Environmental apartheid: Eco-health and rural marginalization inSouth Africa

Valerie Stull a, *, Michael M. Bell b, Mpumelelo Ncwadi ca Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1710 University Ave., Madison, WI 53726, United Statesb Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1535 Observatory Drive, Madison,WI 53706, United Statesc Indwe Trust NPC, 11 Forest Lane, Parklands, Cape Town, 7441, South Africa

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 20 May 2015Received in revised form6 April 2016Accepted 8 April 2016Available online 4 May 2016

Keywords:Environmental apartheidSmallholdersSouth AfricaSocial justiceEnvironmental healthRural marginalization

a b s t r a c t

South Africa's infamous apartheid policies were not based on social, political, and economic injusticealone. They were also instituted environmentally with consequences that continue to scar the land andits people today. We offer the term environmental apartheid to refer to the use of the rural environment todeliberately marginalize racially defined groups, as well as the subsequent consequences of thatmarginalization. In the case of South Africa, the paradigmatic example of apartheid, environmentalapartheid was largely instituted through rural marginalization, the use of rural space as an environmentalmeans of marginalization. Although legal apartheid is over, environmental apartheid and its conse-quences continue to oppress Black South Africans, with devastating implications for their health, live-lihoods, and ecological integrity. We illustrate these rural injustices through a case study ofKuManzimdaka, a community of smallholder farmers on communal land in South Africa's Eastern CapeProvince.

© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Resilient. That's the first word that comes to mind whenmeeting Mildred Ncapayi, known in her community as MamBhele.She will shake your hand with a firm squeeze and a calloused palm.While her colorful red skirt and bright eyes might suggest an easierlife, tilling the earth and working with her hands is the glue thatholds together her meager possessions and extended but tight-knitfamily. Near MamBhele's kraal e the corral for her small herd ofsheep and cattle e chickens scurry to and fro as someone sprinklesmaize. Behind the house, potatoes and cabbages emerge like jewelsfrom the crusty red soil. Here, MamBhele plants vegetables, alongwith other women from the small cooperative she organized.

MamBhele lives in a section of KuManzimdaka, a village of about300 people in South Africa's Eastern Cape Province. Positioned atophigh bluffs at the base of the Drakensberg Mountains, KuMan-zimdaka rests among vast rolling pastures. Warm summer breezesbrush miles of lush grassland, dotted with traditional amaQwathi

huts and cattle grazing under the seemingly endless South Africansky. Women collect water and firewood. Young boys herd cattlealong ridges, and you can just make out the sound of a hoe strikingthe ground in someone's home garden. The pandemonium ofmodern South Africa seems far removed from this intoxicatingcalm.

Such a quick snapshot, however, obscures stark realities. Hun-dreds of dongas e the local word for erosion gullies e woundKuManzimdaka's green pasturelands, chiseling red gashes deepinto the soil. The sward on the pastures is short, patchy, andincreasingly overtaken by water-sucking invasive species, espe-cially black wattle. A hard pan crusts the land's surface, bakedbeneath the over-grazed and often dry grass. Rainfall runs off thethirsty ground, and streams are brown with soil that used to be onthe hills. Local springs and wells yield little or not at all. And thepeople are poor, terribly poor. Unemployment is rampant, as ismalnutrition. Some 12 percent of the province suffers from HIV/AIDS, including nearly 20 percent of adults (Shisana et al., 2014).Household vegetable gardens sit neglected and abandoned. Cropground lies fallow or sprouts only patchy rows of stunted maize.

It's not a pretty picture. And it didn't come about accidentally.South Africa's legacy of apartheid is well known, if still not well

* Corresponding author.E-mail addresses: vstull@wisc.edu (V. Stull), michaelbell@wisc.edu (M.M. Bell),

mncwadi@gmail.com (M. Ncwadi).

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Journal of Rural Studies

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Journal of Rural Studies 47 (2016) 369e380

understood. In this paper, we contribute to a better understandingby examining the intertwined ecological, social, and health impli-cations of what we term environmental apartheid and by showingthe instrumental role of rural space in the implementation of SouthAfrica's inequalities. These inequalities are not only social, political,and economic; they are also environmental. Social injustice andenvironmental injustice feed on each other in a continuing cycle ofimmiseration of people and land.

By environmental apartheid we mean the deliberate use of theenvironment to marginalize racially defined groups, as well as thesubsequent consequences of that marginalization. We presentSouth Africa as the paradigmatic example of environmentalapartheid, investigating the use of the environment in the apart-heid government's efforts to marginalize the majority of the pop-ulation. Our focus will be on the use of rural space as anenvironmental means for marginalizing groups, what we term ruralmarginalization. As we will show, the apartheid government ofSouth Africa wielded rural space as a means to deny most SouthAfricans their political rights, relegate them to the least healthy andleast productive ecological contexts, and leave them economicallydependent upon distant White-owned capital. This forced manySouth Africans into slave-like employment in faraway mines andfactories, as well as in services for whites.

Environmental apartheid is a manifestation of the more generalphenomenon of environmental racism, which we define as Bullard(2001) did: “any policy, practice, or directive that differentially af-fects or disadvantages (whether intended or unintended) in-dividuals, groups, or communities based on race or color.”Environmental racism, then, is a critical term that highlightsenvironmental framings which disproportionally negatively affectpeople of color (Dickinson, 2012) and advantage whites (Bullard,2001).

The conventional use of the term environmental racism pointsout the environmental abuse of a racially-defined marginalizedgroup. Environmental apartheid is the reverse logic of power. Itcommits environmental abuse in order to marginalize a raciallydefined group. As stated above, environmental apartheid is notaccidental. Moreover, in practice the two logics e environmentalabuse of the racially marginalized and environmental abuse in or-der to racially marginalize e often work in consort to varying de-grees. In this sense, environmental apartheid is both cause andconsequence.

Many aspects of the environment might potentially be made useof in environmental apartheid. In the case of South Africa,marginalizing forces mobilized a variety of facets of the environ-ment to implement apartheid, keeping Black South Africans apartfrom the resources of livelihood, well-being, and political power.Our focus here, though, is on the use of the rural to marginalizeracially defined peoples.We trace the nesting of three levels of ruralmarginalization, what we term first order, second order, and thirdorder rural marginalization. By first order rural marginalization, wemean the forcible location of Black South Africans in rural spacesdistant from the economic and cultural advantages controlled byWhites. By second order rural marginalization, wemean how BlackSouth Africans were generally relegated to the worst lands withinthese distant rural spaces. Lastly, by third order rural marginaliza-tion we mean the continued isolation and neglect of Black SouthAfricans within first and second order rural marginalization. Thesethree orders of rural marginalization have had major eco-healthimplications, continuing consequences that cannot be separatedfrom an understanding of the social, political, and economic re-percussions of apartheid policies.

This paper explores environmental apartheid through a casestudy of KuManzimdaka where we have been working since 2011on a participatory approach to agroecological development. First,

we frame our argument in the historical roots of apartheid in SouthAfrica, exemplified by colonial enforcement of the three orders ofrural marginalization. Second, we explore how this foundation ofrural marginalization led to the official policy of apartheid and itsdeepening shadow. Third, we step back to consider what the evi-dence for rural marginalization suggests for a theoretical under-standing of the relationship between apartheid and theenvironment. Fourth, we explore the interrelationship between thematerial and symbolic powers of rural marginalization, and howthat interrelationship often results in “blaming the victims” ofenvironmental apartheid. Next, we present the methods andcontext for our case study and dive into the specifics of KuMan-zimdaka. We include an introduction to several important peopleliving in the area and the eco-health consequences of environ-mental apartheid. We then also include an assessment of the ruraland urban consequences of environmental apartheid. Ultimately,we contend that recognizing the enduring power of the rural (M.M.Bell et al., 2010), for both good and ill, helps us understand why theinequalities of environmental apartheid often seem to last and last,and what we might do about them.

