Managing natural resources in a rural settlement in Peddie district
- Authors: Ainslie, Andrew
- Date: 1998
- Subjects: Conservation of natural resources -- South Africa -- Management , Natural resources -- South Africa -- Peddie District -- Management , Peddie (South Africa) -- Social conditions , Peddie (South Africa) -- History
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2110 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007462 , Conservation of natural resources -- South Africa -- Management , Natural resources -- South Africa -- Peddie District -- Management , Peddie (South Africa) -- Social conditions , Peddie (South Africa) -- History
- Description: This thesis is an account of the challenges people in Tyefu Location, Peddie District, and specifically in Gwabeni village, face in their attempts to manage their common pool natural resources. Taking my analytical cue from the literature which deals with the institutional dimensions of resource management in common property systems, I look at the impact of both outside influences and local dynamics on resource managing institutions at village level. I show how particular historical circumstances, including state interventions, led to the enclosure of Tyefu Location, and to the rapid increase in the population that had to be accommodated here. This placed enormous pressure on the natural resources of the area, and contributed to the emasculation of the local institutions responsible for overseeing resource management. The residents of the location adopted whatever strategies they could to ameliorate the depletion of natural resources in their villages. One 'traditional' strategy they have sought to emulate is to move their imizi (homesteads) away from areas where local resources has been exhausted. Given the finite area of land available to them, this strategy was only ever likely to be successful in the short-term. I analyse social, economic and institutional factors at village level that appear to act as disincentives to collective resource management activities. These factors include the social structure of the imizi and the socio-economic heterogeneity that exists between imizi in Gwabeni village. The varying degrees of household economic marginality that follow from this, together with the differential ownership of livestock and other possessions that decrease people's reliance on locally available natural resources, mean that the transaction costs that people would incur by contributing to collective resource management activities, differ widely. A primary cause of people's failure to engage in resource management at village level stems from the dispersion of the members of their imizi. This factor robs the village of decision makers and undermines the capacity of those left behind to make and implement resource management decisions. It results in the various members of imizi in the village having different orientations that dissipate the energy needed for collective action. It also fuels existing struggles, and creates new ones, over the meanings and uses of the term 'community'. I conclude by arguing that, in Tyefu Location, the management of natural resources is extremely difficult to co-ordinate, because such management is highly contested, undermined by differentiation among resource users, and subject to the attentions of weak village institutions that do not share a clear set of resource management objectives. , KMBT_363
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- Date Issued: 1998
"We are all friends here": the social dynamics of a development project
- Authors: Ainslie, Andrew
- Date: 1994
- Subjects: St Mark's Mission (South Africa) St Mark's Community Project Rural development -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape Community development -- South Africa Cooperative marketing of agricultural produce -- South Africa Women in community development -- South Africa Women in cooperative societies -- South Africa Sex role in the work environment -- South Africa World Vision International Eastern Cape (South Africa) -- Rural conditions
- Language: English
- Type: Book , Text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/1663 , vital:20214 , ISBN 0868102660
- Description: In 1978, a Rev. John Galela, then a minister at St.Mark's, launched a project which included pig-farming and the growing of vegetables for human consumption and to feed the pigs. With a grant from the South African Council of Churches (SACC), a pump was installed on the banks of the river and vegetables were grown under irrigation on 2,4 ha of land. This pilot project did not affect the leasing arrangements mentioned above. The project apparently enjoyed the approval and support of the local community, until the chief, Chief M.D. Feketha (an influential member of the Ciskeian cabinet at this time), came to hear of it and forbade the people of Newlands, who fall under his "tribal" jurisdiction, to participate in the project. , Digitised by Rhodes University Library on behalf of the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER)
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- Date Issued: 1994