knowledgebase.land is back after a technical makeover. Lots of new content going up daily. Your window into land related issues in Southern, Eastern and Central Africa

Mining companies are breaking their promises - and the state is doing nothing about it MACUA report finds mining companies are not sticking to their Social and Labour Plans

A three-year study by Mining Affected Communities in Action (MACUA) has found that 11 mining companies in South Africa have failed to meet the promises they made to their communities.
groundup.org.za/article/mini...

An ode to the Demographic and Health Survey Program Caren Grown reflects on the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) Program and its 40-plus years of impact.

An ode to the Demographic and Health Survey Program www.brookings.edu/articles/an-...

This Is What a Digital Coup Looks Like | Carole Cadwalladr | TED YouTube video by TED

An essential watch with a clear action agenda www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZOo...

What comes after liberation? In this wide-ranging conversation, the freedom fighter and former Constitutional Court justice Albie Sachs reflects on law, liberation, and the unfinished work of building a just South Africa.

Riason Naidoo interviews 90-year-old Albie Sachs
africasacountry.com/2025/04/what...

Mining in Southern Africa. Key issues and trends Feb - March 2025
landportal.org/library/reso...

South Africa land expropriation? Facts and fantasies. News and analysis curated on knowledgebase.land/weekly-overv...
Download PDF from
landportal.org/library/reso...

Twenty Lessons, read by John Lithgow Key selections from On Tyranny, for viewing and sharing

Timothy Snyder: Twenty lessons from On Tyranny. Lessons for America. And everywhere else across the globe. snyder.substack.com/p/twenty-les...

War and Resource Grabbing, Two Sides of the Same Violence - Slow Food The battle for resources draws the lines of world geopolitics, revealing the hypocrisy of so many ideologically vague motivations.

"War and the struggle for resources lead to the destruction of ecosystems, the inability to produce food, food insecurity, hunger and migration for subsistence." www.slowfood.com/blog-and-new...

Cultivating farmland after the bombs Syria dispatch: Finding life and peace amid a devastated land following the fall of dictator Bashar al-Assad.

Syria’s decade-long conflict has ravaged its natural landscape, observes independent environmental journalist Peter Schwartzstein. “Almost no part of the environment has escaped the negative effects of hostilities. theecologist.org/2025/mar/21/...

Turn PEPFAR funding freeze crisis into opportunity The PEPFAR funding freeze has impacted millions of South Africans living with HIV.

A study from the University of Cape Town bit.ly/4loFuqX indicates that withdrawing USAID Pepfar support in South Africa without effectively transitioning to supported services will lead to an estimated 601,000 HIV-related deaths and 501,000 new infections in the next 10 years.

2+2=5 "America destroys one of its own symbols," by Stanislav Aseyev

1984+41: 2+2=5 open.substack.com/pub/snyder/p...

To overthrow a tyrant, try the 3.5 Percent Solution A study of 323 uprisings against repressive regimes yields stunning insights.

This is a charade. America is better than this.

bigthink.com/the-present/...

US shutdown of HIV/Aids funding ‘could lead to 500,000 deaths in South Africa’ Cuts could result in 500,000 deaths over the next 10 years in the country, research suggests

Make no mistake: this is eugenics on a global scale www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

Extreme inequality and housing injustice in the DRC: rebuilding ‘Kinshasa la Belle’ Past policies and programmes in the city of Kinshasa have led to little or no improvement in housing provision and affordability. A new report reveals that proposed policy approaches risk perpetuating...

"In Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo , the phrase débrouillez-vous (fend for yourself) is considered such an important life lesson that the city’s inhabitants refer to it as ‘article 15’ – an imaginary addition to the Congolese constitution"
www.iied.org/extreme-ineq...

Icebreaker returns from Antarctica with alarming news Scientists aboard the SA Agulhas II have been tracking ocean health

South Africa’s icebreaker ship, the SA Agulhas II, returned to Cape Town on Monday after taking supplies and a relief crew to South Africa’s Antarctic base, but the results the scientists on board brought back are alarming.

