Environment and Planning A 2013, volume 45, pages 2553 2571

doi:10.1068/a45693

Dis/articulations and the hydrosocial cycle: postapartheid geographies of agrarian change in the Ceres Valley, South Africa

Anne-Marie DebbanDepartment of Geography, San Diego State University, 5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego, CA 92182, USA; e-mail: adebbane@mail.sdsu.eduReceived 5 December 2012; in revised form 6 August 2013

Abstract. This paper analyzes the role of the hydrosocial cycle in producing and sustaining uneven geographies of capitalist agriculture in the Ceres Valley, a major center of South Africas high-value deciduous fruit industry. I explore ways in which the mobilization, appropriation, and transformation of water resources become intertwined with and reinforce the radicalized capitalist relations that have characterized the local political economy of export fruit production since the 19th century. These relations have solidified over time as they have been able to adapt to shifting politicaleconomic and politicalecological dynamics. Focusing on the postapartheid period, I examine how white agrarian capital has been able to maintain and even strengthen its dominance over the regional economy despite the dramatic shuffling of political and economic priorities. I pay particular attention to how the fatal combination of the liberalization of agricultural markets and the financialization of water supply becomes articulated through interconnected sociospatial processes of dispossession, devaluation, and disinvestment. I argue that questions of access to and control over the hydrosocial cycle not only reveal how marginalized and radicalized social actorsfarm workers, small-scale farmers, township residentsbecome differentially articulated with and disarticulated from existing and emerging circuits of capital accumulation. It also opens promising analytical and political avenues through which to illuminate and confront uneven geographies of capitalist development in ways that highlight the linked sociospatial processes of production and social reproduction.

Keywords: disarticulations, political ecology, hydrosocial cycle, postapartheid South Africa, agrarian change, Ceres Valley

1 IntroductionSouth Africas political transition from apartheid to democratic rule in 1994 was accompanied by a period of dramatic economic restructuring. These changes were aimed at stimulating the development of a globally competitive export-oriented economy through the promulgation of neoliberal reforms, including the deregulation and reregulation of different economic sectors, the privatization of state entities, and the liberalization of finance and trade. Initiated by the apartheid government in the 1980s during a general and prolonged economic crisis, the neo-liberal restructuring of the economy intensified and accelerated under the democratically elected African National Congress (ANC) government.

The shift away from a largely inward-looking and state-supported economy produced deeply uneven effects between and among different economic sectors. One of the more deeply affected sectors was agriculture, which historically benefited from and depended on an elaborate state infrastructure that tightly regulated production and distribution regimes and provided financial support (Bernstein, 1996). On the one hand, the sharp decline in state support, along with the liberalization of trade, severely weakened the maize, wheat, and dairy industries, which faced intense global market competition and volatility; on the other hand,

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high-value and export-oriented sectors such as the wine, fruit, sugar, and wool industries thrived and experienced rapid growth (Greenberg, 2003). At the same time, these sectors have seen a growing concentration and centralization of capital coupled with changes in forms and patterns of agricultural employment that have resulted in job losses, spurred the proliferation of informal settlements, and generated the need to straddle multiple livelihood strategies (Bernstein, 2004; du Toit and Ewert, 2002; Hart, 2002). In view of South Africas history of colonial conquest and racial dispossession, the shifting dynamics of capitalist agriculture in the postapartheid period must necessarily be linked to the reproduction of white agrarian capital, and the way this reinforces existing patterns of racial exclusion and dominance in the countryside (Bernstein, 1996; du Toit, 2004; Greenberg, 2003; 2010; Williams et al, 1998).

A growing body of critical scholarship has emerged examining the shifting dynamics of export-oriented agricultural production in postapartheid South Africa. Emphasis has been put on the changing sociospatial patterns of agricultural labor relations and markets (du Toit and Ally, 2003; Ewert and du Toit, 2005; Mather and Greenberg, 2003); the gendered and radicalized divisions that structure labor dynamics (Barrientos and Kritzinger, 2004; du Toit and Ewert, 2002; Ewert and du Toit, 2005; Orton et al, 2001); the relationship between agricultural restructuring and land reform (Cousins, 2007; Greenberg, 2003; Kepe, 2009; Moseley, 2007); the linkages between global market integration and black economic empowerment strategies (du Toit et al, 2008; Raynolds and Ngcwangu, 2010; Williams, 2005); and the integration of black farmers into global commodity circuits (Mather and Greenberg, 2003; Ponte and Ewert, 2009).

A general trend in this literature has been the examination of agrarian change as a uniquely social process. The result has been neglect of the ecological bases that produce and sustain capitalist agriculture.(1) In this paper I address this gap through a political ecological study of water supply in the Ceres valley, a major center for South Africas deciduous fruit industry. I am specifically interested in examining the role of neoliberal water reforms in shaping the local political economy of export fruit production. While the privatization and commercialization of urban water services has been an important arena for critical scholarly research on the neoliberal restructuring of South Africas water sector (eg, McDonald and Ruiters, 2005), there is a need to understand how neoliberal water management practices have altered ways in which farmers gain access to irrigation water. This is especially important given that white agriculture has historically relied on state subsidies and investments in the development of water supply infrastructure, which have kept irrigation costs artificially low, and thereby stand to be considerably affected by neoliberal water reforms that have resulted in the withdrawal of state support in irrigation.

The case of Ceres is particularly instructive. My main focus is on the Koekedouw Dam, which was constructed in 1998 to supply water to the town of Ceres and irrigators in the surrounding valley (see figure 1). The Koekedouw Dam was entirely financed by the private sector and was praised by government as a model for advancing the national agenda on water resource management. It is of particular importance to understand how the Dam became a catalyst for white farmers to initiate land-reform deals with aspiring black farmers, and, in turn, how land reform became a key strategy through which the old rural elite was able to expand its control over local water and land resources. My concerns in this paper, however, have less to do with the specific details and outcomes of the land-reform projects than with how they enabled the reproduction and expansion of white agrarian capital within the context

(1) Some concerns have been raised around the ecological factors and consequences of agricultural production (Bernstein, 2004; Bolwig et al, 2008), but they are viewed as separate from social processes. I am arguing for something different, as I discuss below.

