Surplus People Project

What changes a system?

Not one person.
Not one organisation.
Not one campaign.

Change happens when people come together to organise, share knowledge, build relationships, and act collectively.

Across South Africa, communities continue to do this work every day. They save seeds, grow food, document lived realities, defend land rights, support one another, and create alternatives rooted in dignity and justice.

At Surplus People Project, we see community organising as essential to building food sovereignty, land justice, and more equitable food systems.
The tools may change. The work continues.

What's On Your Plate? is a question that invites us to think about the connections between food, land, labour, livelihoods, and power.

What's on your plate, and what does it take to put it there?

As we mark Youth Day 2026 under the theme RESET@50: The Future Calls! We reflect not only on the legacy of the youth of 1976, but on the futures young people are building today.

For Surplus People Project, a reset is about reimagining and transforming the systems that shape our lives. It is a commitment to a future rooted in land justice, food sovereignty, agroecology and community power.

Fifty years after the Soweto Uprising, many young people continue to face unemployment, hunger, inequality, climate crises, and barriers to accessing land. Yet across communities, youth are organising, growing food, sharing knowledge, documenting stories and creating alternatives.

Honouring the Class of '76 means continuing the unfinished work. It means building systems that place people, land and dignity at the centre.

A meaningful reset requires confronting the inequalities that continue to shape who has access to land, food, opportunity and decision-making.

This Youth Month, we celebrate the young people organising in their communities, defending their rights, sharing knowledge and building more just and sustainable futures.

The future is not something we inherit. It is something we build together.

While many communities across Witzenberg are trying to recover from floods, damaged homes, displacement, and worsening living conditions, families are still being forced to navigate ongoing court battles linked to housing insecurity, injuries on duty, and the ongoing vulnerability many farm workers face after years of labour.

Today, important matters involving Daniël Kamfer and Oupa Karel and Ouma Sarie de Wee return to court.

These are not isolated stories.

They reflect the realities many rural working-class families continue facing long after the floodwaters disappear, uncertainty around housing, pressure on elderly farm dwellers, medical insecurity after workplace injuries, and ongoing threats of eviction and displacement.

Across farming communities, injured workers often continue facing uncertainty around medical support, housing, income, and long-term security after suffering injuries while working.

Elderly residents who have spent decades living and working on farms continue facing insecurity about the places they have long called home.

At the same time, communities are rebuilding after devastating floods that deepened already difficult social and economic conditions.

We also want to acknowledge the important work of the Witzenberg Justice Coalition , who continue supporting communities, documenting lived realities on the ground, and using digital storytelling and community activism to ensure these struggles are seen and heard beyond Witzenberg.

While many affected community members cannot attend today’s court proceedings because they are still working or dealing with flood impacts, updates and realities from the ground will continue being shared.

These stories deserve visibility.

Please share this post, follow the Witzenberg Justice Coalition page, and help amplify the voices of rural working-class communities facing ongoing injustice.

In solidarity with affected families.

Africa Day is not only a celebration of the continent.
It is also a reminder of struggle.
Of resistance.
Of people organising across borders for liberation, dignity, and self-determination.

On 25 May 1963, African leaders came together to form the Organisation of African Unity, rooted in the belief that the continent’s future could not be shaped through division, colonial control, or exploitation.

More than 60 years later, many of those questions still remain:
Who controls land?
Who benefits from resources?
Who gets to eat well?
Whose knowledge matters?
What kind of future are we building?

Across the continent, communities continue defending land, preserving seed knowledge, rebuilding local food systems, protecting culture, and imagining futures beyond extraction and inequality.

Africa Day reminds us that solutions have always existed within communities themselves:
in collective care,
in indigenous knowledge,
in agroecology,
in organising,
and in people refusing to give up on each other.

As SPP, we stand with movements across Africa working toward justice, dignity, food sovereignty, and a future rooted in people and the land.

Happy Africa Day.

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What happens when indigenous knowledge, memory, culture, and lived experience are constantly overlooked in the decisions shaping our future?

Today reminds us that dialogue, peace, and sustainable development cannot exist without recognising the histories, knowledge systems, and cultural identities of communities.

Across South Africa, rural and farming communities have protected seeds, land, water, biodiversity, food systems, and agroecological knowledge for generations.

Yet too many of these voices remain excluded from conversations shaping development, climate responses, land reform, and food systems today.

At SPP, we believe meaningful dialogue must be rooted in the land, in people’s languages, histories, farming practices, and collective struggles for dignity, justice, and survival.

