Power and politics in stakeholder engagement: farm dweller (in)visibility and conversions to game farming in South Africa

Abstract

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.

Living on Other People’s Land; Impacts of Farm Conversions to Game Farming on Farm Dwellers’ Abilities to Access Land in the Eastern Cape, South Africa

“…The latter enlisted the help some of his neighbors to set the farm dwellers' houses on fire, scatter their livestock, and transport them to a township where they were dumped by the side of the road. The stories were corroborated by some of the neighbors involved in these actions, who expressed remorse during one of the workshops organized in the context of the research project (Brandt, Josefsson and Spierenburg 2018).…”

“…Regular team meetings and joint field visits were organized to discuss findings and validate the coding of the interviews and observation reports by the team members. In addition, several multi-stakeholder meetings were organized by the project team (including the author) between 2007 and 2012 to discuss the objectives of the research and inform the different stakeholders about the findings, which also provided further insights into the power relations between the different stakeholders (Brandt, Josefsson and Spierenburg 2018), and also served to check our interpretations of the findings with our respondents and stakeholders.…”

“…At the same time, farm dwellers also use legal ways to challenge their marginalized position. KwaZulu-Natal has a strong presence of advocacy and activist organizations and has its share of high-profile tenant claims such as the Gongolo case where claimants managed to stall the development of a private wildlife reserve (Brandt, Josefsson andSpierenburg 2018, Kamuti 2014).…”

Individual and Social Preferences in Participatory Multi-Criteria Evaluation

“…Thus, deliberative processes make it possible to observe the different force and influence that different stakeholder groups can exert, both during the process and in the agreements reached [16,51,67,80,81]. It is possible for some stakeholders to participate with the sole objective of defending their own interests, without any interest in providing information or enriching the process [51].…”

Barriers and Opportunities for Actionable Knowledge Production in Drought Risk Management: Embracing the Frontiers of Co-production

“…Successful co-production is predicated on including a plurality of perspectives, which often requires the disruption of established roles and routines (Vincent et al, 2018;Turnhout et al, 2020). Deep rooted power imbalances can prevent engagement, reproduce knowledge hierarchies and, consequently, undermine the co-production process (Mobjörk, 2010;Reed et al, 2014;Brandt et al, 2018). To avoid such pitfalls, it is important that all actors involved in the co-productive processes are committed to achieving a common goal and able to regularly and systematically reflect on and discuss the extent to which their understandings and values are being represented (Reed et al, 2014;Norström et al, 2020).…”