Post-agrarian biopolitics

Abstract

How does one make sense of the incorporation of millions of South Africa’spoor and landless black people into a political and economic order thatcannot deliver on its promises — and what are the implications?The path of economic and political change that South Africa has followedin the last 70 years has led to an alarming and fateful state of affairs. Here, asin other parts of what we can perhaps no longer call the ‘developing world’,millions of people have been induced to leave land-based livelihoods andagricultural employment without any real prospect of finding decent alter-natives in the formal or informal non-farm economy (Du Toit and Neves,2014). While Apartheid is partly to blame, the underlying factors leadingto this ‘stalled agrarian transition’ (Li, 2009) relate to longer time scales,extending both before and after National Party rule.