Soil conservation in a racially ordered society: South Africa 1930-1970

This paper examines the ways in which the formulation and implementation of strategies of soil conservation in South Africa during the period 1930-197 0 were powerfully influenced by racist attitudes and by the differential po litical and economic position of whites and blacks within the systems of se gregation and apartheid The paper traces and compares the evolution of stat e intervention in pursuit of soil conservation in relation to white farmlan ds and African reserves with a particular emphasis on processes in the Tran svaal. The forms of state intervention that emerged provoked bitter resista nce in many African communities while they unintentionally supported ineffi cient and destructive practices amongst many white farmers. The policies to ok different forms, changed over time and had diverse consequences. Bur the y did achieve an overall uniformity of outcome - they failed To live lip to the expectations of conservationists. The paper seeks to demonstrate that there were problems both with excessively coercive and excessively cooperat ive policy approaches, which suggests that a policy framework that strikes a balance between the two extremes is likely to be more successful.