Read groundup.org.za/article/iceb... by Steve Kretzmann

KZN activist shot dead Vusi Banda – Mondlo Township Civic Organisation chairperson – was murdered on Thursday

KZN activist shot dead: Vusi Banda – Mondlo Township Civic Organisation chairperson – was murdered on Thursday

Read groundup.org.za/article/kzn-... by Bongane Motaung

Apologies: Cherryl Walker

Expropriation and class bias — the great unmentionable Evidence from both international experience and South African research suggests that a smallholder-focused land redistribution policy could generate as many as a million new jobs.

Ben Cousins Post-apartheid land reform has misfired badly. It is not surprising that this year’s State of the Nation Address did not say a single word about land.
#SouthAfrica #Expropriation #Landreform
www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2025...

Carbon offsets are one of the spaces where big ag and big oil reveal their strategy to continue business as usual while finding more mechanisms to increase their profits. EG cover crops offsets often require fossil fuel use but that isn’t counted b/c the offsets are based on soil organic carbon.

Glaciers and causation

Hi @theguardian.com -- I think you mean 'continuing to burn fossil fuels' or 'extractive, carbon-intensive economies', or maybe just 'first-world economies', rather than 'melting glaciers'

Elon Musk’s South African fantasy Musk’s outrage over land reform in South Africa isn’t about fairness—it’s about fueling right-wing paranoia and preserving economic privilege.

William Shoki: The global right—and Musk in particular—have seized on land reform as a vehicle for their broader ideological agenda:
africasacountry.com/2025/02/elon...

South Africa has failed to deliver access to enough water for millions – a new approach is needed In South Africa, a household gets 6,000 litres of free water a month. For a family of eight, this falls below the global minimum for health and hygiene.

The mounting water crisis in South Africa.
theconversation.com/south-africa...

Cutting through the maze of disinformation and outright lies around land in SA Let’s be clear: there is no provision in our constitutional order for the arbitrary confiscation of white-owned land, nor any serious suggestion that the current government plans to pursue such a stra...

Cherly Walker, researcher and former land claims commissioner counters active disinformation concerning the South African land question
www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2025...

Around Burundi’s largest lake, women and children bear the brunt of floods Experts say more must be done to build resilience to landslides and other climate-related disasters

Women's land rights, climate change, floods and vulnerability dialogue.earth/en/climate/a...

Avoiding Whatsapp as a political act This is the first part of a four-parter. Part Two on what’s wrong with Meta is here . Part Three on how metadata really matters is here . Part Four on how to avoid Whatsapp is here .

Essential reading! This four part blog by Laura Czerniewicz takes you on a deep dive into the ills of the Zuckerberg metaverse and how WhatsApp contributes to its toxicity. czernie.weebly.com/blog/avoidin...

Race, power, and the politics of distraction As economic crises deepen, right-wing fearmongering and racial scapegoating thrive—masking the real struggle for economic justice.

Andile Zulu
The Expropriation Act is a procedural piece of legislation that lays out the context and criteria through which the government may take private property, either in the public interest or for public purpose.
africasacountry.com/2025/02/race...

Mapped: How extreme weather is destroying crops around the world Carbon Brief has analysed global media coverage over the past two years to identify reporting on extreme weather events damaging crops.

Mapped: How extreme weather is destroying crops around the world
interactive.carbonbrief.org/crops-extrem...

"Can 2025 usher in real change or will it be ‘business as usual’ with a green face?" - Mokoro In 2024 Christopher Tanner attended both the World Bank Land Conference in Washington, and the LANDac Conference in Utrecht. Christopher is a Mokoro Principal Consultant and has over 30 years...

Chris Tanner reflects on how ‘innovations in land governance’ are failing to take up the challenge of preventing Land Grab 2.0. Making land administration tools more efficient with
updated digital technology can play into the hands of private investors.
mokoro.co.uk/can-2025-ush...

So how does this connect to land and human rights in Africa? The implosion of what was left of American 'democracy' has ripple effects around the globe. It emboldens those who already peddle in falsehoods, who divide and plunder as a livelihood strategy. It drives conflict, land and resource grabs