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of the racialized histories of dispossession that shape uneven geographies of export fruit production in the Ceres Valley.

Engaging with the concept of disarticulations (Bair and Werner, 2011), this paper thus explores relationships between the political ecology of water and uneven geographies of capitalist agricultural development. Specifically, I look at how the deepening integration of the Ceres economy into global commodity circuits becomes articulated with and is contingent on the production and circulation of water. In doing so, I demonstrate ways in which these articulations are constituted through processes of disjuncture and disruption that selectively transform, or disarticulate, existing social relations and forms of production (Bair and Werner, 2011, page 989) and social reproduction. My goal in this paper is to develop understandings of the simultaneous processes of articulation and disconnection through which uneven geographies of capitalist agriculture are reworked in the Ceres Valley through the lens of the hydrosocial cycle.

Studies on the political ecology of water have conceptualized the hydrosocial cycle as a way to analyze the interwoven socioecological processes and relations through which the hydrological cycle becomes socially metabolized (Bakker, 2003; Budds, 2008; Gandy, 1997; 2004; Kaika, 2005; 2006; Swyngedouw, 1999; 2004; 2009). Perspectives on the hydrosocial cycle consider that the hydraulic conditions that make irrigation agriculture (and other social systems) possible are socio-physical constructions that are actively and historically produced, both in terms of social content and physical-environmental qualities (Swyngedouw, 2009, page 56). As a material basis for social and economic life, the institutional and structural arrangements through which the hydrosocial cycle becomes organized play a pivotal role in the socioecological production and organization of space (Gandy, 2004). For this reason,

Figure 1. [In color online.] Map of Ceres and surrounding area. The X indicates the proximate location of the Koekedouw Dam.

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examining ways in which material and institutional hydrosocial arrangements operate through interrelated social processes not only addresses important questions about access to and exclusion from water: it opens a window onto a wider set of sociospatial power relations (Loftus, 2007).

The next section begins with a brief overview of critical scholarship of land and agrarian reform in South Africa. This leads me to observe how inadequate attention has been paid to the centrality of water in shaping processes of agrarian change. I then point to ways in which the historical development of capitalist agriculture in South Africa has been premised on a specific ordering of material and institutional hydrosocial arrangements, and how hydrosocial configurations have changed in response and according to politicaleconomic and socioecological dynamics. I argue that a hydrosocial perspective is crucial in order to develop better understandings of postapartheid trajectories of agrarian change.

In the third section of the paper, my attention turns to the Ceres Valley and the Koekedouw Dam. I begin by explaining the driving forces behind increasing water demand and document the institutional and financial arrangements for the new water project. I then examine the role of the Koekedouw Dam in shaping a capital crisis that hit Ceres in the late 1990s, looking specifically at how the states land-reform program provided the means through which the crisis was resolvedor rather, displacedby facilitating the reinvestment into devalued capital. As I go on to explain, the limited and highly circumscribed spaces that land reform opens up for social redistribution must be juxtaposed against the social and spatial fragmentation of agricultural labor and the crisis of social reproduction that has emerged as a result (Bernstein, 2013). This leads me to consider, finally, how Koekedouw water has become a key arena around which new everyday struggles are fought, offering perhaps the strongest examples of the stakes involved from focusing on dis/articulations of the hydrosocial cycle. To conclude, I argue that questions of access to and control over the hydrosocial cycle not only reveal how marginalized and racialized social actorsfarm workers, small-scale farmers, township residentsbecome differentially articulated with and disarticulated from existing and emerging circuits of capital accumulation. It opens promising analytical and political avenues through which to illuminate and confront uneven geographies of capitalist development in ways that highlight the linked sociospatial processes of production and social reproduction.

2 Agrarian reform and the hydrosocial cycle in postapartheid South AfricaSouth Africas history of racialized dispossession and discrimination resulted in deep inequalities in access to land: the white minority population ultimately gained control and ownership of 87% of the total land area. In order to reverse racially skewed land relations, the ANC adopted a market-based land-reform program in 1995 with the goal of redistributing 30% of agricultural land to black South Africans. This target was initially set to be achieved by 1999, which was later revised to 2014, and then most recently to 2025 (Greenberg, 2010). That the land-reform program has had a dismal track record has been hard to deny. By 2009, only 5% of land had been transferred to black ownership (Hall, 2009). Not only have targets not been reached, but actually existing land reform has been unable to generate alternative viable livelihoods for most beneficiaries (Aliber and Cousins, 2013; Jacobs et al, 2003; Moseley and McCusker, 2008).

While many critiques of the ANCs land-reform program have centered on policy issues (eg, Lahiff, 2007), others have interrogated the logics of land reform in relation to broader political-economic processes (eg, Walker, 2008). This last has generated debates about different but interrelated aspects of land reform, including demands to reverse historical injustices (Kepe, 2009); promote the formation of a black commercial farming class; generate employment and alleviate rural and urban poverty; and address the conditions of

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fragmentation of labor under current patterns of accumulation (Bernstein, 2004; OLaughlin et al, 2013).

