CÓDIGO DE CLASE ESPECÍFICO: 20833

Research is caught in a constant tension between relevance and rigour (Smith, 2001). On the one hand the knowledge should be relevant, even practically useful. On the other hand the information and knowledge generated from research should be as accurate as it can be.

‘Research fatigue’ is fairly common in some South African rural settlements, where initial research in a particular place stimulates others to follow up. When the research does not generate any practical changes in the lives of research participants or the inhabitants of the area, some people may eventually become tired of taking time to talk to researchers but getting no benefit. I encountered this amongst some individuals early on in the research, people who questioned my motives and why they should spend time responding to my questions.

I sought to adopt a critical-emancipatory approach in the research, promoting emancipatory praxis and “a critical consciousness which exhibits itself in political as well as practical action to promote change” (Grundy, 1987:154). I aimed to build a bridge between academia and

‘development activism’: using detailed, in-depth research and theorising as the grounding for considered interventions. On the one hand, academia forces nuance whereas activism tends towards crude binaries. On the other hand, activism forces concreteness and practicality whereas academia tends towards abstract argument with no practical consequences. In the words of Wendy Brown this is “the tension between the political necessity to fix meaning, to

‘suture’ textual drift in a formal principle which can only guide us in action, and theory’s permanent ‘deconstruction’ which cannot ever be recuperated in a new positive programme”

(quoted in Zizek, 2008:103). I attempted to manage this tension in the research, keeping both these components alive.

Practically, I sought to integrate my research into on-going processes of development being carried out particularly through Nkuzi, a land rights non-government organisation (NGO) with an office in Elim and a history in the area stretching back to 1997. Nkuzi assisted many claimant groups to work through the restitution process, including the three groups that form the research focus. Nkuzi was respected in the area, and I was able to envelop myself in the organisation’s ‘colours’ to gain acceptance. But Nkuzi was also struggling as an organisation.

The Elim office suffered heavily, with inability to pay for basic communication infrastructure or transport for fieldworkers. The result was a steady attrition of staff and inability either to provide services to community members or to go out into the field to do the ‘community facilitation’ work at the core of their mission. The logic of my approach was to work with Nkuzi, using the research to provide a basis for specific interventions that would emerge in the research process in collaboration with active participants from amongst the inhabitants of the area.

In this I used a combination of methodologies, primarily participant observation, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions. Appendix 1 provides a list of interviews and field trips. These were mostly with inhabitants on the farms and in Vleifontein, but also included people who knew the area and people in and out of government who were working with or interested in land reform in one way or another. I recorded most but not all interviews.

In a ‘scoping’ phase I got to know the lie of the land a bit better, and met some of the key respondents. The issues that emerged during this process set the agenda for the research: the

conflict between the Xikopokopo group and the Mavungeni CPA; tensions between Munzhedzi and Nthabalala, and between the absent Shimange CPA members and the ‘pioneers’ settling on the land; and the abandoned and landlocked Vleifontein residents. I wrote a diary and took field notes, and occasionally tried to identify themes and patterns in relation to my conceptual framework of space and power.

I had planned to carry out various participatory research and planning activities. These methods have proven effective in involving people actively in research and of shaping the agenda around their own concerns and interests (Archer and Cottingham, 1996, Chambers, 1997). However, participatory methodologies must be connected to practical action, otherwise there is a danger of mobilising the energy of participants and then letting it dissipate, with potentially damaging consequences for future attempts to do joint work (Alcorn, 2000). My use of participatory methodologies was therefore dependent on the availability of resources to carry the results forward into practical action. Nkuzi initially indicated resources were available, but these dissolved as Nkuzi faced internal challenges, and the process could not be undertaken. Interactions with government were positive, in particular at the municipal and district levels, but the processes required to link into government planning and budgetary cycles proved too much for me and Nkuzi to realise any tangible movement. Consistent time needed to be put into facilitating interactions between Nkuzi and government, and as an individual I did not have that time available. I live in Johannesburg, which is about four and a half hours from Vleifontein and Louis Trichardt. Personal and work commitments meant travelling back and forth between Johannesburg and the research site. As mentioned, capacity in Nkuzi was also weak and, without resources to get the ball rolling, there was little to offer in a partnership with government. There was neither a local driver of the process, nor the resources to drive it.

The result was that the action part of the action research faded, and I made a decision to emphasise interviews and a kind of semi-involved observation. I walked on the farms with inhabitants who identified key historical and current points of interest, and I used a geographic positioning system to construct maps showing these (Figures 7 and 15). I spent time on the farms, to get at least a glimpse of daily life. I attended meetings when possible. For example, I attended a meeting of the Nthabalala land claims committee and subsequently accompanied them to a meeting with the DLA in Polokwane, where I observed the process and had an opportunity to speak to some of the residents of Nthabalala about their histories and land issues. I also attended meetings of CPA committees and tribal gatherings as an observer, and

given a chance to make comments and suggestions. I found the process useful, and I think the participants in these meetings did too.

