Features of the investment project

Conversion into a monoculture of rape on large shared pastoral territories and food gardens in order to produce agrofuels for the European market.

Description of the identified situation

A project promoted by Eastern Cape Development Corporation in the Eastern Cape Province, elaborated within the frame of the national development strategy of the industrial production of agrofuels. It anticipates (at the end) the establishment of monocultures of canola (a variety of rape) on 500.000 ha in the former Transkei region and the building of a biodiesel production plant from this raw material in the industrial development area of East London . The first phase of the project (that should lead to the cultivation of canola on 70 000 ha in the Umsimvubu valley) should have been completed in 2008.

A strong social opposition got organised against this project. It gathers numerous local organizations as well as international NGOs. This opposition action denounces, in the first place, the diversion in the use of big groups of municipal commons and of traditional and tribal lands. Their enclosure and use for rape monoculture will have, according to the organizations, negative consequences on the way of living and food security of the local populations, due to the big changes they will cause in the breeding practices and the disappearing of the subsistence vegetable gardens. These structures dispute, in this way and in particular, the procedure that brought to the definition of the project. According to them, no prior consultation took place with the populations using the land. The movement called, in March 2007, to the revision of the national strategy concerning the development of the agrofuels’ industrial production, notably in order to grant a bigger part to the voice of the local populations.

See the article of presentation of the selected cases, for more details about the nature of this job, its limits and its objective.

Sources

 African Centre for Biosafety, 2007, The Impacts on Land, Food and Forests ( available on http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/docs…),

 Appendix of the document "Rural communities express dismay" : ‘Land Grabs fuelled by Biofuels Strategy’, the declaration of several participants at the work-group organised by NGOs in Durban, in March 2007, to analyze the national Strategy for the development of the agrofuels’ industrial production , available on http://www.biosafetyafrica.org.za/i…)

Translation

Marie-France Genèvre