One thing that is largely missing from these debates is any serious consideration of the role of water in shaping processes of agrarian change. This is particularly surprising given how water scarcity has been a persistent concern in South Africa from the colonial era onward. Of course, there have been questions raised about how issues of access to water have contributed to the failure of land reform (eg, Cousins, 2013), as well as appeals for better integration between water and land-reform policies (Greenberg, 2010; van Koppen et al, 2009)which the government itself has recognized (DWAF, 2006). The problem, though, is that these accounts adopt an instrumentalist view of water, treating it as an objective factor of production. Yet, this ignores how water resources are socially produced (Linton, 2008), and embedded in multiscaled politicaleconomic and sociocultural processes of hydrosocial transformation that shape and are shaped by highly uneven and unjust socioecological configurations (Swyngedouw, 2004). Approaching water through the hydrosocial cycle becomes vitally important within the specific context of South Africa.

Indeed, the historical development of capitalist agriculture fundamentally depended on access to plentiful and reliable sources of water for irrigation. Under the riparian system that was established during colonial rule (Hall, 1939), landowners had exclusive rights to any water resources (both surface and underground) attached to their land. The riparian system ultimately concentrated and consolidated ownership and control over the countrys water resources within the hands of the white minority population. Only 9.5% of national water resources were allocated to the ethnically divided native reserves (and later bantustans (2)) (Schmitz, 2008), which granted limited landholding rights to the black population and, as such, racial inequalities in land relations produced similar (and even greater) inequalities in access to water (DWAF, 1997). Land and water dispossession were inextricably intertwined (Cottle, 2004; Guelke and Shell, 1992; Ross, 1986).

Although riparian water rights ensured that the white minority could potentially benefit from free access to water, the geographical and temporal variability of freshwater resources, compounded by periodic episodes of drought, meant that water was, nevertheless, a limiting factor for capitalist expansion. In order to overcome these limitations, the state drove forward the transformation of the countrys hydraulic conditions which was, in turn, predicated on greater state control over water (Lumby et al, 2005). The massive development of large-scale hydraulic engineering projects, which gathered pace in the 1970s, served to fuel the expansion and diversification of the national economy as accelerated processes of industrialization and urbanization led to increasing competition and conflict over available water supplies.

White agrarian capital continued to benefit from the riparian system, and also from privileged water allocations and pricing policies for water abstracted from multipurpose state water schemes serving the urban, mining, and agricultural sectors. Furthermore, the state provided generous subsidies and low-interest loans, which were largely written off, to encourage irrigation boards to undertake the construction of private irrigation schemes (Backeberg and Groenwald, 1994; Bate and Tren, 2002).

As demands for water increased and the technological conquest of water was spatially and ecologically extended, the socioecological transformation of the hydrological cycle became more deeply embedded in the consolidation of the capitalist racial formation. This becomes particularly clear when we consider how dam building that flooded valleys in the bantustans resulted in the relocation of rural communities to dense and underserviced (2) The Land Acts of 1913 and 1936 formally limited landholding rights for the black majority, representing two thirds of the population, to ethnically divided native reserves which under apartheid were referred to as bantustans and became the basis for its plan for separate development. Ten bantustans were establishedall across the country, except in the Western Cape province.

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settlements and their absorbtion within the wage-labor economy (Scott and Diab, 1989). A similar scenario took place as a result of the development of state irrigation schemes aimed at improving agricultural production in the bantustans. These schemes were part of the apartheid governments strategy to give credibility to the ideology of separate development through betterment planning schemes in the bantustans. In practice, these schemes led to the rearrangement of patterns of land use and access, benefited only a small minority of the bantustan population, and further increased dependence on wage labor (de Wet, 1989; Letsoalo and Rogerson, 1982).

The above exemplifies how socioecological processes through which water became increasingly mobilized, appropriated, transformed, and incorporated within circuits of capitalist production were premised on the simultaneous separation and expulsion of the black population from land and water resources. Racialized processes of dispossession and displacement, through which racialized capitalist relations became articulated in the South African countryside, operated through specific sociotechnical interventions in the hydrological cycle. These interventions created the socioecological conditions necessary to make possible and sustain the production and expansion of white agrarian capital. Intellectual and political engagements with agrarian questions must thus confront how any project for social transformation in the countryside becomes inserted into existing hydrosocial configurations.

This is particularly relevant given how South Africas democratic transition paved the way for the comprehensive legal review of the water sector. In 1998 the ANC passed new water legislation with the goals of promoting productive and efficient water use while also addressing issues of social equity and racial redistribution. One of the more politically important changes brought about by the new water law has been the abolition of the riparian system, as all water resources have been nationalized and placed within the public trust (DWAF, 1998). However, this has been largely symbolic as provisions were made to protect existing water rights which had been appropriated during the colonial and apartheid eras. White farmers have thus been able to maintain the preferential arrangements through which they have historically secured access to cheap and abundant water resources. Nevertheless, the neoliberal market-based principles that have been adopted to regulate the allocation, development, and use of new water resources have serious implications for farmers. Key elements include full-cost water pricing, the reallocation of water to the highest value use, and private sector financing. In other words, the full costs relating to the production, distribution, and management of water resources have become the responsibility of water users. Furthermore, the policy of providing state subsidies for the development of agricultural water resources has been terminated. An important caveat is that the new law has allowed for the state to grant water subsidies for the purposes of promoting racial redress in the allocation of water resources. Questions about who gains access to these subsidies, by what means, for what purposes, and to what effect are raised in this paper.

The remainder of the paper focuses on my political ecological study of water supply in the Ceres valley. In putting the concept of the hydrosocial cycle to work, I examine ways in which postapartheid shifts in the political and institutional organization of the water supply have intersected with and operated through multiple and interconnected processes of agrarian change.

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3 Reworking the hydrosocial cycle in the Ceres Valley (3) The people who moved in here two hundred, two hundred and fifty years ago, they werent fools they chose places with good soil and good water if you cant irrigate you may as well forget about it.

