ABSTRACT. Here, we discuss tensions inherent in multistakeholder approaches addressing conflicts over natural resources as well as the involvement of stakeholders in research. Our discussion is built on knowledge generated by extensive research on the impacts of private farm conversions to game farms in South Africa, where significant increases in farm conversions have been observed since the 1990s. The studies had a particular focus on the consequences for farm dwellers, one of the most marginalized groups in the South African countryside. The research findings challenge the dominant narrative that game farming offers a win-win situation for nature conservation and rural development. Based on data from the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces, we extended the narrow technical and economic framing of the narrative to include the socio-political meanings of the conversions. We reflect on a series of multistakeholder workshops that we organized, partly as a requirement of the funding agency. The workshop aims were to disseminate our research findings among the stakeholder groups and explore ways to mitigate the negative impacts of conversions. We discuss how we organized the engagement process in ways that sought to address the power differences between game farmers, the State, and farm dwellers. The main challenge appeared to be that farm dwellers were not recognized as stakeholders. This "invisibility" has multiple reasons, in particular, the historical and current trajectories of land dispossession. It is also linked to specific institutional and personal relations in the two provinces, resulting in different uses of the workshop spaces. By considering the complexities of stakeholder relations in the farm conversion context, we gained a deeper understanding of the politics of land and belonging in the still unequal postapartheid rural landscape. Based on experiences from the research as well as the workshops, we take a critical stance regarding mainstream notions of stakeholder engagement and resilience building. We argue that if we fail to consider power relations and politics explicitly in these processes, we risk neglecting important conflicts and reproducing the invisibility of marginalized stakeholders.
This thematic issue brings together the scholarly fields of critical conservation studies and African land issues, a relationship largely unexplored to date. The alienation of land for conservation purposes, introduced to Africa under colonial rule and still taking place today, has fundamental impacts on the politics of land and land use, and is contested in contemporary nation-states -including those that are attempting to implement land restitution and reform. The contributors explore these issues in a range of African contexts. Three key themes are identified: the problematic constructions of 'community' by outside agencies; spatial exclusion and the silencing of local voices; and the neoliberalisation of conservation spaces. In contributing to new perspectives on these themes, this thematic issue shows how discourses and practices of conservation, increasingly shaped by neoliberalism, currently impact on land ownership, access and use. It further highlights some important historical continuities. These trends can be observed in transfrontier conservation areas, on state-owned land used for conservation and 'green' initiatives, but also on private land where conservation is increasingly turned to commercial purposes. Land and conservation in post-colonial Africa: Old Land, New Practices?This thematic issue of the Journal of Contemporary African Studies highlights recent scholarship on the complex interrelations between contemporary conservation practices in post-colonial Africa, in conversation with the well-trodden territory of land use and contested land issues in the continent. Within the last two decades or so, a substantial cross-disciplinary literature has emerged that engages with the local and regional politics of nature conservation from a social science perspective (see Anderson and Grove 1987;Neumann 1998;Zerner 2000, also see Marnham 1980 for an early journalistic critique). Critical conservation studies is emerging as a field in its own right, as evidenced by the success of recent conference initiatives attracting a range of scholars from various disciplines (see for example Nature TM Inc.). African land issues have been a subject of interest for Africanists over a far longer period, as scholars have grappled with the implications of communal tenure systems, land dispossession and the introduction of private property regimes in southern Africa's settler colonies
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