RAINWATER HARVESTING, HOMESTEAD FOOD FARMING, SOCIAL CHANGE AND COMMUNITIES OF INTERESTS IN THE EASTERN CAPE, SOUTH AFRICA

This paper draws on a multidisciplinary 5‐yr study of rainwater harvesting and conservation practices, homestead food farming and rural production practices in two Eastern Cape rural villages. The unexpected negative dynamics and changing aspects of food insecurity alongside limited and declining homestead garden food production (and rainwater harvesting) and subsequent marginalization are explained. The human capital approach is here understood as one that inevitably entails a sense of knowledge and sustainable development held elsewhere. A more engaged sense of defining and working with human capacities is needed, one which does not solely refer to formal education improvements, earnings and transfers of agricultural skills as positive. Application and development of rainwater harvesting is embedded in the complex and negative, increasingly marginal and compressed singular livelihood attributes that have come to be socially associated with food farming and rainwater harvesting. Food farming and rainwater harvesting is stigmatized as a sign of poverty, HIV/AIDS and abandonment by family, and thus is located in the differentiated and distinctively negative space in the existing webs of local community and village social and knowledge relationships. The paper concludes that this has major implications, and methods aimed at assisting vulnerable families to cope with food insecurity might actually lead to increased vulnerability. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.