Bill Derman

Environmental NGOs, Dispossession, and the State: The Ideology and Praxis of African Nature and Development

Zimbabwe provides a significant context to examine the interplay of the new development rhetoric, the actions of powerful conservation organizations, donor policies, a relatively strong and stable government, and the empowerment of local communities. This interplay exists in diverse rural areas where the Communal Areas Management Program for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) is in various stages of experimentation and implementation. CAMPFIRE has been described as a philosophy of sustainable rural development that enables rural communities to manage, and benefit directly form indigenous wildlife. It is the best known of African efforts to permit African communities to re- assert their management of selected natural resources. The program has the official support of the Zimbabwean government. Nonetheless, there are many potential areas of serious conflict. Three case studies are utilized to explore how the challenges of repossession of critical environmental resources by marginalized communities in the changing context of state and NGO relationships where international tourism is a revenue generator for both the private sector and government.

The politics of IWRM in Southern Africa

This article offers an approach to the study of the evolution, spread and uptake of integrated water resources management (IWRM). Specifically, it looks at the flow of IWRM as an idea in international and national fora, its translation and adoption into national contexts, and the on-the-ground practices of IWRM. Research carried out in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique provides empirical insights into the politics of IWRM implementation in southern Africa, the interface between international and national interests in shaping water policies in specific country contexts, and the on-the-ground challenges of addressing equity, redress and the reallocation of water.

The New Development Rhetoric and Lake Malawi

Despite the new development rhetoric emphasising sustainability, preservation of biodiversity, natural resource management, income generation and participatory research, the new World Bank Malawi Fisheries Development Project represents a continuation of past practices. This article examines the underlying conceptual framework and implications of this World Bank project in the light of research among fishing communities on Lake Malawi. The Bank, it is argued, is mistakenly promoting assistance to the large-scale commercial fishing sector rather than attempting to implement more innovative and collaborative project initiatives with small-scale fishers, processors and traders who comprise the vast majority of lake

Historical Justice and Socio-Economic Development: Tensions in South Africa's Land Resolution Programme

Abstract This study of the land restitution process and the return of, or compensation for, land taken for racial reasons since 1913, explores how the South African ANC government balances the search for economic growth and undoing historical and social injustices underpinned by efforts to balance universal citizenship with recognition of difference. Land restitution, the third leg of South Africas land reform, has entered a critical phase, with the planned restoration of hundreds of highly developed commercial farms in Limpopo Province to claimant communities in the face of substantial landowner resistance and government over-commitment. The combination of productive land, substantial export revenues, pervasive restitution claims and past disappointments has led the government to embrace a new model of restitution. Successful claimant communities will form a joint venture company with a private entrepreneur and with a small share reserved for farm workers. This new modified business model raises a series of fundamental questions about how the South African government balances its responsibility for providing economic and social development while achieving social justice. A related question is how it equalises the three sources of inequality: race, gender and class. The paper, based upon fieldwork in northern Limpopo Province, analyses these emerging tensions.

Rights-Based Freshwater Governance for the Twenty-First Century: Beyond an Exclusionary Focus on Domestic Water Uses

The UN recognition of a human right to water for drinking, personal and other domestic uses and sanitation in 2010 was a political breakthrough in states’ commitments to adopt a human rights framework in carrying out part of their mandate. This chapter explores other domains of freshwater governance in which human rights frameworks provide a robust and widely accepted set of normative values to such governance. The basis is General Comment No. 15 of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 2002, which states that water is needed to realise a range of indivisible human rights to non-starvation, food, health, work and an adequate standard of living and also procedural rights to participation and information in water interventions. On that basis, the chapter explores concrete implications of the Comment for states’ broader infrastructure-based water services implied in the recognised need to access to infrastructure, rights to non-discrimination in public service delivery and respect of people’s own prioritisation. This implies a right to water for livelihoods with core minimum service levels for water to homesteads that meet both domestic and small-scale productive uses, so at least 50–100 l per capita per day. Turning to the state’s mandates and authority in allocating water resources, the chapter identifies three forms of unfair treatment of small-scale users in current licence systems. As illustrated by the case of South Africa, the legal tool of “Priority General Authorisations” is proposed. This prioritises water allocation to small-scale water users while targeting and enforcing regulatory licences to the few high-impact users.

Land Rights, Human Rights and Development: Contestations in Land Restitution, Limpopo Province, South Africa

Worlds of Human Rights presents ethnographic studies from Sub Saharan Africa that highlight how individuals and groups use human rights to achieve greater justice. It shows how struggles concerning land, property, gender equality and legal identity are shaped by contexts of history, power structures and legal pluralism.

Worlds of Human Rights

Worlds of Human Rights presents ethnographic studies from Sub Saharan Africa that highlight how individuals and groups use human rights to achieve greater justice. It shows how struggles concerning land, property, gender equality and legal identity are shaped by contexts of history, power structures and legal pluralism.

Between Common Community Interest and Gender Difference: Women in South Africa's Land Restitution Process

Worlds of Human Rights presents ethnographic studies from Sub Saharan Africa that highlight how individuals and groups use human rights to achieve greater justice. It shows how struggles concerning land, property, gender equality and legal identity are shaped by contexts of history, power structures and legal pluralism.

A Response to ‘The Elusive “Fair Deal” in South Africa's Land Reform’

In James Gibson’s assessment of public opinion surrounding land reconciliation in South Africa, he concludes that while land is not the most pressing issue for most South Africans (unemployment and jobs are), it is an issue of considerable importance to black South Africans (Gibson, 2009). A variety of reasons account for its importance including: the symbolic significance given to land, and the deep sense that current land inequality is a reflection of past actions. The past is indeed used to provide the rationale for changing present land distribution while whites are highly insensitive to the crimes of the past. In addition, black South Africans are far more favorable to land redistribution than other South African groups. In recognising the continued importance of land, Dr Kepe enquires as to why, given the widely acknowledged importance of the principle of justice in South African society, has land reform fallen so short in meeting its original goals? He argues that the neoliberal character of South African land reform which treats land as a commodity – functionally and discursively disembedded from socio-political histories of dispossession – has limited the land reform process to a shallow distributive model of justice. Even though I agree with most of Dr Kepe’s sentiments, I do not envision any easy acceptance of his argument nor a path to its resolution. Nor do I see the ‘political will’ to engage in such a set of difficult, long, and complex processes with unpredictable outcomes. I find in my own research that the scale of inter-related issues transcend his suggested binary opposition of commodity\non-commodity and the property clause in the constitution. Land restitution in Limpopo Province has entailed keeping land off the market while claimant communities in 2005–2006 viewed the return of their land as a recognition of their just claims (Hellum and Derman, 2009). Dispossession takes multiple forms and who decides which ones count is a question of power, not necessarily that of fairness or justice. For example, most of the remaining land restitution cases in Limpopo Province are pitting black South African communities against each other.

Ethnographic and Historical Perspectives on Rights Claiming on the African Continent

Worlds of Human Rights presents ethnographic studies from Sub Saharan Africa that highlight how individuals and groups use human rights to achieve greater justice. It shows how struggles concerning land, property, gender equality and legal identity are shaped by contexts of history, power structures and legal pluralism.