Sunday, June 20, 2010

Agrarian Reform in South Africa

Here's a link from Raj Patel about poverty and agrarian reform in South Africa. More and more I'm noticing that the demands of many progressive grassroots groups are really not that radical. The food sovereignty campaign cited in Patel's post demands land redistribution, non-privatization of water resources, decent public housing, and a move towards more sustainable agriculture. Fifty years ago a government proposing such things would be considered within the political mainstream, but now so many governments have bought into the radical ideas of market deregulation, shrinking of government responsibilities, privatization of public resources, and consolidation of land and wealth, that it's left to small, supposedly radical grassroots movements to demand a bit of sanity in governance.

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