Protecting cultural diversity also means protecting indigenous knowledge, agroecology, land rights, food sovereignty, and the right of communities to shape their own futures.

What would change if communities were not only consulted, but trusted to lead?

FOOD. LAND. LABOUR. JUSTICE.

WORKERS MONTH 2026

The people feeding this country are carrying more than work.
They are carrying rising food prices, flooded roads, heatwaves, expensive transport, and unsafe, insecure labour conditions.

Across rural communities, many workers wake before sunrise, travel long distances, and spend a significant part of their wages simply getting to work, while climate shocks and rising living costs continue deepening pressure on already vulnerable households.

Farmworkers, seasonal workers, rural women, organisers, and working-class communities continue holding households, farms, and food systems together under increasingly difficult conditions.

Workers Month cannot only be about celebration. It must also be about accountability, dignity, decent work, and justice.

Why are the people producing food still struggling to survive?

Food. Land. Labour. Justice.

Freedom Day marks the moment South Africans voted freely for the first time in 1994.

A day that symbolises dignity, equality, and the promise of a new beginning.

Today, we honour that history, the struggle, the courage, and the people who made this freedom possible.

At the same time, Freedom Day invites reflection.

Because freedom was never only about the vote.
It was also about everyday life, about land, about work, about food, and about the ability to live with security and dignity.

For many, that journey is still unfolding.

Across farms and rural communities, questions of land access, fair livelihoods, and food sovereignty remain part of daily reality.

We look forward to seeing these promises more fully realised, in ways that are felt in people’s lives, homes, and communities.

It is now up to all of us to carry this forward.

Today, we honour the past,
while recognising the work that still lies ahead.

In South Africa’s forestry sector, present-day challenges are rooted in how the system was historically structured.

Plantations were established through land dispossession and labour control, with worker settlements designed to serve the forestry economy, not to secure long-term community rights or stability.

Post-1994 reforms did not fundamentally restructure this system. Instead, market-led approaches and privatisation largely preserved its foundations, while shifting ownership on the surface.

Today, this shows up across forestry communities as:
- Insecure land tenure and limited control over land use
- Exclusion from decision-making
- Failing infrastructure - water, roads, and sanitation

These are not side issues. They shape daily life and livelihoods.

Without reliable drinking water, households struggle to live with dignity.
Without water for farming, production becomes limited and uncertain.

Without functional roads, communities are cut off from markets, clinics, and opportunity.

Without safe sanitation, health risks increase, and the same land people depend on is affected.

Food security becomes more difficult, more costly, more fragile.

Food systems are not just about what is grown, but the conditions that make growing possible.

When land is insecure, infrastructure fails, and decisions are made elsewhere, communities carry the burden.

So the question is:

What would change if land was secure, infrastructure worked, and communities had real control?

Day 2: Farmer-to-Farmer Exchange Recap

Today we visited Environmental Traits. agroecology site in Port Nolloth, engaging with a local agroecology hub and learning from practices already on the ground.

Farmers from the Western Cape and Northern Cape explored tunnel farming, drip irrigation, and seed systems, including discussions on GMO and non-GMO seeds, and the challenges shaping local food systems.

The exchange built on Day 1, where farmers shared knowledge on indigenous livestock practices, traditional medicine, and practical approaches to livestock farming, grounding the exchange in lived experience.

Across both days, farmers reflected on key questions around their farming systems, from reducing input costs in livestock production, to strengthening integration on farms, and how agroecological principles are applied in day-to-day practices.

In Port Nolloth, the focus shifted to food systems, with farmers critically reflecting on how they organise around production and distribution, the barriers to building stronger local food systems, how the Lighthouse model can support their work, and what needs to change to better support agroecology in practice.

This exchange was not just about sharing knowledge, it was about asking the hard questions, learning from each other, and strengthening what already exists.

Agroecology here is not theory. It is practice, experience, and community.

-to-farmerExchange -Lighthouse

An on-site visit to the Concordia Lighthouse in the Northern Cape formed part of Day 1 of the Farmer-to-Farmer Exchange.

Farmers from the Western Cape and Northern Cape came together to share knowledge, reflect on their different realities, and learn directly from one another.

The Lighthouse is a local agroecology learning site, a space where farmers test practices, exchange ideas, and build knowledge rooted in lived experience.

Through the visit, farmers engaged with the space, shared what is already working in their own communities, and explored how these practices can be strengthened and adapted across regions.

This is what agroecology looks like in practice: learning from each other, on the land, in real time.

-to-farmerExchange -Lighthouse