Carl van der Merwe (quoted in Smuts and Albert, 1988, page 116)

Lying about 150 km northeast of Cape Town, the town of Ceres was established in the mid-19th century as a local market and distribution outlet for colonial farmers in the surrounding valley, and continues to be a key node in the production and distribution of deciduous fruit. Today, Ceres produces about 20% of the apples and 45% of the pears grown in South Africa; over 60% of the Ceres fruit crop is geared for export markets. While the EU, especially the UK, has traditionally been the main destination for Ceres exports, other important markets include North America, the Middle East, and East Asia. Apart from producing fruit, Ceres has also become a primary location for a well-established and expanding agroindustry in the packing and processing of fruit and vegetables. Indeed, Ceres is perhaps best known as the headquarters of the world famous Ceres Fruit Juices company.

Capitalist forms of agricultural production took root in the late 19th century when farmers in the valley became increasingly specialized in horticulture, growing apples, pears, peaches, and nectarines. While the area receives good rainfall during the winter months,(4) the inverse relationship between hydrological cycles (winter rainfall patterns) and production demands (summer growing season) meant that any sort of agriculture on a commercial scale would have been impossible without irrigation (Smuts and Albert, 1988). In the early days of irrigation agriculture, water from perennial streams and springs was channeled to fields and orchards by furrows. As agriculture intensified and streams started to dry up, farmers built dams on their farms to capture and store surface runoff that accumulated during the winter rainfall season in order to irrigate their fields and orchards in the summer season.

It was not until the second half of the 20th century that Ceres farmers saw the need for larger scale irrigation schemes, as the deciduous fruit industry was undergoing rapid expansion. Between 1950 and 1980 the region experienced nearly five-fold growth in exports by volume (Stander, 1983). Within this time frame, Ceres irrigation boards undertook the construction of four irrigation schemes to meet increasing demands for water (DWA, 1973). These schemes enabled farmers to gain access to water to which they did not have riparian rights. Because the schemes were financed through state subsidies and low-interest loans, irrigation costs accounted for only a small proportion (on average 5%) of total costs of production (Louw, 2004). As we shall see, the sociopolitical and financial arrangements through which farmers gained access to water changed dramatically in the postapartheid period.

3.1 Liberalizing the countrysideWhile the period of agricultural restructuring that began in the 1980s opened new markets for South African deciduous fruit growers, Ceres farmers became increasingly concerned about strained water supplies. The growing demand for water was not simply to expand production: it was also linked to meeting the strict quality standards of the European market.(5) In order to remain competitive, farmers needed to replant orchards with new, high-value cultivars for which more and cleaner water meant bigger and tastier fruit. Farmers had increasingly been

(3) This section draws on key informant and ethnographic interviews conducted during fieldwork in Ceres from November 2006 to April 2007.(4) The average annual precipitation is 2400 mm, significantly higher than the country average of 500 mm (DWAF, 2003).(5) The integration and concentration of power by European retail markets have subjected fruit farmers to greater price competition and strict production standards.

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supplementing their irrigation needs with brackish groundwater, which was far from ideal and ran the risk of ruining crops. Farmers thus turned to the Koekedouw River.

The Koekedouw River had already supplied irrigation water to farmers on the western edge of the Ceres valley since the 1970s (DWA, 1969). These farmers had established the Koekedouw Irrigation Board (KIB) and developed an irrigation scheme which granted them the right to pump water in the winter months from the upper reaches of the Koekedouw River. The farmers wanted to build a dam on the Koekedouw River in order to fully exploit the rivers waters throughout the year. Since a small municipal dam already existed on the Koekedouw River, which supplied water to the town of Ceres, the KIB depended on the collaboration of the Ceres Municipality to move forward with the Koekedouw water project. A constellation of social, political, and economic forces combined to steer the municipality in favor of a larger water-supply scheme. At least three deserve mention. First, the towns economic base is directly dependent upon agroindustrial linkages such that fruit processing and packaging plants experienced growing demand for water, as well as the farmers. In addition, many farmers have managerial interests in these concerns, forging a unity of class interests between urban and agricultural demands for water. Second, the representation of farmers on the local council further consolidated this unity of class interests (du Toit, 2004). Third, the towns growing population created expectations that a greater demand for water would need to be met, especially in the context of postapartheid political priorities focused on extending and improving municipal water connections to black households.

In 1996 the Ceres Municipality and the KIB, with a membership of thirty farmers, entered into a public-partnership agreement for the construction of the Koekedouw Dam (Ceres Municipality, 1996). The stated objectives for the dam project included the expansion of the water supply to irrigate an additional 1500 ha of land, the creation of 800 agricultural jobs through increased productivity, and meeting projected growth in the towns demands for water. In addition, a portion of water from the dam was to be released back into the river (DWAF, 1995). On the basis that these objectives advanced the national governments agenda on waterby promoting economic growth and job creation while simultaneously addressing ecological concernsthe Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) issued a water license for the abstraction and storage of water on the Koekedouw River.

The construction of the Koekedouw Dam was completed in 1998. It replaced the old municipal dam with a much larger one that increased by more than forty times the average annual water yield from the Koekedouw River. Originally estimated at R53 million,(6) the construction of the dam ended up costing R94 million. The capital, operational, and maintenance costs of the dam were divided between the municipality (41%) and the KIB (59%), based on their respective allocation of water rights. No funding from the national government was to be allocated to finance the project. Indeed, the Koekedouw Dam was the first bulk water supply project that was to be entirely financed with loans from private commercial banks without government guarantees. This meant that the income derived from agricultural water resources was to be self-generating without the support of state subsidies. The KIB was able to secure a loan at a fixed interest rate of 14.5% with a repayment plan that was set to increase at 7.5% per annum over twenty years. Farmers believed that they could carry the loan in view of the favorable market conditions in the fruit industry at the time (Louw, 2004).

The financial and institutional arrangements for the Koekedouw Dam exemplify the neoliberal thrust underpinning national water policy reforms. This is reflected in three important ways: the withholding of government subsidies and state-backed loans for irrigation projects; the expanded role given to the private sector in planning and building large-scale

(6) In 1998 the South African Rand (ZAR) was trading in the vicinity of US $5.50.

