Five episodes of the Land and Corruption podcast now available

You can access a five episode podcast series from the Corruption Watch website.

Episode 1: You’ll hear project leaders from CW and TI as they talk about the areas in which they want to see change happen and the research done so far, community activists who paint a disturbing picture of ruthless corruption between companies and authorities and threats to livelihoods and lives, and representatives of other organisations who tell of discrimination and hardships against marginalised people.

Episode 2: Podcast host Melusi Ncala brings together people with different views on the land issue.  Those on the left believe land should be returned to the black majority because of the country’s colonial past, and those on the right who believe that inequality and poverty can be addressed through employment and access to property rights.

Episode 3: Melusi Ncala and the CW team take a field trip to the Western Cape’s agricultural region. Here they visit several farming communities and talk honestly and openly with people living and/or working on some of the region’s biggest farms, as well as small farmers who cannot realistically compete with the power wielded by white farmers. These discussions highlight the flaws in government schemes and programmes such as the equity scheme, the aim of which was to allow farm workers to share in ownership of the economy as a vehicle of transformation.

Episode 4: In this episode farm workers tell us about their largely unrewarded toil for the owners. They speak about working on farms for their whole lives, and leaving with a fraction of what is due to them.

Episode 5: This episode explores how policies introduced along with the new democratic order could inadvertently be responsible for the continued suffering of labour tenants and other social groups trying to access and own land. This despite the constitutional safeguards put in place to mitigate the very hardships that are now experienced by the rural poor. Experts discuss the problems at hand, and some of the solutions that have been put in place.