Townships and informal areas were never designed for farming, yet smallholders continue to build agricultural livelihoods within them. MPL Nobulumko Nkondlo explores how municipal enforcement and landlessness threaten Western Cape small-scale farmers, calling for land access and fair regulation.
The land question remains a fundamental issue and historic grievance for the black majority, many of whom continue to remain on the periphery of a thriving agricultural economy in the Western Cape.
Small-scale, subsistence, informal and emerging farmers are often treated as an irritation to the mainstream economy rather than as participants in an economy that deserves recognition and support.
Across the province, municipalities appear increasingly comfortable responding to informal farming through law enforcement rather than engagement. By-laws, regulations and legislation are being applied with an iron fist, while the material realities that make compliance difficult are largely ignored. So, it begs the question: when does landlessness become a crime?
The reality of landlessness and rigid enforcement
The Western Cape has a strong agricultural economy, yet many small-scale and informal farmers cannot secure one of the most basic requirements for farming: access to land.
In conducting oversight work in the Garden Route and conversations with farmers across the province, a consistent picture has emerged. These farmers are trying to build livelihoods with limited access to land, capital, infrastructure, markets and government support.
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We spoke to farmers in George and Knysna who keep livestock as a source of income and food for their households. Others cultivate small plots or combine farming with other forms of employment. Their operations may be informal, but the livelihoods they sustain are real. I am not saying municipalities should not enforce their by-laws. They have a responsibility to regulate public spaces, protect communities and ensure animal health and safety.
But enforcement cannot become an end in itself. Laws must be implemented fairly and with an understanding of the circumstances of the people affected by them.
When the response to informal farming is simply to fine, impound or cull animals, government risks destroying the very livelihoods it should be helping to develop. For example, in Witzenberg Municipality, on 20 July 2026, more than ten emerging farmers, with more than 300 sheep and cattle, were issued a 14-day notice warning that livestock grazing on municipal land could be impounded. These farmers had reportedly been using the land for years and were known to the municipality.
The fundamental question that we need to take into account is: if a farmer does not have sufficient private land for grazing, where exactly is that farmer expected to keep their animals?
Removing livestock without providing a realistic alternative does not resolve the underlying problem. It simply transfers the problem from one place to another.
A similar experience was reported by Mr Fezile Fama, who used open land along the N7 after struggling to find grazing for his cattle. He approached the City of Cape Town seeking clarity about the land and whether he could purchase it. After receiving no clear direction, he continued using the land.
The property was subsequently purchased by a commercial farmer, and Mr Fama’s livestock was locked inside the property for days. He says animals subsequently died because they could not access adequate food and water.
The high cost of municipal by-laws
In George and Knysna, small-scale farmers have raised similar concerns about the lack of grazing land. In Thembalethu, farmers have faced livestock impoundments and fines of up to R20 000 when animals are found on roads. For farmers operating at subsistence or small-scale levels, such fines can wipe out months of income. When they cannot afford to recover their animals, the consequence is effectively the loss of their livelihoods.
This is the reality of the informal economy that municipalities cannot afford to ignore. The same problem becomes even more serious when animal-health legislation is applied without addressing the conditions in which informal farmers operate. The Animal Health Act and biosecurity measures are important tools for protecting the agricultural sector from infectious diseases.
But these measures must not become instruments through which landlessness and informality are turned into permanent non-compliance.
This creates a cycle: no land, no formal recognition; no formal recognition, no support; no support, continued non-compliance; and continued non-compliance, further enforcement.
The experience of pig farmers in Cape Agulhas illustrates the devastating consequences. In 2025, approximately 900 pigs in Zwelitsha, Bredasdorp, were culled amid concerns about African swine fever. Farmers questioned whether they had been adequately informed and raised concerns about the handling of the process and testing. The incident left small-scale farmers facing significant economic losses.
More recently, in KwaNonqaba in Mossel Bay, nine pigs were seized from a piggery following concerns raised about animal welfare, including shelter, bedding, water, drainage and the construction of pens. The SPCA indicated that warnings had been issued over several years. Yet farmers also pointed to the physical limitations of the site, including its slope, clay soil and inadequate drainage, and requested engagement with the municipality and SPCA to find a workable solution.
Building a pathway to compliance, not exclusion
The lesson from these cases is not that regulations should be abandoned. It is that regulation without a pathway to compliance can become a mechanism for exclusion. Municipalities often approach the informal economy as something that must be formalised, controlled or removed. But informal farmers cannot simply be expected to replicate the commercial agricultural sector.
They require a different, practical ecosystem that recognises their scale and circumstances while progressively improving standards. This requires municipalities to make land available, identify grazing areas, provide basic infrastructure, establish clear registration systems and engage farmers before enforcement reaches crisis point.
Confronting spatial legacies for inclusive growth
It also requires us to confront the spatial legacy of apartheid. Townships and informal settlements were not designed as productive economic spaces. They were designed primarily as dormitories for cheap labour. Decades later, municipalities have yet to adequately reorganise land, infrastructure and planning systems to support the economic activities of the people who live there.
The concerns raised here come from oversight work undertaken in places such as George, Witzenberg and Cape Agulhas, and from direct conversations with informal farmers. What comes through consistently is that these farmers are not asking government to remove regulation or lower standards.
They are asking for land on which they can farm, infrastructure that enables them to comply, clear guidance from municipalities and a meaningful opportunity to engage when challenges arise.
The Western Cape government must therefore move beyond an enforcement-first approach. Fines, impoundments and culling may enforce a rule, but they do not build livelihoods.
If municipalities continue to use by-laws and legislation as blunt instruments against people operating in an informal economy, they risk turning regulation into a mechanism that destroys the very economic activity they should be supporting.
- Nobulumko Nkondlo is a member of the Western Cape provincial legislature, serving on the Portfolio Committee of Agriculture, Economic Development and Tourism. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Food For Mzansi.
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