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infrastructure projects; and the expanded role given to private commercial banks in financing water infrastructure. This marked a significant departure from previous practices, where the government heavily subsidized the costs of irrigation development. The result was that irrigation costs soared and many farmers became increasingly vulnerable to sharp market fluctuations, as occurred in the late 1990s.

3.2 Overaccumulation and devaluation: land reform comes to the Ceres valleyThe booming export fruit economy of the 1990s that stimulated a new cycle of accumulation in Ceres was abruptly interrupted at the end of the decade. A global market glut in apples and pearsprimary export crops in Cerescaused world prices to crash in 1997, in 1999, and again in 2002 (see table 1). Three major developments occurred that shaped the crisis of South Africas deciduous fruit industry in general. First, the deregulation of agricultural export markets in 1997 led to a rapid multiplication of private export agents, which created intense competition for producers and exporters as they struggled to secure overseas markets (Williams et al, 1998). This only intensified competitive pressures resulting from the liberalization of trade in the 1980s, which placed South African farmers in direct competition with other exporters from the Southern Hemisphere, especially Chile (Kritzinger et al, 2004). Second, the integration and concentration of power within European and domestic retail markets subjected fruit farmers to stringent production standards that resulted in higher production costs (Barrientos and Kritizinger, 2004). Third, the devaluation of the Rand and rising interest rates also increased production costs. International shipping costs paid in US $ and the importation of agricultural inputs downplayed the positive effects of export growth that might have been generated from the falling Rand. The combination of plummeting world fruit prices, the intensification of competitive forces, and the devaluation of the Rand (7) severely destabilized the financial viability of many farmers throughout the deciduous fruit producing regions of the Western Cape. In Ceres, the debt burden of the Koekedouw Dam only made things worse, leading some farmers to restructure their operations and pull out of the Koekedouw Irrigation Scheme in 1997, before the dam was even completed. This threatened the ability of the remaining KIB farmers to move forward with the project at all. The KIB consequently sought government support.

In keeping with national water reforms, the DWAF was prepared to fund part of the capital costs of the Koekedouw Dam on the condition that a share of water rights would be allocated to black farmers. There were, however, no land owning black farmers in the region, reflecting the particular historical character of agrarian relations in the Western Cape (Ross, 1986). Hence, KIB farmers agreed to drive forward the implementation of land-reform projects in order to create a presence of black farmers who could benefit from Koekedouw water. The land

(7) Between 1998 and 2002, the exchange rate for the R: US $ had fallen from 5.50 to 10.52.

Table 1. Price trends for apples and pears (R/ton) expressed in nominal terms (source: Cherry, 2004).

Year Apples Pears

1996 826 11221997 611 4281998 614 9021999 412 7562000 693 5432001 705 9252002 1383 14842003 796 11822004 936 1293

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and water rights targeted for land reform came from all or some of the undeveloped parcels released by KIB members who had resigned from the irrigation scheme and the sector in general.

The Koekedouw land-reform projects unfolded in three different phases between 1996 and 2003 and were carried out through the governments market-based land-redistribution program. Land grants were allocated to aspiring black farmers to acquire white-owned commercial farmland for sale at market prices. Since the value of land grants were severely inadequate to cover the market price of land, people necessarily formed groups to pool their grants together, and often ended up acquiring marginal or undeveloped land (eg, Lahiff, 2007).

The land-reform farms established in the first two phases led to the transfer of 790 ha of land and 236 ha of Koekedouw water rights to 382 beneficiaries for the establishment of twelve individual farms wholly owned and run by land-reform beneficiaries. The farms have generally been considered to be a failure (van Koppen et al, 2009): they did not become a primary source of livelihood for the large majority of beneficiaries who were predominantly engaged in waged agricultural labor on white farms, and at best offered a secondary source of income.

The main beneficiaries of the land-reform projects were the white farmers of the KIB. First, the land-reform projects created a politically palatable means through which the state was able to partially subsidize the capital costs of the Koekedouw irrigation scheme. Second, the land-reform projects lowered the unit costs of Koekedouw water charged to individual KIB farmers by absorbing surplus water that had been released from outgoing farmers. Although the land-reform projects alleviated some of the farmers financial woes, the situation for many continued to deteriorate. At the same time that world prices for apples and pears were on a downward trend at the end of the 1990s, as shown in table 1, loan repayments for KIB farmers escalated. Irrigation costs as a proportion overall production costs had risen from 5% to 30% (Louw, 2004). Whereas irrigation costs for fruit farmers in other areas ranged between R1300 and R3600 per hectare, Ceres farmers were paying more than R12 000 per hectare for Koekedouw water (Cherry, 2004). Reportedly, the average farmer in Ceres was R7 million in debt and many farmers were forced into liquidation (Erasmus, 2006). One farm had accumulated over R3 million just in water debt owed to the KIB, which received a number of requests from farmers to write off debts and accumulating interest on these debts (interview, DWAF regional manager, 20 December 2006).

By 2002 nine farms had been liquidated. This not only meant that the KIB was not receiving payment for previously allocated water, but also that the operational and maintenance costs of the dam were spread out among the remaining twenty-one farmers of the original thirty who had belonged to the Koekedouw irrigation scheme. As bankruptcy loomed for the KIB, members of the board decided that their only way out was to approach the DWAF for help. In the wake of the economic crisis, farmers hoped that the government would be sympathetic to their situation on the basis that its support would help to save jobs. Ironically, the justification for the dam had focused on its job-creation potential.