The area has two main languages, Tshivenda and Xitsonga. These are notoriously difficult languages to learn, and are spoken by less than 7% of the national population.⁹ I did not attempt to learn the languages, given the constraints I faced in having to travel and not being in the area full time. I was fortunate to have Sipho Baloyi as a research assistant, who is conversant in both languages, although he is a native Xitsonga speaker. He is well-known in the area, and his presence did not prove to be a hindrance, even in potentially sensitive situations, for example at the Nthabalala tribal gathering or at Munzhedzi when discussions turned on the tensions between Munzhedzi and Shimange, where he lives. Mike Mokgalapa, a Tshivenda speaker, also assisted me with translations when I stayed at Munzhedzi/Maila. I was surprised that many people spoke English fluently in the area, and I needed translation assistance in less than half the interviews (Appendix 1). Nevertheless, it is possible and even likely that this resulted in some bias in the people I spoke to and the information and ideas I consequently was able to get.

I am a white, urban, middle class male in South Africa. Different people will have their own views about what that means. For some, it meant the possibility of resources (hence overstating the lack of resources or support). For others, it meant suspicion or distrust which I could not at all times penetrate, in particular with regard to gender issues and when talking to women. Few African rural women will be willing to talk forthrightly about gendered power dynamics with a white man from the city, and why should they? I specifically sought women to speak to, but my presence as a white man was not the only obstacle. The internal power relations on the farms also resulted in me constantly being redirected towards men. The CPA committees were overwhelmingly dominated by men, as were the claims committees and the DoA. Ultimately, about a quarter of the overall respondents were women (Appendix 1). This aspect of power in the research site remained closed to me and constitutes a limit of the study. The analysis, the findings of the research, is a product of my interaction, as a subjective individual, with a range of respondents with their own views about the world, themselves and me. All any researcher can do is acknowledge this fundamental subjectivity, and try to mediate it through gathering multiple viewpoints.

9 http://www.southafrica.info/about/people/language.htm

So while I set out to make the study relevant to the needs and concerns of the inhabitants of the area, I had little immediate success in practical terms in the actual research process.

However, there is a question about whether research relevance can only be measured on the basis of its contribution to immediate, practical outcomes. This is an important aspect of relevance, especially to people who are living in poverty. However, if the research is to take the form of critical-emancipatory research, there may be a broader relevance both in raising structural issues that precisely prevent the success and even possibility of immediate practical interventions, and also of bringing the voice of inhabitants themselves, in their own words, into the story about what is happening in land reform. Bringing the history of dispossession out of the hidden depths and improving our theoretical understandings also make a contribution, partly at a broader societal level but also amongst the direct participants in the research process. I found a passion about the history that surprised me, shared by many people across the racial and class spectrum. If the research contributes to facilitating dialogue about those issues, it has relevance. The process was not ideal, because the analysis still resided with me as the researcher, and I chose and selected what to put in and how to interpret it.

Qualitative research as a whole has attracted criticism for a lack of rigour in comparison with more controlled, quantitative forms of research. The extent to which epistemic claims beyond the practice setting can be made is questioned. Action research, in these terms, is acceptable as a guide for practical action, but is less valid as a method for advancing theoretical knowledge (Herr and Anderson, 2005:52). Validity refers to “the reasons we have for believing truth claims” (Moghaddam, cited in Newton and Burgess, 2008:22). This conception is dependent on the nature of the truth claims being generated. I think this argument about validity can be short-circuited by focusing more on the rigour of the information gathering process than on the validity of the ‘truth’ that is presented in the final research. This thesis is an interpretation of events, and does not claim to be the truth in some absolute sense.

Readers may not even agree with my interpretation. That in itself does not invalidate the research. Some issues in the research are subjective by their very nature. For example, what were the Hennings’ motives in trying to secure a 25 year lease at Mavungeni after the claim was settled? Or did Chief Munzhedzi’s grandfather sign away his rights to the chieftaincy to Chief Nthabalala, and why? These are subjective issues that are central to the story of Vleifontein and the surrounding farms, but which are complex and multi-faceted and have no definitive answer.

The important thing is that the reader has enough trust in the data I have used as the basis for my interpretation. I can show the reader that I have listened to and incorporated different relevant points of view. Triangulation is thus a critical method in ensuring a rounded view of the story. The nature of the research is qualitative and interpretive. To supplement this, I drew on surveys conducted on the same farms by other researchers in the Livelihoods after Land Reform project.¹⁰ I also used archival material (mainly from the Historical Papers archive housed at the William Cullen Library at Wits University in Johannesburg, but also from documents and maps that people in the area gave me, including from Nkuzi and Sam Shirinda in particular) to verify the history of the area. The transect walks and maps strengthened my understanding of the history of the area, and the way the history intersects with the present materially, through representation, and in everyday practice. They helped to reveal how the past remains present on the land, even if often hidden by thornbush and undergrowth, in memories of how the space was used and visions about how it might be used.

I began the fieldwork in earnest in October 2008 and continued through to May 2010, thinning out towards the end as I started to write. While writing, I continued going to the research site at intervals, to keep the dialogue going and to work with Nkuzi to plan the way forward beyond the PhD. Seeing space as produced does not come naturally. We take space as given, and it takes some intellectual effort to see the social relations that lie behind space and its dynamic reproduction in everyday reality. As I moved through the spaces of the research site, I had to become conscious not only of the social relations underpinning those spaces, but also my own preconceptions about where I was and what I was seeing. From this perspective, the research pushed me to examine my own thinking about space, my unquestioned assumptions about what space is meant to be used for, how it is materially organised, how that organisation is sustained and how people live it.