Participatory rural appraisal of dairy farms in the north west province of Cameroon

A Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) was conducted in dairy farms of the North West Province of Cameroon. The aim of the PRA was to have a better understanding of the prevailing dairy systems, identify problems, and set priorities for research and development that can contribute to improved systems of production. A multidisciplinary team of researchers and extension agents was constituted. It was made up of scientists of the following fields: cattle management, forage science, agro economy, veterinary, dairy technology, nutrition and extension. The research team visited farmers' groups and divided itself into subgroups for farm and village walks during which direct observations were also noted. The extension agent of the locality, key informants, gave additional information overlooked by farmers. Interviews were also carried out with other stakeholders of the dairy sector. The research team met the day following the visit to agree on a common report. Results show that five small scale dairy production systems are found in the region: transhumance, improved extensive, semi intensive, zero grazing and peri-urban. Agriculture is well integrated to dairying. Main constraints include in order of importance: poor marketing opportunities and long distances to market, limited grazing land and poor supplementation strategies, poor reproductive management and poor calving interval, inadequate knowledge in processing, hygiene and milk preservation, and limited health control. In market oriented farms, reproduction and feeding were the most important constraints. Main factors influencing dairy production are: milk collection, fresh milk price, consumer demand, genotype and management. These results suggest that much can be done to improve production by extending improved packages to dairy farmers.

Coming to grips with 'abandoned arable' land in efforts to enhance communal grazing systems in the Eastern Cape province, South Africa

The communal lands of the Eastern Cape have been regarded as both tools and problems by policy-makers. In particular, communal lands are problematised as environmentally degraded, of suboptimum productivity and constraining economic development. The Eastern Cape Communal Lands Research Project was framed within this policy discourse with the aim of introducing legume-based pasture into ‘abandoned arable lands’. Initial results from community workshops show that the institutional arrangements for these arable lands vary widely and, with them, the capacity to utilise any new technology that may have application to them. Rather than simply draw on social capital, if a participatory research approach is to enhance the agency of the participating communites, it may need to contribute to social capital building and especially to create a dialogical space in which the matters being researched can be discussed meaningfully.

Fenced in: Common property struggles in the management of communal rangelands in central Eastern Cape Province, South Africa

This paper takes as its starting point the assertion that current rangeland management in the central Eastern Cape Province (former Ciskei) of South Africa, is characterised primarily by an ‘open access’ approach. Empirical material drawn from three case-study communities in the region is used to examine the main barriers to management of rangeland as a ‘commons’. The general inability to define and enforce rights to particular grazing resourses in the face of competing claims from ‘outsiders’, as well as inadequate local institutions responsible for rangeland management are highlighted as being of key importance. These are often exacerbated by lack of available grazing land, diffuse user groups and local political and ethnic divisions. Many of these problems have a strong legacy in historical apartheid policies such as forced resettlement and betterment planning. On this basis it is argued that policy should focus on facilitating the emergence of effective, local institutions for rangeland management. Given the limited grazing available to many communities in the region, a critical aspect of this will be finding ways to legitimise current patterns of extensive resource use, which traverse existing ‘community’ boundaries. However, this runs counter to recent legislation, which strongly links community management with legal ownership of land within strict boundaries often defined through fencing. Finding ways to overcome this apparent disjuncture between theory and policy will be vital for the effective management of common pool grazing resources in the region.

Contested institutions? Traditional leaders and land access and control in communal areas of Eastern Cape Province, South Africa

The South African government has endeavoured to strengthen property rights in communal areas and develop civil society institutions for community-led development and natural resource management. However, the effectiveness of this remains unclear as the emergence and operation of civil society institutions in these areas is potentially constrained by the persistence of traditional authorities. Focusing on the former Transkei region of Eastern Cape Province, three case study communities are used examine the extent to which local institutions overlap in issues of land access and control. Within these communities, traditional leaders (chiefs and headmen) continue to exercise complete and sole authority over land allocation and use this to entrench their own positions. However, in the absence of effective state support, traditional authorities have only limited power over how land is used and in enforcing land rights, particularly over communal resources such as rangeland. This diminishes their local legitimacy and encourages some groups to contest their authority by cutting fences, ignoring collective grazing decisions and refusing to pay ‘fees’ levied on them. They are encouraged in such activities by the presence of democratically elected local civil society institutions such as ward councillors and farmers’ organisations, which have broad appeal and are increasingly responsible for much of the agrarian development that takes place, despite having no direct mandate over land. Where it occurs at all, interaction between these different institutions is generally restricted to approval being required from traditional leaders for land allocated to development projects. On this basis it is argued that a more radical approach to land reform in communal areas is required, which transfers all powers over land to elected and accountable local institutions and integrates land allocation, land management and agrarian development more effectively.

Harnessing the ancestors: mutuality, uncertainty and ritual practice in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa

In the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, chronic economic uncertainty has seen social relations stretched to breaking point. Informants speak of a 'war between men and women'. While grinding poverty, death in the shape of the 'axe' (HIV/AIDS) and suspicion stalk the land, and the project of building the umzi (homestead) falters, hope for the future and with it, trust between people, leaches away. One response to such uncertainty is a turn to ritual. Through a nearly relentless schedule of ritual activity which invokes the ancestors and the Christian deity in various forms, Xhosa people attempt to dam up trust, secure ongoing investment in the rural homestead and sustain ties of reciprocity both among rural people and between them and their urban kin. It is also through the staging of these rituals that women, acting together and in support of each other, are increasingly assertive – often in the face of a violent, rearguard opposition from men - in their efforts to exercise agency over the differentiated, fragmented and fragile social and economic relationships within their homesteads and across their villages.