2. The roots of apartheid and the three orders of ruralmarginalization

Although sometimes seen as a mid-twentieth century offense,apartheid has old roots. Ever since colonization, South Africa hasfaced severe racial tension. In 1652, the Dutch East India Companyestablished the Cape Colony at the site of what is now Cape Town asa kind of refueling station for its ships in need of food and water tomake it all the way to the East Indies and back. Six years later, thefirst boatload of slaves arrived with captives from Benin andAngola. The Dutch settlers did not enslave the local Khoikhoi andSan peoples much, recognizing that locally-derived slaves caneasily escape back to their home communities. But the Dutchtreated them brutally just the same, considering them a sub-caste,while steadily expanding White farms and grazing north into thelands of the native peoples. By the mid-eighteenth century, theDutch had taken control of nearly all the agriculturally productivelands of the Khoikhoi and San. Further north, the Bantu-speakingpeoples resided, including the two largest groups: the morewarlike amaZulu and the amaXhosa. In the late eighteenth century,the Dutch advance into those lands began as well (Thompson,2014).

Then in 1795, the surging British Empire swept into the CapeColony and forced the Dutch to capitulate. In the decades to follow,the British also swept north, especially along the east coast, forcingback the Bantu speaking people onto ever higher and ever lessdesirable ground, through a series of bloody wars. Dutch “voor-trekkers,” however, disgruntled with British rule, preceded theBritish in vanquishing the local people in the dryer lands in theinterior. The British were initially content to let the Dutch e whowere coming to be known as the Afrikaners e have the interior. Butbetween 1866 and 1886, a series of discoveries made plain theregion's wealth of diamonds and gold, attracting British interest.The ensuing British-Afrikaner conflict culminated in Britain's vic-tory in the South African War of 1899e1902, and the founding ofthe modern South African state e albeit as a unit of the BritishEmpire, subject to legal override by the British parliament(Thompson, 2014).

After the war, white farmers returned to the business of devel-oping and expanding their properties. They received amighty boostwith the passage of the Natives Land Act of 1913which banned “anyperson, male or female, who is a member of an aboriginal race ortribe of Africa” from owning or renting land in 93 percent of SouthAfrica (Thompson, 2014; Wotshela, 2004). The Natives Land Act

V. Stull et al. / Journal of Rural Studies 47 (2016) 369e380370

made explicit the latent first order rural marginalization of SouthAfrica's earlier colonial period, for the remaining seven percent washardly the best land. Rather, it primarily included the last refuges ofSouth Africa's various indigenous peoples and the final frontlines ofthemanywars with the British and the Dutch over the course of the18th and 19th centuries. It was generally land too high, dry, rocky,and rural to be worth the time and blood of Whites to pursuefurther. Here, indigenous peoples continued to live in largelytraditional manners, communally managing what land they hadleft through customary land rights awarded based on tribalassociation.

The Natives Land Act established this seven percent of land as“reserves,” under control of tribal authorities e a fact that helpedthe South African government win the allegiance of tribal author-ities to the scheme. But as well, the allocation of these poor lands asreserves assured that Black South Africans would struggle tomaintain secure livelihoods there, virtually guaranteeing that manywould be willing to accept low wage work in White-owned farms,mines, factories, and homes. The first order rural marginalization ofthe Natives Land Act did not merely represent the outcome ofcompetition for land but the creation of a population with littlesocial, economic, and political power in the wider society.

The Natives Trust and Land Act of 1936 expanded the area ofland available to Black South Africans to 13.5 percent of country,purchasing unprofitable lands back from White South Africanfarmers (Beck, 2000). Even allocating 13.5 percent of the land to 60percent of the population, though, could hardly be consideredgenerous. Whites hand-picked the most productive land forthemselves, furthering the second order rural marginalization thatwas already evident in the Natives Land Act of 1913. While Blackswere forced to use marginal land and to live in economically lessproductive areas (Durning, 1990), Whites formerly living on thesedisadvantaged lands were bought out.

Nor was there much concerted effort to alleviate the disadvan-tages faced by Blacks segregated by first and second order ruralmarginalization. Villages and towns in these low-productivity areaslacked basic services like running water, sanitation, electricity, anddecent roads. Hospitals were few and poor. Schools as well. Thisthird order rural marginalization of continuing isolation andneglect was not inevitable. South Africa's mineral riches meant itlong held the status of being the wealthiest country and largesteconomy in Africa, although it has now been surpassed by Nigeriain both categories. Of course there are limits to what even a rela-tively wealthier country can afford. But it is a political choicewhether to allocatewhat wealth a nation has towards the top or thebottom. South Africa pursued the former course of action. Conse-quently, its relative wealth was also accompanied by being theworld's most economically unequal country, a status it retains tothis day (World Bank, 2016).

3. Apartheid's deepening shadow

Upon this foundation of the three orders of rural marginaliza-tion, the official policy of apartheid was built. The 1948 electiongave governmental control to the Afrikaner-dominated NationalParty (NP), which enacted a series of aggressive laws that enforcedrigid segregation between four official “races”: those defined as“White” (mainly the British and Afrikaners), “Black Africans” (themany tribes of Bantu peoples, such as the amaXhosa, the amaZulu,and smaller groups like the amaQwathi), “Coloreds” (the Khoikhoiand San, plus the descendants of slaves from the Cape Colony, manyof whom also had some European parentage), and “Indians” (thesmall percentage of South Africans who had migrated from SouthAsia) (Steyn, 2005). Some of the pillars of legalized racism includedthe Mines and Work Act of 1911 (part of broader job reservation

practices), the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949, thePopulation Registration Act of 1950, the Group Areas Act of 1950,and the Bantu Education Act of 1953. In parallel, a series of movesstripped away voting rights until only White South Africans hadsuffrage.

It was the Bantu Authorities Act of 1951, however, that put thecapstone on rural marginalization. This is the act that establishedpolitical entities based on the rural areas where Black South Afri-cans had been confined by first and second order rural marginali-zation, and gave further legal license to their continued third orderrural marginalization. Based on the terminology used by the Britishin 1947 for partitioning Pakistan from India, White leaders calledthese areas “Bantustans.” Later, trying to make the claim that thesewere the indigenous locations for the different Black tribes, theWhite authorities took to calling them tribal “homelands” incomplete neglect of the two centuries of war that had disen-franchised Blacks from the regions now owned by Whites.

Fig. 1 shows the borders of the homelands established by theAct. As the map demonstrates, these areas were located in the ruralperiphery as a result of first order marginalization. The jagged anddisconnected shapes and boundaries of most of the homelandsreflect the further second order marginalization that Black SouthAfricans faced under apartheid. These boundaries relegated Blacksto what was generally theworst rural land available, often land thatwas already badly degraded, accelerating a cruel cycle of poverty. Insome instances, Black smallholders had access to decent land, but itwas the White farmers who controlled nearby dams and waterrights, as well as access and entry to nearby markets.

