The Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS)

📢 Seminar: Navigating the Green Energy Dilemma: A Case Study of Geothermal Development in Kenya🗣️

While solar, wind, and geothermal projects are crucial for global climate goals, their low energy density frequently leads to new land conflicts, displacements, and marginalized rural burdens at the local level.

Join us for this seminar with Professor Clemens Greiner from the University of Cologne, who will explore these complex dynamics and their intersections with local communities, economic development, and environmental sustainability.

📅 27 Aug 2026
🕐 13:00 SAST
📍 Jakes Gerwel Hall, UWC / 💻 Zoom
Register: https://uwc.zoom.us/meeting/register/AF0s8zLZTyCTfBjRyfdQZw

PLAAS PhD graduate, Dr Charity Rusere, takes on a new role as Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the Bio-social Security: Social Science Transformations of Biosecurity (BIOSSCI) project at the Institute for Economic Justice (IEJ). 🌍

For the next three years, Dr Rusere will explore livestock systems in South Africa with project PI Professor Stephen Hinchliffe and Dr Andrew Bennie, bringing her expertise in agrarian change, land governance, rural livelihoods, food systems and rural development.

Congratulations, Dr Rusere! 🎉 We are so proud of you and look forward to the incredible impact you will make on people’s lives.

🎓 Kenya and Tanzania PhD candidates, we're looking for you!

We have two scholarships in poverty, land and agrarian studies, working on our "Digital Agrarian Futures" project with the Collaborative Research Centre TR228 with the University of Cologne. If you have the right doctoral topic, can conduct long-term ethnographic research, write scholarly publications, and are confident you can present your findings at academic conferences, we want to hear from you. Women candidates are strongly urged to apply.

Find more information on the flyer, and apply via this link: https://plaas.org.za/apply-phd-scholarships-digital-agrarian-futures-project/

The University of the Western Cape

📢 CALLING ALL BIODIVERSITY AND CONSERVATION PROFESSIONALS!

Why are so many conservation approaches unable to do justice to people who live in these areas? Our Living Landscapes: New Thinking on Integrating Biodiversity and Social Justice short course is designed to answer this question and many more about how conservation is practised in Africa. Apply for this fully funded in-person course, taking place this October, where you can learn how to apply considerations about the ever-present racial, gender and other inequities in conservation.

🗓️ 26-30 October 2026
📍Cape Town, South Africa

Participants must be available in person in Cape Town for the duration of the course. Read more and apply below.

Call for applications 2026: New Thinking on Integrating Biodiversity and Social Justice short course | Plaas In-person short course 26-30 October 2026 Cape Town, South Africa Why are so many conservation approaches unable to do justice to people who live in these areas? What could an integrated approach to “living with” biodiversity rather than separating locals from nature achieve? Is conservation cau...

“I don’t want to be seated in heaven seeing my grandchildren without land.”

Watch this new documentary, based on research by Tapiwa Chatikobo, Ian Scoones and other researchers and produced by Alport Ndlovu. It explores the reality of Zimbabwe’s controversial land reform programme 25 years later and how it yielded different results across communities.

It follows field visits in May 2025, when land reform beneficiaries from Mvurwi, Matobo, Gutu, and Masvingo communities visited one another to learn from each other’s dynamics and have remained in touch to date.

Listen to their stories below.

TRAVEL FILM:25 years after land reform in Zimbabwe Our research has explored the experiences of land reform in A1 smal...

Applications open for 2027: Postgraduate Diploma in Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (NQF Level 8)! 🎓

This programme is the only accredited qualification of its kind in South Africa. It is ideal for graduates and working professionals who are looking to strengthen their knowledge in poverty, land, and agrarian studies.

💼Strategise your next career move with an accredited university qualification (NQF) level 8, learning from internationally renowned African lecturers with established teaching, learning, and research expertise in poverty, land and agrarian studies.

🏛️Build a solid understanding of key concepts in poverty, land, agrarian reform, ecosystem management, and climate change.

🌍Get ahead in your profession by learning historically accurate and timely critical engagement with land and related policies in Southern Africa to make real-time interventions in your context.
Learn more and apply here: https://plaas.org.za/postgraduate-diploma/

The Constitutional Court judgment on a Tafelberg property in Sea Point, Cape Town, sets an important precedent on equitable access to land and spatial justice. The state is obliged to deliver on equitable access to land as outlined in Section 25(5) of the Constitution. The Constitutional Court confirmed that the state and its departments – in this case the Western Cape province and the City of Cape Town – have an obligation to deliver on spatial justice. These are:

- Access to the city for the poor and vulnerable is vital for housing delivery and particularly housing, which has to be intentional in addressing spatial apartheid and promoting access to city life and opportunities in the city.
- The state at this provincial and city level must seek resources from the national government to deliver on its constitutional obligation for access to land and housing.
- Where these resources are insufficient, it must use its intergovernmental relations in different statutes, such as provincial and national Human Settlements departments, or provincial and national Infrastructure departments.

Read more on how in the link below.