The escalating financial troubles confronting the KIB paved the way for the third phase of the Koekedouw land-reform projects. In contrast to the first two phases of land reform, the third phase took the form of farm worker equity schemes (or joint ventures), whereby commercial farmers formed equity partnerships with their farm workers to acquire shares in a commercial farm. As table 2 shows, the joint ventures involved over 900 farm worker beneficiaries who were able to secure land grants from the government to finance their portion of the acquisition of the liquidated farms, which were sold at rock-bottom prices. The farms covered approximately 1000 ha of land, with 500 ha of Koekedouw water rights, and were already cultivated with mature pear and apple orchards, though there remained potential for expansion (Louw, 2004). It is important to note that while farm worker beneficiaries who

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became part of joint venture farms held the majority of shares, these shares represented the holdings of up to two hundred workers. By contrast, the commercial farmers shares were either wholly owned or at most split with one other farmer, thus concentrating effective control and dividends in their hands despite holding a minority number of shares. While the value of joint ventures to beneficiaries is largely represented in terms of an investment in the future, two of the three joint ventures had distributed dividends to beneficiaries by 2011.(8) This not only demonstrated that the farms were making substantial profits: it also asserted the new and positive role played by white farmers in making land reform a success.

The farmers who initiated joint ventures with their farm workers operate profitable, corporatized businesses run by families who have been farming in the Ceres Valley for generations, including the Graaffs, the du Toits, and the Goosens.(9) They form part of a trend in the high-value export-oriented farming sectors that has been characterized by growing vertical and horizontal integration and concentrated ownership (see Bernstein, 2013). While this would seem to work against agrarian reform (Hall, 2009), these farmers have also been able to take advantage of state incentives aimed at promoting black economic empowerment, thereby positioning themselves as champions of social transformation in the countryside through joint-venture projects that may be accurately referred to as the deracialization of capital, rather than land reform. In the meantime, they gain access to land grants through which they are able to increase their control over local land and water resources, refinance their operations, expand production, and gain access to niche ethical markets (Mayson, 2003).

By creating more land-reform opportunities through joint ventures, the KIB hoped that it would have the necessary leverage to obtain additional state subsidies for the Koekedouw irrigation schemebut DWAF refused. Nevertheless, the KIB was able to negotiate more favorable terms for its bank loan, the outcome of which was an extended repayment period over fifty years, as opposed to twenty years as per the initial agreement; a decrease in the interest rate from 14.5% to 8%; and a new annual repayment plan that was to increase by only 4%, as opposed to 7.5% (Cherry, 2004). As a result, the rates charged for the Koekedouw irrigation scheme decreased substantially. By making irrigation costs more affordable to farmers, the KIBs lending bank secured its assets and averted the further devaluation of agrarian and financial capital. At the same time, the uneven geographies of capitalist development became even more pronounced.

3.3 Respatializing uneven geographies of social reproductionThe government praised the Koekedouw land-reform projects as an example of how South Africa will make a success of meaningful transformation in the countryside (Van Schallwyk, 2002). The DWAF also reported that the Koekedouw Dam created land reform opportunities, and now hundreds of rural households are farming for themselves (DWAF, 2002). Such statements downplay and obscure how the governments land-reform program

(8) http://www.dutoit.com/framework/NewsArticle.asp?NewsID=17; http://www.graaff-fruit.com/leopont-properties/(9) Each of these family businesses have glossy websites that provide information about their family histories, their operations, and their commitments to black empowerment: http://www.graaff-fruit.com; http://www.dutoit.com; http://www.goosenfarming.com/history/

Table 2. Koekedouw land-reform projects, 2004 (source: Cherry, 2004; Louw, 2004).

Number of beneficiaries

Land Area (ha)

Koekedouw water rights (ha)

Beneficiary-owned farms 382 790 236Farm-worker equity schemes 962 1099 530

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has produced few tangible material benefits for beneficiaries (Cousins, 2007; Jacobs et al, 2003), and actually has done very little to change broader structural relations.

Furthermore, land reform narrowly targets a select segment of the rural population (du Toit, 1993). This is clearly reflected in the farm worker equity schemes which for the most part exclusively involve permanent farm workers, and potentially benefit only an increasingly small segment (see below) of a deeply fragmented and racialized agricultural labor force. It is important to note that coloured (10) workers have historically made up the majority of permanently employed farm labor in the fruit and wine farming districts of the Western Cape, while a seasonal and migrant labor force has been largely made up of black African workers recruited from the former bantustans, especially in the Eastern Cape, and also from other African countries.

Of perhaps greater concern is how the land-reform projects in the Ceres valley, and more generally, have operated through parallel and intersecting processes that have deepened conditions of marginalization and impoverishment in the countryside. Since the 1990s the permanently employed agricultural labor force has been drastically reduced as farmers seek to adopt cost-cutting labor practices by relying more and more on cheaper temporary and informal (contract) labor. While the fragmentation of agricultural labor in horticulture is not a recent phenomenon (Mather and Greenberg, 2003), there has been a significant decrease in the proportion of permanent workers that has been accompanied by an even sharper decline in tied-housing arrangements (du Toit and Ally, 2003).

It is not without irony that while negotiations for the Koekedouw Dam were underway, hundreds of farm workers were losing their jobs and being evicted from the farms where they worked. This was due to farm bankruptcies and liquidations, and also to the rationalization of the permanent labor force. As one retrenched and evicted farm worker explained:

The farmer told us that because he will now have more water he needs the land from farm worker housing to plant more trees. He didnt care what happened to us, we are just workers. He loaded our things onto his bakkie [pickup truck] and dumped them on the road in the middle of the night. We had no place to go (interview, 13 February 2007).