Ultimately, apartheid policies were legal sanctions by which thegovernment could control labor, movement, freedom, and eco-nomic status according to race. The Bantu Authorities Act estab-lished ethnic governments in the homelands. Outside of thehomelands, Black South Africans were required to carry passbooksdesignating their race and where they could travel and live. Mil-lions were arrested for pass law violations. Alongside homelandcreation came forced removal, whereby at least 3.5 million peoplewere pushed from their land and resettled in the homelands be-tween 1960 and 1983 e land that was largely barren and unin-habitable (Platzky and Walker, 1984).

Beginning in the late 1970s, South Africa began to spin off thehomelands as independent states. Four homelands e Ciskei,Transkei, Bophuthatswana, and Venda, the so-called “Bush Re-publics” e eventually gained this status before the end of officialapartheid. As a result, Black South Africans were no longerconsidered citizens of South Africa and had no citizenship rightsinside it. In reality, however, these were quite obviously puppetstates controlled by South Africa, and no other nation ever recog-nized them. Meanwhile, the homelands received little economicdevelopment and remained mired in poverty and lack ofopportunity.

As the Black Anti-Apartheid activist and cleric Allan Boesakdeclared at the Anti-South African Indian Council Committee in1984,

Blacks are not impressed. We have seen what happened in thehomelands. We know that the “independence” of the four BushRepublics is a sham; that the homelands are no more thandumping grounds for the discarded blacks of this land; that theyare places where our elderly die of misery and want, and ourchildren are stalked day and night by hunger, sickness, and grimdeath that sits on the shoulder of hopelessness (Boesak, 2015).

Direct evidence that this was all a deliberate plan of marginal-ization e such as memos and tape recordings of leaders discussingplanse is hard to come by. The politics of marginalization are rarely

V. Stull et al. / Journal of Rural Studies 47 (2016) 369e380 371

in full public view, although the proceedings of South Africa'sunique Truth and Reconciliation Commission following apartheidsubsequently gave much disturbing evidence of deliberate intent,especially the policy known as “forced removals” that relocatedmillions of Blacks to the homelands, as well as the overall shockingbrutality of the apartheid era. Few Black South Africans who livedthrough this period doubt its deliberateness.

The result was quite effective for the South African government,which aimed to: Create a large population of poor, desperate peoplewho would therefore be essentially forced to migrate to the Whiteareas of South Africa to accept low-wage, menial work with virtu-ally no rights. First, second, and third order rural marginalizationkept labor cheap andwithout rights, while also ensuring that blackswere subordinate and disorganized (MacDonald, 2006). In otherwords, the point of apartheid was not to keep Blacks and Whitesseparate. Whites and Blacks interacted closely on a daily basisduring apartheid. Rather, the point was to keep Blacks powerlessand willing to work for Whites for very little. Separateness was themeans; marginalization was the ends.

Recognizing that it was impractical to expect people to show upat work in the morning if they had to sleep hundreds of kilometersaway in their designated homelands, Black South Africans weregiven leave to live on the rural outskirts of cities in vast slums called“townships,” or to live in huts on White farms and barracks atmines and factories, or in some cases to live in small shacks in the

back gardens of White houses if they held domestic jobs there. Butpermission to stay outside the homelands had to be granted by, andregistered with, theWhite authorities. It could be terminated at anytime, should a Black worker show signs of being insufficientlycompliant to White control. The maintenance of first and secondorder spaces of rural marginalization gave White authorities acontinued legal and economic whip to keep Blacks living outside ofthe homelands in line. Moreover, employment opportunities in thehomelands deteriorated throughout apartheid thanks to on-goingthird order marginalization, as the regime aimed to guarantee asecure stream of cheap labor into White-controlled cities, keepingthe homelands economically dependent on the Republic of SouthAfrica (Percival and Homer-Dixon, 1998).

With the eventual success of the anti-apartheid movement andthe enfranchisement of all South Africans, the homelands ceased toexist as of April, 1994, when they were reincorporated into a newdemocratic Republic of South Africa that had nine provinces. Sadly,the end of apartheid has not brought relief to much of South Africa.National income inequalities have actually worsened since 1994(Seekings and Nattrass, 2005) and the situation in the Transkei ethe former homeland where the village of KuManzimdaka islocated e is particularly dire. The Transkei is now part of theEastern Cape Province, along with Ciskei, another former home-land. The Eastern Cape also includes quite a bit of historicallyWhite-owned lands, particularly in the southwestern end of the

Fig. 1. Map of South Africa's “homelands” or “Bantustans” policy under apartheid.

V. Stull et al. / Journal of Rural Studies 47 (2016) 369e380372

Province. Poverty rates are especially high in the former homelandsof Ciskei and Transkei in the Eastern Cape, with many peopledependent on welfare transfers, and most with limited access toeducation, healthcare, and clean water (Westaway, 2012). (SeeFig. 2).

4. Apartheid and the environment

There is little dispute regarding the deleterious impact ofapartheid on the South African environment (Beinart, 2003; Beinartand Hughes, 2007; Department of Environment Affairs andTourism 1999; Durning, 1990; McDonald, 2002; Percival andHomer-Dixon, 1998; Steyn, 2005). The Worldwatch Institute'sinfluential 1990 text, “Apartheid's Environmental Toll,” providedstark evidence of the overlap between apartheid policies andenvironmental degradation. South Africa has a well-establishedenvironmental movement, dating back to the 18th century. Butthe focus of concernwas long uponwildlife conservation, and uponcorrecting other aspects of what Whites regarded as the “envi-ronmental profligacy of African farmers” (Beinart, 2003: 355),which resulted in soil erosion, tree removal, and over-grazing.Before the Worldwatch report, South African conservationistsrarely contextualized these problems within the history of Blackrural marginalization onto the worst land with high populationdensities e lands that are easily degraded, especially when farmersare poor and desperate. Our village of interest, KuManzimdaka, isno exception; apartheid policies twenty years gone still impact thequality of land available to local farmers, their agricultural pro-ductivity, their environmental impact, their access to markets, aswell as their access to healthcare, as we will describe.

The very word apartheid e Afrikaans for “separateness” or“apartness” e itself points to the environmental character of thepolicy through its political use of space. Of course, apartheid wasalso founded on an ideology of race and racial hierarchy, as well asmotivated by efforts to build and enforce economic and politicalinequality. Numerous other social settings have also seen ideologiesof racial hierarchy with economic and political motivations. Thispaper emphasizes a distinctive feature of apartheid in South Africa,which is not characteristic of all such ideologies: how it wasenacted through the environment, emphasizing the powers of therural to marginalize racially defined populations. The powerconstruct of apartheid in South Africa was, and is, spatial andlargely rural.

The recent expansion in the application of the term apartheid inworld politics pushes the social scientist to tread carefully, how-ever. Like the term holocaust, the term apartheid now appears indiscussions of situations a long way away from where it first orig-inated. It has become synonymous not only with the South Africansystem of racial oppression that prevailed from 1948 to 1994, butalso with other forms of racial, religious, and economic separationacross the globe. The term has crept into discussions of policies andpractices in Palestine (Zreik, 2004), the United States of America(Cable and Mix, 2003; Massey, 1990; Massey and Denton, 1993),and even Ireland (O'Farrell, 2005) e evidence that the term carriessubstantial weight in our understanding of discrimination. We donot write to reject the application of the term apartheid elsewhere;rather we seek to expand understandings of apartheid by exam-ining its environmental linkages. By the phrase “environmentalapartheid”we seek to point to situations inwhich the environmentis a central factor in building and maintaining racial marginaliza-tion, as was and in many ways remains the case in South Africanapartheid. It is perhaps theoretically possible, if unlikely, toconstruct an apartheid which is not environmental. As well,apartheid is not only environmental. Thus, it is analytically helpfulto distinguish environmental apartheid as a characteristic of

apartheid, but not equal to it. Further, there is an especially salientcharacteristic of environmental apartheid in South Africa: thedeliberate use of the rural to marginalize and subjugate Black SouthAfricans.

