In this chapter we examine what makes up the agrarian in present-day Guquka and Koloni, two rural African settlements located in the central part of the Eastern Cape, previously known as Ciskei. In our understanding, the agrarian presents itself in three important dimensions. Firstly, there is the economic dimension, where agrarian refers to agricultural activities and practices associated with farming and the provision of goods and services linked to it. Cultural landscape makes up the second dimension of the agrarian. Cultural landscape refers to specific patterns of land use – that is, the outcome of the interaction between people, their livelihoods and the physical landscape. In the literature this interaction is referred to as ‘co-production’ (Hebinck 2007; Van der Ploeg 2010, 2013) or ‘co-evolution’ (Norgaard 1994). Cultural landscape reflects how land resources are utilised and spatially organised. Lastly, there is the sociocultural dimension of agrarian, which refers to value systems, social networks, symbolism and cultural meanings of natural resource use. These three dimensions are interdependent and mutually shape one another. For this reason, they can be expected to change together.

The work presented in this chapter builds on the book edited by Hebinck and Lent that was published in 2007 and is largely based on two livelihood surveys conducted in 1996 and 2010 using the same instrument. These surveys enabled assessment of what constituted the agrarian in the two settlements during the post-apartheid period and the changes that had occurred in its composition during the 14-year period that separated the two surveys. Our findings confirm the weakening link between rural and agrarian in South Africa, described by many others. There is clear evidence of de-agrarianisation: long-term processes of occupational adjustment, income-earning reorientation, social identification and the spatial relocation of rural dwellers away from strictly agricultural modes of livelihood (Bryceson 2002). This reality contrasts sharply with the content of policy documents, which continues to equate the rural with the agrarian and assumes that rural areas are populated by farmers who work on the land and have livelihoods that revolve around cultivating crops and rearing livestock. The chapter starts with short summary descriptions of the livelihood resources at Guquka and Koloni and the agrarian transformation that has occurred in these two villages.