Some found themselves living on the banks of the river while others lived in shacks in the backyard of relatives houses in the township of Prince Alfreds Hamlet. Prince Alfreds Hamlet is about 9 km from the town of Ceres and is surrounded by lucrative fruit farms run by families who have been in farming for generations in various parts of the region. Like many rural towns, the township in Prince Alfreds Hamlet literally became a dumping ground for retrenched coloured workers who were formerly employed and lived on white-owned commercial farms.(11)

The devaluation of labor in the Ceres valley was thus accomplished through two key processes: the rationalization and fragmentation of the agricultural labor force, and the capital disinvestment in social reproduction. The formerly employed farm workers who are now shack dwellers have not only lost steady employment, but they have also lost their homes. They have joined the swelling ranks of other urbanized farm workers who have experienced

(10) I use the term coloured in a manner that is consistent with the South African context. People with a coloured identity in South Africa have a particularly strong presence in the Western Cape, reflecting the specific colonial histories of the region. They are classified as such to refer to black people descended from Cape slaves and indentured servants and European settlers in the colonial era. While the coloured identity has typically been assumed as representing a mixed racial heritage, du Toit (2004) makes a point of noting that all South Africans are mixed.(11) Between 1994 and 2004, 2.3 million farm dwellers were displaced from South African farms while almost 1 million were forcefully evicted (Wegerif et al, 2005). Significantly, Wegerif et al point out that the total number of displaced farm dwellers is greater than the 1.2 million people who have been beneficiaries of land reform from 1994 onward.

Dis/articulations and the hydrosocial cycle 2565

a stark deterioration in material living conditions (Bernstein, 2004; du Toit, 2004). The disciplinary norms of a monetized and commodified urban life also signal a marked contrast to farm life, where the farmer dictated every aspect of workers lives. At the same time, wages for off-farm labor have not compensated for the higher cost of living in townships (du Toit and Ally, 2003). Displaced farm workers now face new kinds of worker struggles that reflect those of the devalued agricultural labor force more generally, and are defined by the dictates of market forces that constitute new uneven geographies of social reproduction.

In sum, the sociospatial reorganization of farm labor has been driven by the capital imperative to implement cost-cutting labor strategies and to absolve capital from the costs of social reproduction. Neoliberal imperatives have in turn also absolved the state from its social welfare function.

3.4 Urban water and the crisis of local governmentBetween 1991 and 2006 the urban and rural populations in the district of Ceres increased by 114% and 29%, respectively (Witzenberg Municipality, 2006). The urbanization of farm labor has certainly been an important factor contributing to the growing urban population. In addition, the abolition of apartheid-era population influx controls has increased migratory movements from other provinces to the Western Cape where there is greater employment potential. The bucolic landscape of Ceres has also made it an attractive destination for white retirees.

The growing urban population led to increasing demands for water, which worked in favor of the KIB in gaining local government support for the Koekedouw Dam project. Inasmuch as KIB farmers were detrimentally impacted by the financial burden of the Koekedouw Dam, so too was the municipality. In order to cover its proportional capital costs for the dam, the municipality obtained a loan that was to be repaid over twenty years; only interest payments were to be made for the first few years of the repayment period, and thereafter payments would be made both on the interest and on the capital. It was expected that after the initial period water sales and tariffs would increase, and thereby ensure that the municipality would remain financially viable.

The tariffs charged for the provision of urban water services were restructured to reflect the full costs of the Koekedouw Dam. Inevitably, this led to a steep hike in water tariffs. As water bills soared, many residents from the mainly white affluent parts of town drilled boreholes to water their gardens and fill their swimming pools, allowing them to bypass the municipal water supply system and thereby gain access to free, unmetered water. Whereas commercial businesses complained to the local chamber of commerce, industryspecifically the Ceres Fruit Juices Companythreatened to relocate its operations. High water bills only exacerbated the strain from the towns economic downturn spiraling out of the crisis in the farming sector (Louw, 2004).

Low-income township residents were the least able to deal with the new water tariffs and began to accumulate arrears on their municipal service bills. The municipality then began disconnecting water and electricity services to households who were in arrears. Such practices derived from national policies that strongly urged local governments to implement strict credit-control measures to achieve full cost recovery on the provision of municipal services to maintain balanced budgets (McDonald and Pape, 2002).

Despite the municipalitys attempts to enforce the payment of municipal bills, collection rates remained low, at 40%, which created cash-flow problems. It did not help that the towns water consumption was lower than projected, which meant that the municipality was left with a large water surplus that was not generating any revenue. By 2002 water demand had been projected to reach above 4 million m3 but the actual volume of water sold had not yet even reached 3 million m3 (Witzenberg Municipality, 2006).

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In 2000 the municipalitys financial position deteriorated even further following a national process of municipal amalgamation. Ceres was amalgamated with four other smaller and highly indebted municipalities, including Prince Alfred Hamlet, to form the Witzenberg Municipality. Added to this, debt-service payments for the Koekedouw Dam were set to double in 2002. Municipal amalgamation did offer at least one silver lining: the possibility of expanding the hydrosocial circulation of Koekedouw water. Specifically, Ceres water tariffs were applied to other municipalities that fell under Witzenbergs jurisdiction, even though they had independent and much cheaper municipal water supply systems. The number of households charged with Ceres water tariffs, and paying for the Koekedouw Dam, increased by 70% from 6772 to 11 491 households.(12) Not only did the municipality universalize Ceres water tariffs, it increased them by another 20%. As a result, collection rates fell and outstanding-debtor accounts increased by almost 400%. The debt burden on low-income and poor households spiraled out of control, reaching upward of R8000 in some instances. Instead of writing off debts, the municipality broadened its credit-control measures to include propoor policies such as indigent and debt-management policies, while also continuing to resort to water and electricity cutoffs.