While the social scientific usage of environmental apartheid inthis paper is certainly more limited than the larger use of “apart-heid” in popular culture and broader scholarship, we contend thatit is effective in underlining how the environment can be used tomarginalize racially defined groups, whether via use of rural spaceor other means, such the location of highways in cities or the lack ofprovision of clean water or other environmental necessities andamenities. Environmental apartheid always has a spatial dimen-sion. Powerful populations have often relocated or confined theirenemies to the places and spaces they consider to be least valuableor most precarious. Humans draw arbitrary boundaries aroundswaths of land to form district, state, or national boundaries thatoften reinforce racial divisions. They cultivate identities and free-doms by way of citizenship acquired from a geographic separation.Although it is outside the scope of this paper to provide a globalreview, the widespread prevalence of discrimination reinforcedusing spatial divisions is undeniable. In the case of South Africa, theapartheid government commonly isolated Black South Africansthrough the strategic use of rural space, forcing them into confined,desolate, and underdeveloped regions of the country as a means topreserve a cheap labor force and to retain racial control.

5. Blaming the environmental apartheid victim

Following Bell et al. (2010), we note two general forms of the useof the rural in environmental apartheid: the material practices of“rural power” and the symbolic practices of the “power of the ru-ral.” Physical removal of Black South Africans from spaces of eco-nomic opportunity ensured their migration to work for low wages.Forcing Blacks into economically undeveloped regions wasdependent on the material power of rural space to isolate people.Additionally, the spatial association of Black South Africans withrural homelands, separate from White spaces, symbolically pro-pelled a sense of social difference, essential for creating the cate-gories of hierarchy. It also served to put poor Black people in a ‘blindspot’ for Whites with more power and privilege. The notion ofseparate citizenship in rural spaces served to reinforce this differ-ence and the political disenfranchisement it created. The threeorders of rural marginalization thus have both material and sym-bolic powers.

Importantly, the material and symbolic ruralness of Black SouthAfricans helped define them as backward and in need of control,legitimizing apartheid's racial hierarchy and the victim blamingideology of much South African environmentalism, as described byBeinart (2003). From the intertwining of these rural powers comesrural abuse: the continuing debilitating eco-health consequences ofthis racial ostracism. Black South Africans living in rural areas muststruggle to cultivate adequate livelihoods from their unproductivelands, with deleterious consequences for both their own health andthe health of the land. This is to say that once you take away all thegood land in rural areas, what remains is often damaged or rocky,making it difficult to manage properly, as we noted earlier.Degraded land is not highly productive and is a biological magnetfor invasive species. Wells are known to dry up in such areas, andpoor inhabitants are at risk of waterborne and infectious diseasedue to poor sanitation and livestock control practices.

Yes, it is true that many rural Black livelihood practices promotethese ill effects. But the consequences of first and second orderrural marginalization leave rural Blacks little alternative e espe-cially in light of the compounding effect of continuing third orderneglect. The South African government still provides few services to

V. Stull et al. / Journal of Rural Studies 47 (2016) 369e380 373

Black rural residents. Health care is limited. Public water supply andsanitation infrastructure are next to non-existent. Electricity is farfrom universal. Roads are generally terrible. Agricultural extensionagents are rare and poorly trained. Supply chain development forreaching markets, creating employment, and countering poverty isat best rudimentary in most former homelands.

Even the widely-praised “enumerated rights” provision in theSouth African Bill of Rights gives leeway for government services tostagnate when the task is arduous. Section 27 states that:

27. (1) Everyone has the right to have access tod(a) health care services, including reproductive health care;(b) sufficient food and water; and(c) social security, including, if they are unable to support

themselves and their dependents, appropriate socialassistance.(2) The state must take reasonable legislative and other

measures, within its available resources, to achieve the pro-gressive realisation of each of these rights (Department ofJustice and Constitutional Development (2016)).

Distance from services necessitates long travel and greatexpense to “achieve [this] progressive realisation.” And the SouthAfrican state, like any state, does indeed have limits in its “availableresources.” But as noted above, it is no accident who is living inremote places and experiencing such routine violation of theseenumerated rights, and it is no coincidence what path of economicinvestment the South African government has long followed.

South Africa does have an established extension service and avigorous environmental movement, as stated earlier. Third orderneglect is not the same as inattention and unawareness. Theproblems we discuss in this paper are by no means unknown to

South African elites and decision makers. But the continuance ofvictim-blaming environmentalism and agricultural extensionwhich is “insensitive to rural social relationships and often highlydisruptive” (Beinart, 2003: 366) perpetuates the widely repeatedtrope among South African Whites that “Blacks can't farm” e atrope echoed by Whites several times during this research and onewhich is widely debated on social media.1 Such a trope helps createa sense that nothing can be done, so why bother.

Consequently, rural Black South Africans are exposed to an arrayof environmental health hazards that contribute to both infectiousand chronic disease (Mathee, 2011). Rural people face high rates offood insecurity, poverty, and unemployment. For example, as of2011, poverty rates in rural South Africa were more than doubleurban rates: 68.8% versus 30.9%, based on a poverty line of 620Rand per month or about $40 (Statistics South Africa, 2014: figure14). Their primary currency e the natural environment, includingcattle and agricultural outputs e has been tarnished over time,leaving themwith a limited safety net. Meanwhile, they have beenafforded very little access to basic services that might amelioratethe situation.

6. Methods and context

Before we dive in further to our case study, let us explain thenature of our work in KuManzimdaka and the researchmethods weemploy. Since 2006 we have been collaborating with communityleaders in South Africa's Eastern Cape, through a participatoryapproach to agroecological development. Although one of us,

Fig. 2. Poverty Index for the Eastern Cape Province in deciles, showing the correspondence with the borderlines of the former homelands. Darker shading indicates greaterdeprivation. (Source: adopted from Southern Africa Research Institute, 2014 data).

1 For examples, see https://www.reddit.com/comments/co0qa/?sort¼qa orhttp://ozziesaffa.blogspot.com/2012/10/south-africa-no-land-grab-under-anc.html.

V. Stull et al. / Journal of Rural Studies 47 (2016) 369e380374

Mpumelelo Ncwadi, had earlier met village leaders in KuManzim-daka, we did not begin a concerted effort at community engage-ment there until 2011.

Immediately some characteristics of the village stood out to us.First, we were shocked by the absence of government and non-governmental organizations (NGO) presence in the area. Giventhe global push to reach the Millennium Development Goalsestablished by the United Nations in the year 2000, and given SouthAfrica's relative wealth, we were surprised to encounter suchneglect by both the government and NGOs. Second, while small-holders in the area enjoy access to land, due to the continued up-holding of customary land rights on communal lands, people stillface extreme poverty. Third, we were struck by the poor ecologicalcondition of the landscape and the array of health consequencesthat undermine community vitality. Through conversations, in-terviews, focus groups, historical research, and observations, wecame to appreciate the challenges faced by the community. Fromthere, we began to generate strategies to improve agroecosystemsand livelihoods, in collaboration with the community itself.

