Join us tomorrow for our Living Landscapes in Action Masterclass! Prof. Maano Ramutsindela from @UCT_news will explore how the institutionalisation of borders in ecologically inspired landscapes affects the mobility of humans and non-humans. 🗓️ Tuesday, 27 October 2026 🕙 10:00 to 13:00 CAT 📍 Online via Zoom 🔗Find suggested readings and register here: shorturl.at/Mocyp

👩🏿‍🌾 Are land and water policy reforms ‘too ambitious’ and ‘unimplementable’ in South Africa? This Thursday, Professor Janwillem Liebrand, from Utrecht University, will deliver a #seminar on progressive land and water policies in South Africa based on his ongoing research in the Trichardtsdal-Ofcolaco area in Limpopo. Join us! 🗓️ Thursday, 22 October 2026 🕐 13:00 to 14:00 SAST 📍 PLAAS seminar room, Jakes Gerwel Hall, University of the Western Cape & online 📝 Register on zoom and read the full abstract here: shorturl.at/KiXEd

#NewBook Alert! 📚 Redistributive Land Reform: Challenging Inequality in the 21st Century, edited by @IanScoones, Saturnino M. Borras, @RuthHallPLAAS, and Wendy Wolford, published by @BloomsburyBooks on February 4, 2027. Experts from across four continents - Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe 🌍 explore research and case studies on inequality and redistributive land reform. 🔗 Learn more: bloomsbury.com/uk/redistribu… 📩 Sign up to be the first to know about updates: forms.gle/FnBcoSRrZxHL2qN27

🌱 This week, we joined our civil society partners at a workshop on equitable access to land, where they strategised on what they want "equitable", "access", and "land" to encompass. We'll share more of the outcomes soon! ✊🏾 @UWConline @NelsonMandela @DAG__activism @AFRAKZN @RuralDemocracy @NdifunaUkwazi

Deadline on Tuesday! We're looking for two energetic PhD candidates - one from Kenya and another from Tanzania - for our exciting Digital Agrarian Futures project. We strongly urge young women researchers to apply. shorturl.at/1prwm @UWConline @RuthHallPLAAS @NELGA_AU

Seminar 📢 Human-made climate change undermines the ecological and socio-economic basis of African life. Addressing this global climate crisis requires a rapid and drastic reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions. But while a transition towards renewable energies has become inevitable, justice has not. Dr Hamza Hamouchene delivers on Monday this seminar challenging the deceptive narrative that obfuscates questions of ownership and sovereignty, and that masks ongoing global relations of neo-colonial domination. Monday, 14 September 2026 13:00 to 14:00 SAST PLAAS seminar room, or online Register on zoom: shorturl.at/vgeoD Read the abstract: shorturl.at/RGY8J

How does renewable energy infrastructure create ‘green sacrifice zones’ in rural Africa? 🌍 Join us for a seminar with Prof. Clemens Greiner to explore this from a case study of geothermal energy in Kenya. 📅 27 August 2026 🕐 13:00 SAST 📍 Jakes Gerwel Hall, UWC / 💻 Zoom Register: uwc.zoom.us/meeting/register…

Congratulations to PLAAS PhD graduate Charity Rusere on her new role as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the BIOSSCI at the @IEJ_SA. 🎉 Dr Rusere will bring her research expertise in agrarian change and rural livelihoods to explore livestock systems in South Africa through this project.

🇰🇪🇹🇿 We're looking for PhD candidates to apply for two "Digital Agrarian Futures" scholarships. If you have the right doctoral topic and can conduct long-term ethnographic research, we want to hear from you. Read more and apply here: shorturl.at/1prwm

📢 BIODIVERSITY & CONSERVATION PROFESSIONALS! Apply for our funded Living Landscapes: New Thinking on Integrating Biodiversity and Social Justice short course, designed to bring racial and gender justice into conservation. 🗓️ 26-30 Oct 📍Cape Town, SA plaas.org.za/call-for-applic…

“I don’t want to be seated in heaven seeing my grandchildren without land.” 🎥 Watch this new documentary, based on research on 25 years after Zimbabwe's controversial land reform programme by @TapiwaChatikob2, @IanScoones, and other researchers, and produced by Alport Ndlovu. 🌱It follows field visits where farmers from Mvurwi, Matobo, Gutu, and Masvingo communities visited each other to learn from one another and have remained in touch since then. youtube.com/watch?v=ldiTtVio…

📢 Ready to advance your career in poverty, land and agrarian studies? Applications are now open for our 2027 Postgraduate Diploma in Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (NQF 8), the only accredited programme of its kind in South Africa, taught by leading African academics. 📅 Applications close: 30 September, 2026 Learn more and apply: plaas.org.za/postgraduate-di… @UWConline

What South Africa's @ConCourtSA's progressive judgment on Cape Town's Tafelberg property means for equitable access to land and spatial justice. We congratulate @NdifunaUkwazi and @ReclaimCT for their long struggle to have these rights recognised. shorturl.at/3WDbU

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. ✊🏿

How is bridging the urban and rural divide key to a stronger democracy in #SouthernAfrica? 🤔 PLAAS postdoctoral fellow, @boamonjane argues that rural and urban struggles are deeply interconnected. Drawing on case studies of popular resistance ✊🏾, he shows how building solidarity across these spaces can challenge inequality. Read here: tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.…

📊New research using 10 years of data from 34 African countries has mapped out 1,000+ conflicts across Africa. Almost 75% of these conflicts were related to access to resources. 🌍PLAAS Professors @HaraMafaniso and Moenieba Isaacs discuss the barriers to access in South Africa and the role of government in solving them, in this article by @TC_Africa. Read and learn about other African case studies: theconversation.com/disputes… #WorldOceansDay 🌊