Joint Ventures (JVs) between ‘agribusiness’ investors and ‘small farmers’ or ‘customary landowners’ are being promoted in South Africa’s land and agrarian reform programme as a way to include land reform beneficiaries in the country’s competitive agricultural sector.

Debates about land redistribution from white farm owners to black hands tend to be silent on the question of farm dwellers. This is despite the fact that over two million black people are estimated to be living on commercial farms.