Years of relationship building has led to our deep investment inthis community, and we believe the level of trust is such that allstakeholders can speak relatively freely and honestly even acrossracial and cultural lines. We ourselves represent a team of mixedage, gender, nationality, class origin, and racial attribution, grantingus a diversity of forms of contextual privilege both in the village andwith non-village actors in South Africa and abroad. In 2012, webegan what we now term the LAND (Livelihood, Agroecology,Nutrition, and Development) Project, an international effort byAmerican and South African partners and collaborators to synergizelocal and expert knowledge in planning and implementing an ag-roecological future for the villages of the Eastern Cape. For thepurposes of this paper, we draw upon ethnographic research(observation, interviews, and secondary research), combined withfocus group results, and numerous conversations with communitymembers to explore environmental apartheid. We also highlightour interactions with two key community leaders e MamBhele(Mildred Ncapayi), the leader of the local women's cooperative, andVilnius Beta, known in the community as Majola, the leader of amulti-village farmer cooperative in the area e to explore theexperienced realities of people living in KuManzimdaka.

It is also worth noting that, while the former Transkei is mainlypopulated by amaXhosa people (the second largest tribe in SouthAfrica), KuManzimdaka and about 30 surrounding villages arepopulated by a much smaller group, the amaQwathi. Some regardthe amaQwathi as a sub-tribe of the amaXhosa, and the amaQwathiat times seem to as well, for they speak isiXhosa and follow similarcustoms to the amaXhosa. But historians, anthropologists, andmany amaQwathi themselves maintain that they are a distinctgroup (Ndima, 1988).

7. The village road

It takes almost an hour on rough gravel roads to reachKuManzimdaka from the nearest paved road, and when it rains theroute is nearly impassible. A minivan from Elliot (the nearest town)traverses the pass twice a day, transporting teachers, goods, andvisitors to and from the community. When the van is coming, youcan see it from a distance, spitting up dust (or mud) in its wake. Ifyou miss it, you'll be walking for hours. Early during our work inKuManzimdaka, the extent of true isolation felt here becameevident. Despite the many improvements in the South Africaneconomy, infrastructure has not reached this place.

Elliot itself is a small town, but the ways in which it resembleslarger South African cities are striking. Occupied by many Afrikanerand English families even today, the town is surrounded on its

formerly rural outskirts by informal settlements and townshipsinhabited by poorer Black South Africans. Moving just one block inalmost any direction outside of the town's main grid and you willfind overcrowded dwellings, many of them mere shacks, withnarrow streets and uncollected garbage. Like the countrywide firstorder marginalization, the Black population, even in the ruralEastern Cape, was pushed out of urban centers into surroundingrural spaces where infrastructure was poor. It is as though there isan invisible barrier between the town and its rural surroundingswhere those seen as inferior were placed. Once there, and oncegiven little opportunity to improve their condition, the mentalimagery of Blacks as different from Whites and happy to live insqualor became a widespread symbolic, power-of-the-rural cul-tural trope. “I don't know how they can stand to live like that,” oneof us heard a White South African woman remark at an elite bedand breakfast. The answer to this question e because they areforced to e seems hard even now for someWhite South Africans tocomprehend.

The road to KuManzimdaka from Elliot shows a tortured historyof rural marginalization that still seems stuck to the land. Afterpassing the peri-urban townships, lush green fields appear againwhere the ground is relatively flat and the soil rich. Commercialfarmers e most of whom are White, with a small number ofemerging Black farmers who obtained land through South Africa'spost-apartheid redistribution policies e and large agribusinessesgrow impressive stands of maize. With irrigation, fertilizer, pesti-cides, high-yield seed, and plenty of machinery, these lush plots onthe gentle plateau just below the Drakensberg mountains resembleNebraska in July. But where the road veers right to the even morerural KuManzimdaka, the topography steepens as the heads ofsmall valleys begin to cut into that plateau. The crest is still high eup to 1600 m, or about 5200 feet e but ever more deeply incised.Dark groves of invasive black wattle (Acacia mearnsii) begin toobscure the view. Behind the evergreen foliage rests a rock-strewnlandscape stippled with trees, sparse crops, and anemic grass. Blackwattle is an aggressive Australian tree that invades bare spots inover-grazed grasslands or over-harvested woodlands, and it suc-cessfully competes with indigenous species to the point of take-over. It forms dense thickets that reduce grazing areas for live-stock and wild animals, all while hoarding available water. Blackwattle is one of the most pervasive and damaging invasive alientrees in South Africa, posing amajor threat local towater catchmentyields (Dye and Jarmain, 2004). Nearly every household inKuManzimdaka is plagued by the tree.

The road and the view from the road represent environmentalapartheid's first order rural marginalization compounded by sec-ond and third order rural marginalization. The amaXhosa andamaQwathi who live here were historically pushed to the ruralfringes through first order marginalization. Yet even within thesemargins they were relegated to the worst possible land. Apartheid-era surveyors carefully drew the line of the former Transkei alongthe heads of the valleys cutting into the plateau that forms an apronof rich crop ground at the base of the Drakensberge a second orderline of rural marginalization that separated ground Whites wantedto own from less valuable land. To north and west of the line, theland could be bought and sold on the open market if you wereWhite, as Black South Africans were then not allowed to own land.To the south and east, the rougher ground was designated ascommunal land, governed by Black tribal authorities. It remains sotoday. (See Fig. 3). Having access to land without having to buy orrent it is fundamental to local people's livelihoods and is oneadvantage that they do have amid their poverty. But managing suchmarginal land is difficult. The margin for error is tight, and overtime it gets harder and harder as bad luck compounds. Excessivegrazing in a dry year, for example, could perhaps be followed by a

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veld fire. The ground heats in the sun, the grass does not reestablishfully, and opportunistic black wattle along with other weeds andinvasives leap into the holes in the grass sward. And sometimesbefore they do, a donga starts to form, carving the land away andsending it into the muddy streams and rivers.

Today, the wattle stands tall and the dongas cut deep inKuManzimdaka, mocking signposts of stifled productivity whereverdant grasslands could have flourished. Black wattle yieldsserious negative impacts on biodiversity, water resources, and thecohesion and stability of riparian ecosystems throughout ruralSouth Africa, while also increasing erosion (Wit et al., 2001). Theextensive veld fires that raged outside Cape Town in 2000 have alsobeen blamed at least in part on the presence of invasive species(Neely, 2010), which pull moisture from the ground and therebyencouragewildfires. In August of 2014, a veld fire decimated almostall the pastureland in KuManzimdaka, exactly in the depths ofwinter when both the rains and grass growth subside. Charredgrass is inedible, and for a time the community livestock herdswereon the verge of collapse. Without the generosity of neighboringvillages who gave KuManzimdaka access to unburned grazinglands, the people might have lost every single animal. No help camefrom central government. Third order rural marginalization stillpervades.

The journey to KuManzimdaka also exemplifies the symbolicpractices of the power of the rural. The village's physical distanceand difference from any ‘modern’ town makes it feel outdated andforeign to several of the White South Africans we have brought tothe village as a part of our participatory development work, reso-nating with past notions that Black South Africans are somehowinferior and uncivilized. “I didn't know people still lived this way inSouth Africa,” one of them remarked, struggling with her culturalexpectations. Traditional round huts abound, many with thatchedroofs. Women cook on outdoor fires, except in the winter, and canoften be seen carrying bundles of fuel wood on their heads. In thewinter, people cook inside on open fire pits so as to also warm theirhouses, leading to dangerous levels of indoor air pollution. Abouthalf the homes do not have electric wires leading to them. One

might expect that such realizations would motivate more urgentefforts to improve local livelihoods, but as yet they have not. Wesuspect that some of the reason for this is likely the cultural feelingamong South African elites that local people are comfortable livingtheir “traditional” ways.