In the shack settlement of Prince Alfreds Hamlet, the municipality did not need to worry about cutting peoples water off as that activity had been shifted to the people themselves. This was because individual household water connections had come in the form of prepaid water meters, which offered a politically neutral technological device through which to enforce the payment of water services (see Loftus, 2006).(13) For shack dwellers in Prince Alfreds Hamlet, this has meant depending on various income sources to scratch out the means to pay for water units. This has included relying on government support grants (child, pensions, disability), going back to farm work as contract labor, working as labor brokers, and hawking discarded fruit and vegetables from neighboring farms. Many have also borrowed money, or water, from their neighbors, while some have also resorted to taking out predatory cash loans at exorbitant interest rates. For others, survival has also meant involvement in illegal activities such as the trade in drugs and alcohol, and theft, as well as finding odd jobs here and there (du Toit, 2003).

The multiple livelihood strategies outlined above characterize new everyday struggles faced by a devalued and urban agricultural labor force more generally. In particular, the market-based mechanisms that regulate access to and exclusion from water services have kept low-income households in a perpetual cycle of water debt and disconnection. This is not simply an outcome of the neoliberalization of water services as expressed by the local governments rigid cost-recovery practices. Rather, it reflects the more general and amplified unevenness of the socioecological and sociospatial relations embedded in capitalist processes of dispossession, devaluation, and disinvestment that have crystallized through shifting hydrosocial configurations.

(12) These numbers are derived from Witzenberg population statistics, 2006 (Witzenberg Municipality, 2006).(13) Prepaid water meters have encroached on the landscape of South African townships in recent years as a counter measure to explosive tensions around water disconnections. Standing above ground with a tap below, the rectangular metal boxes of prepaid water meters are easily identifiable. The flow of water is released from the tap by inserting a prepaid digitized card in the meter box; the volume of water flow is determined by the value of water units put on the card, and stops when the units run out. In other words, households self-disconnect from the water service when they no longer have money to pay.

Dis/articulations and the hydrosocial cycle 2567

4 ConclusionsThis paper has explored the hydrosocial transformations of the Ceres Valley as a means to develop a disarticulations perspective on the changing geographies of capitalist agriculture in postapartheid South Africa. In so doing, I have drawn attention to ways in which the deepening integration of fruit production into global commodity circuits embodies interrelated processes of connection and separation that become articulated and constituted through the hydrosocial cycle. I have emphasized how the production and circulation of water supply that make capitalist agriculture possible in the Ceres Valley have become intertwined with and reinforces a particular set of racialized capitalist relations. What is particularly instructive about the postapartheid period is how white agrarian capital has maintained and even strengthened its dominance over the regional economy despite the drastic shuffling of political and economic priorities.

As I have shown, the Koekedouw Dam became the main arena in and through which contradictory capitalist dynamics of postapartheid agrarian change were played out in the Ceres Valley. In the first instance the neoliberalization of agriculture offered a spatial fix (Harvey, 2006) to the agricultural crisis of the 1980s through the geographical expansion of export market opportunities. While attempts to displace the crisis through a spatial fix had devalued some sectors, others had profitedincluding the high-value export-oriented deciduous fruit industries (Greenberg, 2003). The expansionary conditions for the deciduous fruit industry led to new investments in fixed capital, including new plantings and, most significantly, the Koekedouw Dam. Yet, the liberalization of agriculture also exposed fruit farmers to global market fluctuations. At the same time, the financial arrangements for the dam were premised on the incorporation of water into expanded circuits of accumulation, which implied that farmers were not only to absorb the full costs of the Koekedouw irrigation scheme, but also to realize a profit for finance capital.

The fatal combination of liberalized finance capital and fluctuating commodity prices engulfed Ceres farmers in a crisis of overaccumulation, clearly illustrating the temporality and fragility of the spatiotemporal fix. As such, the Koekedouw Dam can be viewed as both cause and effect of periodic disruptions occurring through circuits of accumulation. Again, though, the key moments of disruption were expressed unevenly as the differential turnover times for realizing profit between agricultural and financial capital created a debt load for individual farm capitals that could not be sustained in crisis conditions. Because a spatial fix through geographical market expansion or the relocation of capital (as a result of the substantial investment in geographically fixed capital) was not a viable option, other means needed to be found to resolve the crisis. These included the devaluation of individual farm capitals through bankruptcies, the devaluation of labor through the spatial and structural reorganization of the labor market, and state intervention through land reform. On the one hand, land reform provided a means through which to channel subsidies indirectly toward the costs of the Koekedouw Dam, and on the other, to absorb devalued land and water capital. The joint ventures, in particular, provided white farmers with access to very cheap capital through the land grants allocated to land reform beneficiaries, enabling them to extend their dominance over local land and water resources while also gaining political legitimacy (Mayson, 2003, page 37). By anchoring the states investment within the framework of water and land redistribution, regional class interests became articulated with a national program for racial and historical redress. Analysis of the relationship between water and land reform thus enables better understandings of why it is that structural socioecological inequalities persist in the South African countryside. It is not simply a matter of explaining the failure of land reform but, rather, of recognizing what land reform actually accomplishes in terms of maintaining and reproducing conditions and relations of capitalist agricultural production. It is even more

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a matter of how land reform exists alongside of and operates through simultaneous processes of dispossession and displacement.

The financialization and commercialization of water supply in Ceres also contributed to a crisis of local government, which was ultimately displaced onto the devalued labor force. Indeed, capital and state disinvestments in social reproduction operated as key tactics of accumulation by dispossession (Katz, 2011) and accentuated conditions of uneven development. In various ways, then, a focus on the shifting configurations of the hydrosocial cycle brings into full view how uneven geographies of capitalist development in the Ceres valley become articulated through interconnected sociospatial processes of dispossession, devaluation, and disinvestment.

Acknowledgements. This research was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Doctoral Fellowship. I am indebted to the late Soyiso Mtemekwana for his invaluable assistance in conducting fieldwork for this project. I would like to thank Marion Werner and three anonymous reviewers for their very detailed and helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper, and Trevor Barnes for his advice and guidance. All remaining errors are my own.

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