at the heart of the new irrigation regions are politically ‘too big to fail’, which has committed the Swazi state to the long-term support of smallholders to ensure repayment of loans to build the dams. At the same time, the success of commercial small-scale sugar cane production poses challenges to the Swazi model of customary land tenure. Although emblematic of autocratic royal power, it also – in the processes of land and water development for commercial smallholder sugar cane production – suggests limits to how that power may be deployed in the changing relationships between Swazi elites and their corporate partners and the diverse classes of rural stakeholders.

Spectators' negotiations of risk, masculinity and performative mobilities at the TT races

Abstract This paper explores the particular assemblage of place, event and individual identity performances that occur each year in the Isle of Man in and through the TT (Tourist Trophy) motorcycle races. These road races are associated with a high degree of risk for the racers and the confluence of over 30,000 visitors and 10,000 motorcycles also presents potential risks for spectators and residents alike. Both motorcycling and risk-taking have been associated with particular forms of masculinity, notably hegemonic, working class and youthful masculinities. Using detailed surveys of spectators we argue that the TT races, while undoubtedly dominated by men and predicated on a cultural privileging of speed and skill, are grounded in varying combinations of determinate and reflexive attitudes to risk, reflecting the performance of a variety of gendered, ‘biker’ and wider identity-based positionalities. Findings also highlight a particular inter-relation of mobilities and place identities at the TT races and bring to light the highly significant and under-researched embodied, performative and emotional mobilities of spectators. The conceptual and methodological importance of (a) situated research of both mobilities and gender in specific place-temporalities and (b) wider surveys of motorcyclists to complement ethnographic studies of small cohorts are also stressed.

Understanding the Political Significance of Community Sustainable Development Indicators in Post-Apartheid South Africa: A Case Study from Sobantu Township, Pietermaritzburg

This chapter is concerned with a critical re-evaluation of a Department of International Development (DFID) funded project that ran between 1998 and 2001 in India and South Africa. The aim of the project was test whether the process of developing community-led indicators would encourage more effective participatory development. The case study addresses some of the criticisms that have recently been aimed at participatory methods, especially the view that they are apolitical and adopt a technocratic approach. Sobantu has been chosen as the subject of this chapter because the locally based non-governmental organization (NGO) was a politically astute, well connected institution which understood the political nature of the process of developing the indicators. However, although the project achieved some positive outcomes, the long-term commitment to the indicators has been compromised. Despite the sophistication of the approach, the inability of community members to engage meaningfully with key municipal service providers has diluted the long-term benefits associated with the development of the indicators. However, recent changes to the South African planning regime might provide opportunities for the indicators to become more widely adopted.