Author: Stha Yeni

Stha Yeni An activist and PhD student concerned with the struggles of the landless, farm workers, farm dwellers and small-scale farmers for land and food justice in South Africa. She received her MPhil degree from institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of Western Cape (South Africa) and MA from the International Institute of Social Studies (Netherlands). She is currently pursuing her PhD at PLAAS and a doctoral fellow at the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of Western Cape. She was the national coordinator of Tshintsha Amakhaya (TA), a civil society alliance working on land, water and food justice in rural South Africa. Before TA she was a researcher at Land and Accountability Research Centre, University of Cape Town, working on land rights violations in communal areas. Her PhD research focuses on small-scale agriculture, property rights and notions of belonging amongst former labour tenants on land reform farms. She was the lead researcher and narrator in This Land (2017), a documentary highlighting land rights violations by traditional leaders and resistance. She is the author of the book chapter; Traditional Leadership, Violation of land rights and resistance from below in Makhasaneni village, Kwa-Zulu Natal (2018). She is a 2018 Atlantic Fellow for Racial Equity. Her email address is sthayeni@gmail.com