But environmental apartheid's third order rural marginalizationis not only due to symbolic constructions of rural life in KuMan-zimdaka. The material practices of rural power make such inat-tention to local needs easier for government to contemplate. It isindeed a long and difficult road from KuManzimdaka. But that roadcould be tarred. And because it is not, employment opportunities inKuManzimdaka remain a major problem, pushing locals to migrateto cities and mines in search of work. Employment outside of thearea has yet to bring much wealth or prosperity to KuManzimdakaitself, but the practice lingers, as the people have few options.Meanwhile, those left behind e mainly women e are tasked withmanaging the degraded landscape in addition to all otherresponsibilities.

8. Eco-health in KuManzimdaka

Onewarm January afternoon, an elderly woman of 84 is walkingup a steep hillside to fetch water from a spring. She moves slowlybut meticulously up the gradient, taking calculated steps to avoidholes and stones. Her traditional headpiece is large and blue,indicative of her age and marital status. The spring she seeks ismeager, where a slow trickle of water emerges from the hillside topool in a muddy puddle on a flat ledge. Upon reaching the spot, shepulls aside the sheet of metal someone has thrown over the sourceof the water, perhaps to serve as a bridge for passersby or to protectthe pool from rain. (See Fig. 4). But the sheet of metal provides verylittle real sanitation. A cluster of hoof prints encloses the area, andthere are a few in the mud in front of the pool, evidence that cattleand other livestock share this spring and defecate close by. With norunning water, no system for keeping out cattle, and no alternativereliable source nearby, this is the only option for this elder. Shecomes here a couple of times every day to carry this dirty water

Fig. 3. Cadastral map of property lines in the area of KuManzimdaka, Eastern Cape, South Africa, showing the switch to communally held lands across the boundary of the formerTranskei. Note the presence of heavier contour lines in the communally held lands, indicative of steeper slopes and lower agricultural potential, compared to land to the northwestof the former Transkei. Box shows location of KuManzimdaka village (Source: Map base from Chief Directorate, National GeoSpatial Information, South Africa, 2013.).

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back home. In recent years, she tells us, the spring has becomeunreliable. “There were other springs on this hill before,” she says,“but now they are dry.” It seems the water is disappearing.

Grass on the hill is patchy; the soil is hard and chalky. The veldhas been overgrazed for a long time, and even the cattle appeardespondent when feeding here. The degraded hillside itself con-tributes to the lack of water, as overgrazing has led to soilcompaction, reduced plant growth, and high levels of erosion.Sufficient rainwater no longer seeps in to recharge the groundwaterlevels. There are scarce plant roots to hold the soil in place andcollect moisture. Instead, water runs off down the valley, carryingwith it rocks and sand that amass in the river. From here, one cansee the river's brown color far below. The land is rocky, the hillsidesharp, due to second order rural marginalization's continued legacyof environmental apartheid. It would be nearly impossible to farmdecent field crops here, especially without advanced equipment;livestock grazing is the only realistic option. But there is no fencingor training to help people institute a technique like rotationalgrazing that could restore the grasslands and ground water levels.Nor is there help with establishing even the most basic of watersupply improvements, such as a spring boxor a drilledwell. Signs ofNGOs and international aid agencies like USAID are as scarce as theSouth African government here, in part because of the feeling thatSouth Africa, as one of the richest countries on the continent, oughtto be able to handle simple investments like these. But it doesn't.Environmental apartheid persists as third order rural marginali-zation compiles with first and second order rural marginalization toleave people with little option but to continue the cycle of livestockover-grazing.

KuManzimdaka's common lands are in disastrous condition, yetthis is no tragedy of the commons as described by Garret Hardin(1967). A number of scholars have argued that Hardin's parable ofenvironmental decline rarely applies in practice. (See (Petrzelkaand Bell, 2000) and (M. Bell and Ashwood, 2016) for reviews ofthis literature.) Yes, the condition of the privately owned land to thenorthwest of the line of the former Transkei is much better. Butbecause of second order rural marginalization, these are muchhigher quality lands, less given to environmental decline and morecapable of supporting livelihoods and return on investment. And

because of third order rural marginalization, local people have littleoption other than to over-graze and hope for the best. In KuMan-zimdaka, it is not individual greed and lack of private property thatis leading to over-grazing and other eco-health issues as Hardinconjectured. Local people do not over-graze because of lack ofexclusion from the resource as the classic model of the tragedy ofthe commons suggests. They over-graze because of too muchexclusion. That is, they overgraze because they have been largelyexcluded from every other resource.

As a result, MamBhele and other women in the village voicethree primary concerns regarding their community. First, there islimited access to clean water and healthcare. The wells are dryingup and the water is contaminated. Plus, water sources are far awayand water must be carried by hand. Boys, girls, and women walkkilometers to fetch heavy buckets every day. Once home, there arefew options for water purification. Even boiling it is a challengebecause of the added firewood or other expensive fuel required eresources that take precious time or money to procure. Not sur-prisingly, children get sick, frequently. A mobile clinic comesthrough the area every once in a while, but its focus is vaccinationsand young child wellness appointments. It does not provide acutecare or antibiotics, and it does not visit the village on a consistentschedule. Isolation has left KuManzimdaka in a “healthcare desert”of sorts, cut off from both government and private healthcare ser-vices. While primary healthcare provisions are available for free inSouth Africa, they aren't truly free for the people here. Just gettingto a clinic can be a prohibitive expense.

Second, thewomen note that there are few jobs or opportunitiesfor them in the village. “We need income generating activities,” onewoman says. “Without money, we can do nothing,” they say.Whereare the jobs? Farming barely meets subsistence levels for most; it ishardly lucrative. And transporting crops grown here to Elliot is asdifficult as transporting people. Without jobs, people leave. Whenthey return, they don't stay long.

Third, “the soil is dead,” they say. “There is not enough to eat.”Farmers struggle to grow and sell crops, especially during the dryseason. With little water and limited access to fertilizer or trainingin organic production techniques, agricultural productivity is low inKuManzimdaka. Community members face periods of foodshortage throughout the year. The Eastern Cape province is SouthAfrica's second poorest, with almost 60% of its 6.5 million peopleliving in poverty (ECSECC, 2012; Statistics South Africa, 2014), aproblem compounded by the fact that nearly 20% of adults in theEastern Cape are living with HIV and AIDS e and likely far more inKuManzimdaka, were a local survey to be done. (In our experience,nearly every weekend there is at least one funeral in local villagesfor someone rumored to have died of AIDS.) Malnutrition is still amajor problem here too, with rates of stunting in children under-five around 32%, the highest in the country (Zere and McIntyre,2003). Close to 50% of the population was food insecure in 2008(Labadarios et al., 2011), making the Eastern Cape the most foodinsecure province in the country. And yet there is little done to help.The effects of environmental apartheid are everywhere, plain to beseen, as health declines are visible in tandem with environmentaldegradation.