PLAAS congratulates Reclaim the City and Ndifuna Ukwazi for their long struggle to have these rights recognised and to advance spatial justice in Cape Town. We welcome this progressive judgment from the Constitutional Court.

STATEMENT: What the Constitutional Court’s ruling on the Tafelberg property means for equitable access to land and spatial justice | Plaas Pictures: Zacharia Mashele/Ndifuna Ukwazi. The Constitutional Court judgment on a Tafelberg property in Sea Point, Cape Town, sets an important precedent on equitable access to land and spatial justice. The state is obliged to deliver on equitable access to land as outlined in Section 25(5) of the C...

𝗣𝗟𝗔𝗔𝗦 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝘀𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗱𝗮𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗔𝗳𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗰𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘇𝗲𝗻𝘀

Through 30 years of our work, PLAAS has learnt that African citizens want the same thing: a safe piece of land with their families to call home, and no one is threatening to take it away from them. The rise of vigilantism, hate-speech, violence, human rights violations, terror, and other unlawful behaviour in South Africa against African citizens is a shameful blight on the leadership of our country and society. Afrophobic and xenophobic threats, intimidation, violence, and inhumane behaviour towards African migrants is in profound contradiction to the values we hold at PLAAS. PLAAS rejects all forms of hatred towards people. Our institute remains a safe space for all who work and study here, regardless of nationality.

A unilateral ultimatum has been issued by vigilante groups for migrants to leave South Africa, with protestors charging on migrants with illegal threats to loot their shops, assaults, vigilantism, and other forms of unlawful behaviour, marking clearly the race and class distinction some members of the public have drawn. Desperate South Africans are intimidating countless thousands, even millions, of people escaping injustice where they were born, forcing them to run for their lives.

Much has been said and written to make sense of how and why some groups using hate-filled language have manipulated legitimate grievances by working-class South Africans – chronic joblessness, failed service delivery, crime and gangsterism, homelessness and landlessness, corruption, and economic stagnation – and laid them at the door of some of the most vulnerable people in our society: African migrants. Fearful movements use Afrophobia to misdirect people’s anger with failed systems and scapegoat migrants for deep-seated socioeconomic crises.

We understand this anger all too well. For over three decades, PLAAS’s research has underscored the severity of poverty, landlessness, and failed policies that poor and working-class people have been forced to live with. By remaining unaccountable for these failures, political, public, and corporate leadership have allowed vigilante groups to threaten our democracy.

As a community dedicated to the struggle for social justice, land rights, and livelihoods, we at PLAAS understand that this is a regional and universal struggle. The histories of conquest, dispossession, colonialism, and neoliberalism have shaped our realities, conflicts, and the many drivers of human mobility across the continent. The fight for justice and dignity is a universal one, internationalism and African solidarity must remain a core principle we defend as a foundation of our democracy. We commend members of the public who have stood up to and rejected Afrophobic responses to legitimate governance issues.

We stand with all African citizens, the poor, and working-class people struggling peacefully for livelihoods and a dignified life in South Africa.

PLAAS stands in solidarity with African citizens | Plaas Through 30 years of our work, PLAAS has learnt that African citizens want the same thing: a safe piece of land with their families to call home, and no one is threatening to take it away from them. The rise of vigilantism, hate-speech, violence, human rights violations, terror, and other unlawful be...

How is bridging the urban and rural divide key to a stronger democracy in Southern Africa? 🤔

In his latest article, Boa Monjane explains that the fragmentation between urban and rural communities only further entrenches ‘erratic democracy’ in , where elections are held, but social justice lags.

He points to case studies, such as the ProSavana movement in Mozambique, which was successful because rural peasants teamed up with urban professionals and lawyers to prevent a massive land-grab project. ✊🏾

He recommends that for democracy to benefit all, it must bridge the spatial divide between urban and rural communities first.

Read here:

Bridging divides against erratic democratic trajectories: the politics of rural and urban social movements in Southern Africa This article examines the complex relationship between social and popular movements in Southern Africa across sectors and geographies amid erratic democracy. It analyzes how these sectorial and geo...

This 🌊, we're highlighting research that puts small-scale fishers at the center of conversations about ocean governance.

This new paper 📊 explores what causes conflict for small-scale fishers while they’re trying to eke out a living and maps out the different forms of conflict that artisanal fishers face across the Global South.

The research found more than 1,000 conflicts over the study period, most of which were verbal disagreements. But because they’re non-violent, it draws less attention, yet they define how the ocean is used, managed, and who benefits from it.

Using 10 years of data across 34 African countries, PLAAS Professors Mafa Hara and Moenieba Isaacs, alongside other researchers, help understand and map out what fair interventions for small-scale fishers could look like.

Read this blog in The Conversation Africa to learn more about what this means, including for South Africa’s blue economy. 🎣 🌍

Disputes over Africa’s ocean resources: here’s what could help avoid them As ocean uses expand, it will be necessary to reduce disputes because they disrupt the environmental sustainability and equity central to a blue economy.