Image: Corruption Watch
Episodes 1 and 2 of our new five-part podcast series on land corruption, respectively, laid down the background to the Land and Corruption in Africa phase 2 (LCA2) project, driven by Transparency International (TI), and moved towards discussion of land in the agricultural sector. Now episode 3 has been released.
Corruption Watch (CW) is the South Africa lead for LCA2, and is part of an eight-chapter team – with Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe – that successfully completed the first phase from 2014 to 2019. Overall, the LCA project seeks to address land corruption risks and injustices in sub-Saharan Africa.
The podcast series is titled Land and Corruption: Story of the Marginalised. Our focus area in LCA2 was land in the agricultural sector.
In episode 3 of the series, the CW team delves deeper into the intersection between corruption and human rights abuses in the land sector, exposing the ways in which this manifests and impacts disadvantaged and marginalised groups.
Join podcast host Melusi Ncala, as he and the CW team take a field trip to the Western Cape’s agricultural region. Here they visit several farming communities and talk honestly and openly with people living and/or working on some of the region’s biggest farms, as well as small farmers who cannot realistically compete with the power wielded by white farmers.
Their meetings and engagements with beneficiaries and civil society stakeholders bring to light the challenges facing farm workers, the precariousness of their lives, and lack of security in terms of tenure and livelihoods. They also discuss the situation whereby farmers received millions of rands from the government for farm worker equity schemes, of which very little trickled down to the workers who were supposed to be the main beneficiaries.
These discussions highlight the flaws in government schemes and programmes such as the equity scheme, the aim of which was to allow farm workers to share in ownership of the economy as a vehicle of transformation.
For the full story, listen to episode 3 of Land and Corruption: Story of the Marginalised now.
NOTE:
This podcast series is made possible by funding received from Transparency International. For more on CW’s work, including research reports and toolkits on land corruption, please visit our website at www.corruptionwatch.org.za. Our e-mail address is info@corruptionwatch.org.za. You can call us on 011 242 3900.