9. Majola

If it wasn't forMajola, this research likelywould not have startedin KuManzimdaka. But one of us was fortunate enough tomeet himat a local agricultural event. Majola occupies an iconic space amongvillage leadership. He is wise, relatively affluent, and unendinglygenerous. His home overlooks the only school in the village and isnestled up against the hillside where the elder described aboveclimbs twice a day to fetch her water. It is as though he lives on a

Fig. 4. One of the main springs used by local people in KuManzimdaka. In recent years,the springs have been drying up, as over-grazing compounded with invasive speciesleads to lower ground water recharge.

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perch, whereby he sees the entire community. Not only has Majolaadopted six village children orphaned by AIDS, but he has alsoadopted the school, at least metaphorically, investing resourcesinto improving education and access to healthy food for students.Majola knows the community inside and out, and he recognizesboth its challenges and opportunities. It was Majola who first hel-ped Mambhele begin a chicken rearing project. Without using ourterminology, Majola has recognized and highlighted the need toaddress environmental apartheid in KuManzimdaka.

Majola, like others in the village, is a pastoralist; cattle are hismost esteemed possessions. Historically, cattle have been invalu-able to amaQwathi and amaXhosa people, serving as a sign ofwealth, means of exchange, and symbol of status (Afọlayan, 2004).But the modernworth of local cattle in a post-apartheid economy isastonishingly low. Because of environmental apartheid, the currentpopulation of KuManzimdaka is almost entirely isolated and thuscut-off from regional markets. They lack the necessary connectionswith the predominatelyWhite-controlled supply chains and do notpossess marketing teams or sales experts to support their busi-nesses. Rural marginalization e the base of environmental apart-heid e has incentivized many young people to seek work outsidethe community. Some travel to and from mines for work. Othersmove to cities in seek of employment. But still others remain inKuManzimdaka, attempting to succeed as farmers e almost all byrearing cattle alone or in addition to other crops. The only hope ofsuccessful farming is better management of natural resources.

To grapple with these and other challenges, Majola founded theNcedisizwe (Helping the Nation) Co-op in 2002, a cooperative ofabout 800 smallholder farmers in 26 amaQwathi villages in theEngcobo region of the Eastern Cape. The co-op is designed to buyand sell agricultural inputs such as seed and fertilizer. Majola re-peats to us at almost every meeting that collectively farmers inKuManzimdaka can do more than they can alone. Despite the sizeof the cooperative, their ability to sell local, grass-fed beef intobroader markets has been stifled by lingering discrimination andseclusion. These farmers do not have a way to track their animalsfrom field to abattoir to market and thereby achieve the traceabilitytheywould need to establish a brand. Animal health is another trial,as the farmers of KuManzimdaka struggle to fight pathogens andmaintain veld quality, due to the overgrazing of marginalized lands.Against the odds, Majola and other cooperative members do pro-duce high quality grass-fed beef. They also farm a variety of crops ofvalue in South Africa's agriculture sector, but any casual observernotices the discrepancies between smallholder farms and nearbycommercial e and mostly White-owned e farms that exist in thelower, flatter areas. Without either industrial or agroecologicaltechniques, the members of Ncedisizwe cannot compete withcommercial farmers in yield or quality. Overcoming these chal-lenges is difficult, especially given the additional pressures thesesmallholders face daily.

Majola has ideas, though. And these ideas stem from carefulobservation of his own community and its practices of communalland holding and farming. While there are numerous social andeconomic benefits to communal farming, communal land holdingin the Eastern Cape is also highly correlatedwith erosion and arableland abandonment due in part to years of social and environmentalstrife. The relocation of millions people to the ‘homelands’ between1960 and 1980 (Percival and Homer-Dixon, 1998) led to increasedpopulation living on and utilizing communal lands (Davis et al.,2008). Cultivation on communal lands over that same period oftime declined, due in part to overuse and soil degradation and alsoother factors like AIDS and lack of decent healthcare. Plus, it is eand probably will always be e more difficult to manage suchmarginal land successfully. Changes in land use and erosion overtime in the former Ciskei have been studied using time series data

from air photos, demonstrating that gullies and extreme erosionare strongly associated with abandoned arable land. Between 1954and 1988, 60 to 70 percent of all gullying was found on abandonedarable land (Kakembo and Rowntree, 2003). But Majola recognizesthe potential of abandoned land and the need for better manage-ment of cultivated land and pastures. He says that current practicesin KuManzimdaka are not preserving the grasslands or conservingsoil. He wants to know about and implement alternatives such asmanaged or rotational grazing systems.

The situation for Ncedisizwe farmers in KuManzimdaka is grim.Again, this grimness is not the result of accidental or localized ac-tivities. It is born from a history of environmental apartheid and itspolicies of rural abuse that trampled on the people of the formerTranskei. As a result, pastures were overgrazed, agrarian land over-cultivated, and soils depleted to the extent that traditional methodsof production were no longer viable. Meanwhile, agriculturalindustrialization in South Africa resulted in high yields on White-owned farms. While this productivity protected food security, itcame at considerable environmental and social costs (Fakir andCooper, 1995); many farmers began to rely heavily on syntheticfertilizers, other chemicals, and mechanization. White-farmershave been historically protected by government drought insur-ance e potentially increasing their willingness to take risks withland (Mather, 1996). Environmental apartheid ultimately hinderedthe productivity and ecological vitality of all rural lands because itforced Blacks to farm on already marginal soils; encouraged Whitefarmers to carelessly industrialize with over-application of pesti-cides, commercial fertilizers, and heavy machinery; and perpetu-ated inequality through unequal access to resources. Today,pastures in the former homelands e including KuManzimdaka eare largely overgrazed, facing extreme erosion, poor water sanita-tion, and lowered river flows (Cooper, 1991; Weiner and Levin,1991). Consequently, in the late 1990's, South Africa was identi-fied as having the highest extinction rate of plants and animalsglobally, abnormally high air pollution levels in some areas, and anunsafe waste and hazardous waste disposal program, along withwidespread soil erosion and water contamination (Department ofEnvironment Affairs and Tourism 1999). And yet almost no atten-tion is given to the desperate situation of most rural people in SouthAfrica today, especially in the former homelands. Official apartheidmay be over, but environmental apartheid is not.

10. Rural and urban consequences

The negative impact of apartheid on the environment and hu-man health has not been limited only to rural areas. Colonial con-trol of South Africa prompted a shift away from self-sufficiency forAfrican smallholders by creating awage laborer system through theuse of taxation and land expropriation, among other strategies(Mitsuo, 1996). Thus, apartheid policies led to a collapse of rurallivelihoods, and concomitantly massive migration to the outskirtsof cities as policies restricted Black residence inside the cities andcontrolled employment. People flocked to cities because of the lackof jobs in rural areas, and once they got there things did notimprove. Consequently, the use of the rural environment to imposeracial segregation actually led to an increase in the population ofurban areas.

But wage laborers migrating to cities were still constrained intheir work options and residency, as well as their movement to andfrom the homelands where many still had legal access to farmlandand had families. Overcrowding, poor sanitation, and pollution ledto environmental degradation and poor health for non-Whites inurban areas. Even those that originated from cities were pushedinto townships by racial segregation and enforced curfews. His-torically, townships were designed to house non-White laborers

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who worked in the cities, preserving separate living spaces. Today,the cost of living at the heart of South African cities remains toohigh for most migrant laborers. Racial spatial divides are stillapparent in all major cities. Thus, environmental apartheid's use ofthe rural to marginalize had and continues to have urban effects.

