- Title
- Exploring contradictions and absences in mobilizing ‘learning as process' for sustainable agricultural practices
- Creator
- Pesanayi, Tichaona
- Subject
- To be catalogued
- Date
- 2015
- Type
- text
- Type
- book chapter
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437008
- Identifier
- vital:73323
- Identifier
- ISBN 9781315660899
- Identifier
- https://www.routledge.com/Critical-Realism-Environmental-Learning-and-Social-Ecological-Change/Price-Lotz-Sistka/p/book/9780367597689
- Description
- Water is a fascinating, life-giving being. It flows. It cuts into the earth to create its passage by finding the places where the earth will give. As it meanders it passes through many different contexts, whether at a fastrush-full-blown flood or the trickle of an underground desert stream. It does not demand that the space it moves through is homogenous. It adapts to whatever terrain it finds itself journeying through. Human creatures, dependent as they are on water for their own beings and for life, flock to water like flies to food. We build our cities, our factories and homes on the banks and corners of rivers and draw and drink and use (and abuse) water. We throw in and we take out and the river keeps going until sometimes it doesn’t. Then we worry. Sometimes it is not the lack of flow that worries us but the fact that when we drink it babies become sick, some die and this causes a stir. In South Africa this security, or lack of it, is embedded in the political historical landscape of this land. Water is classified as scarce. Our rainfall is low in comparison to other countries. In South Africa, during apartheid this scarce resource was not avail able in equal measure to all. The rulers of apartheid South Africa were farmers and miners. They were of British decent, sent to farm the new colony. They were also descended from first colonial settlers arriving from the Nether-lands and then Germany, known colloquially as the Boers. South Africa was divided and redivided until in 1948 the Boers gained independence from British rule and finished the job that the British had started by legalizing the separation of races. Farming was still core to the Boer way of life and this is reflect-ed in the laws that dictated resource use and management, such as the 1956 Water Act No. 54 (RSA, 1956) which gave riparian rights to those that owned land. Water was also subsi-dized to boost the economy, particularly for the large mines, and parastatals such as Eskom (Byrnes, 1996). Water was not only used to ensure that the economy of white South Africa flourished, it also was the landmark of division.
- Format
- 24 pages, pdf
- Publisher
- Routledge
- Language
- English
- Relation
- Pesanayi, T., 2015. Exploring contradictions and absences in mobilizing ‘learning as process' for sustainable agricultural practices. Critical realism, environmental learning and social-ecological change, pp.230-253
- Rights
- Publishers
- Rights
- Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Taylor and Francis Online Terms and Conditions Statement (https://www.tandfonline.com/terms-and-conditions)
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