Mobilisation and Engagement: AFRA’s exciting new partnership with Oxfam South Africa

AFRA is delighted to be working with Oxfam South Africa as part of their Rural Transformation Programme. Oxfam South Africa mobilise the power of people to claim their rights and participate fully in shaping decisions, policies and processes that affect their lives and hold power to account, challenging systems which perpetuate poverty and inequality.

AFRA, in partnership with Oxfam South Africa, will assist women, youth and men residing or working on rural commercial farmland in six local municipalities in uMgungundlovu to mobilise around key issues impacting on their quality of life and access to sustainable livelihoods, engaging with and influencing policies and processes that impact on their land and development rights. This will build on the work started in our recent Regional Farm Dweller and Workers Platform to identify, support and mobilise community entry points, networks and alliances as champions of land and development issues.

This project is an integral part of AFRA’s Strategic Plan for 2017-19, and builds on similar work that AFRA has undertaken with communities over the past 37 years whilst also opening opportunities for us to explore new approaches. The project expands on and consolidates current work within all our other programmes, building on aspects of community empowerment and mobilisation already within our Farm Dweller Advocacy Project (funded by Bread for the World), our Action Research Project with Tshintsha Amakhaya, our Farm worker and Farm dweller Rights Project and our Youth Rights Project (both funded by the Foundation for Human Rights), and our Farm Dweller Rights Settlement Project – better known as the Pathways Project (funded by the European Union). We are grateful to the farm dwellers and workers who stepped forward at the Platform and asked for support to create this space to work with each other, and to Oxfam South Africa and our other partners for working with us to enable this vision to become a reality.