Pushed away from urban centers, the peri-urban slumsresemble in concentrated form some of the most underdevelopedrural areas: overcrowded and barely resourced. The LAND projectalso works in Alexandra “township” e the South African term for aslum on the edge of a city e which is a bustling zone of half amillion people living on about one square kilometer of land about12 km from Johannesburg's city center. Despite the movement andenergy of the place, it is a strange mirror of impoverished de-velopments in rural areas with limited infrastructure, overcrowdedhousing, and sheer poverty. People living in Alexandra are alsoisolated via first order marginalization as, like most townships, itwas situated on land that was originally rural and just outside thecity. After pushing people into distant homelands, the apartheidgovernment eventually had to deal with the problem of housingwage laborers within daily commuting distance. The governmenttook a similar environmental apartheid approach but on a morelocalized scale. Today, Johannesburg has spread out to incorporateAlexandra, but it remains on the city's fringedfar from services andjobs. And while the area is insular in some ways, there is evidentdependency on Johannesburg as a whole.

Alexandra shows the effects of second order rural marginaliza-tion as well. The rural land used for its site was hardly the best.Running through the heart of “Alex,” as local people call it, is thewide floodplain of the Jukskei River. Today, that floodplain containsthe worst sections of housing in the township, a vast swath ofinformal shacks now occupied mainly by recent migrants fromZimbabwe, Malawi, and other southern African countries. Tens ofthousands live in constant risk of having their homes swept away.Moreover, these dense ranks of mostly corrugated iron shacks oftenuse hazardous materials that contain asbestos (Mathee et al., 2000)or lead-based paint (Mathee et al., 2007). Generally, these dwell-ings are constructed without proper sanitation including bath-rooms, and with very limited water access (Mathee, 2011).Although close to the centers of the country's wealth, third ordermarginalization means that townships have received few servicesand amenities, contributing to poor health outcomes. Eco-healthproblems are widespread; without sanitation, densely populatedareas are prone to infectious disease outbreaks and diarrheal dis-ease. Food insecurity and hunger are pervasive, as is HIV/AIDS andviolence (Naicker et al., 2010).

The rural marginalization policies of environmental apartheidalso generated new urban areas in the homelands. By forcing BlackSouth Africans back to live in homelands where their citizenshipsupposedly resided, but where there was little opportunity, urbanpopulations in the homelands grew rapidly as well, especiallybeginning in the 1970s (Jooma,1991). These urban areas in the ruraland fragmented homelands lacked an economic base, however, sothey could not function as typical cities (Mitsuo, 1996). Whether itbe on the fringes of White cities or the population centers of thehomelands, the environmental impact of apartheid on the urbanwas also devastating. Thus, environmental apartheid's use of ruralmarginalization has spatial consequences that continue acrossSouth Africa today.

11. Challenges and a brighter future

Although this paper paints a bleak picture of KuManzimdakaand the results of environmental apartheid's practices of ruralmarginalization, there are also examples of resilience andopportunity.

Let's return to MamBhele. She lives just down the road from theKuManzimdaka school e far from town, far from any job or store,on a plot where her ancestors likely settled after first order forciblerelocation during colonial control. She cultivates rocky soil, thanksto second order marginalization that pushed her relatives up steephillsides in contrast to White farmers who occupied the morefertile, flatter lands at the nearby base of the mountains. There is noclinic within an hour's walk, no running or clean water, no elec-tricity. Through third order marginalization and current govern-ment neglect, MamBhele must fend for herself and fight for hercommunity in nearly every way.

MamBhele is, in some ways, a foil for the Kumanzimdakalandscape. While the land is tired, MamBhele is nearly burstingwith energy. She is a picture of determination and rural entrepre-neurship. On her small plot, MamBhele has created several profit-able businesses. She raises chickens for local sale, grows a set ofvegetables and marketable crops, and led in the formation of awomen's farming cooperative: the Masithembane Co-op, whichmeans ‘let us trust one another.’ Together, and thanks toMamBhele,women in the village are generating new ideas and products, tap-ping into their environmental resources with a wise, longer-termvision for development. Together, they have more purchasing po-wer and can sell bulk foodstuff to neighbors and even in town.Together, they support one another when someone is sick. Theyshare in their profits, their woes, and their labordfighting againstthe negative ecohealth consequences of environmental apartheid.

Majola is also pushing back against the troubled position ofcattle producers in the area through the Ncedisizwe Co-op. Whilerural marginalization has made access to markets and availabilityand use of natural resources challenging, he is not without hope. Heis networking and reaching out to businesses. He is leading byexample and learning to manage the grasslands with conservationin mind.

A history of abuse and seclusion has not completely demoral-ized KuManzimdaka. The people recognize that they can no longerwait to be helped; instead, some are stepping forwardwith urgencyto change their circumstances. They are making use of the re-sources around them, learning to protect the environment andtapping into their strong community ties. They are learning thatthey have some rural powers too, such as their communal tradi-tions, a land base that they still control, potentially high-valueproducts like grass-fed meat and organic vegetable production,and a rural narrative that could be a strong symbolic resource ingaining attention to their circumstances.

Plus, although this paper outlined the ways in which KuMan-zimdaka has long been marginalized, scholars should not overlooksome recent efforts to improve the lives of rural peoples made bythe South African government, however inadequate they may befor the scale of the problems. Specifically, the ANC has worked toredistribute land to Black South Africans since the end of apartheid,buying land from willing White sellers and making it available toemerging Black commercial farmers. The fruit of that policy can beseen in much of the privately owned lands on the plateau betweenKuManzimdaka and the mountains. Other initiatives have sup-ported Black farmers through grants and training, although most ofthat work has focused on the emerging Black commercial farmers,not the smallholders on communal land. There has also been arecent surge in legally recognized cooperatives in South Africa, ascooperative agricultural business models were identified as apotentially powerful mechanism for simultaneously empoweringpreviously marginalized groups and jump-starting the economicengine. Government incentives were introduced to achieve thispurpose including grants to promote co-op development. Begin-ning with the end of official apartheid in 1994, the South Africangovernment implemented the Reconstruction and Development

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Programme (RDP), the National Growth and Development Strategy(NGDS), and the Growth Employment and Redistribution strategy(GEAR) to name a few (Alemu, 2012).

But progress in most, if not all, of these areas has largely fallenshortdas is plainly evident in KuManzimdaka and elsewhere.Throughout the Eastern Cape, much of the land that was redis-tributed is unused or under-produces because of lack of skills andcapital held by new owners, enduring deficiencies in support ser-vices, and continued exclusion from White-controlled supplychains. Cooperative development efforts have been stymied by alack of fundamental financial literacy, foundational agriculturalknowledge, and working capital. Government agricultural policy,while encouraging cooperative growth and smallholder farmersthrough grant making, often prioritizes cheap food and has beenmore effective at supporting large, predominantly White, farmoperations. Black smallholders and emerging commercial farmersstruggle to compete with large, established, White-owned farms.

Rural powers can push two ways, however, as we note aboveand as the people of KuManzimdaka are starting to discover.Indeed, the leadership of the African National Congress (ANC)developed out of the rural isolation of the Transkei. NelsonMandelawas born in a Transkei village about a hundred kilometers away.Local people are not passive actors. MamBhele and Majola are bothexamples of the current and necessary movement away from ruraloppression, building on the strengths of their rural history andlocation. KuManzimdaka, like other rural places in South Africa, hassubstantial potential. The slow progress in these areas underscoresthat the impact of environmental apartheid runs deep. But withcollaborative and participatory efforts that strive for holistic andagroecological approaches to justice and development, SouthAfrica's rural margins can become spaces of hope and well-being.

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