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Rick has over 40 years experience working in the land sector in Southern Africa. He is part of the Land Portal knowledge engagement team working to research and develop knowledge resources including data stories, blogs and in-depth country profiles for Southern, Central and Eastern Africa.
Rick is also a Senior Research Associate with Phuhlisani NPC - a South African land sector NGO and the curator of specialist Southern African land news and analysis website https://knowledgebase.land
He tweets on land related issues Twitter account https://twitter.com/KnowledgebaseL
He has a PhD from the University of Cape Town. His research in Langa, Cape Town features as the central case study in a recent book Urban Planning in the Global South (2018), co-authored with the late Vanessa Watson, which examines the on-going contestations over land and housing in the rapidly growing cities of the global South.
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Stealth Game: “Community” Conservancies and Dispossession in Northern Kenya
The fortress conservation model, created with support from some of the world’s biggest environmental groups and western donors, has led to land dispossession, militarization, and widespread human rights abuses.
Zimbabwe: High Court Gives Mnangagwa Greenlight To Evict Chilonga Villagers
THE fate of 12 000 villagers in Chilonga, Chiredzi, has been effectively sealed after the High Court on Thursday ruled there was “finite wisdom” in gave President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s administration’s decision to evict them.
The controversial decision by government, which courted global outrage, has been raging for almost a year now. High Court judge Justice Joseph Mafusire dismissed an application by villagers in which they were challenging their pending eviction.
Why reconciliation agreement between Germany and Namibia has hit the buffers
In bilateral negotiations which are reported to have disregarded international participation rights based both in treaties and customary international law, both the German and Namibian governments have been accused of “seeking forgiveness without listening to descendants” and with no reference to the return of land to the dispossessed as part of restitutive justice.
The African Women’s Collaborative for Healthy Food Systems helps build a native seedbank in Lufwanyama District, Zambia
Lufwanyama District in the Copperbelt Province of Zambia, home to many remote communities that completely depend on smallholder agriculture for food and income, is on a mission to collect native seeds to build a seed bank.
The African Women’s Collaborative for Healthy Food Systems emphasizes the importance of local, agroecological, and equitable food systems, and raises awareness of peasant and indigenous women’s important contributions to food sovereignty and food justice, particularly during the COVID-19 crisis.
‘They want to remove us and take the rock’, say Zimbabweans living near Chinese-owned mines
As companies extract wealth, villagers say they see little benefit and are instead exploited in quarries, live in homes damaged by blasts and are unable to farm polluted land
In search of a fair deal
Burundi’s government is trying to increase its share of the mineral wealth that foreign mining companies extract from its soil. The government receives only 10% of the income from the minerals even though it owns the land, according to an official of the Ministry of Energy and Mines.
To put pressure on foreign mining companies operating in Burundi, the government ordered a shut-down last July of mines belonging to seven British, Chinese and Russian companies. It says the mines can re-open once the contracts have been renegotiated.
River turns black after coal mine dam collapse next to rural communities and Hluhluwe-iMfolozi game reserve
An anthracite mine in rural KwaZulu-Natal which has operated for more than 30 years and has reportedly been involved in several controversies during this time involving water pollution, illegal mine expansion and water shortages in neighbouring rural communities, experienced a slurry dam collapse on 24 December 2021. Large volumes of potentially toxic and acidic coal-mine effluent have spilled into rivers flowing through rural communities and the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi and iSimangaliso wildlife reserves.
Zimbabwe: 12 000 Chilonga villagers face eviction after losing High Court battle
High Court judge Justice Martin Mafusire has dismissed an application by Chilonga villagers challenging government’s plans to evict more than 12 000 families from their ancestral land in Chiredzi to pave way for a lucerne grass project.
The ANC’s inertia on land could be the betrayal of its founding principles
Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, a prominent South African Advocate and author writing an Op-Ed in the Mail and Guardian on 8th January, provides in depth analysis of the failure by South Africa's ANC ruling party to address land issues. He argues that "the backstory to the formation of the ANC (in 1912) was land... Yet the evidence since 1994 shows hesitation, timidity and indifference to the resolution of land".
The government should establish proper pro-poor land reform instead of fiddling with the Constitution
Gender equity is also key to land reform since women are under-represented and have not benefited from land reform in any meaningful manner. (Photo: newframe.com / Wikipedia)