Farm Workers and Farm Dwellers in Limpopo Province, South Africa RUTH HALL, POUL WISBORG, SHIRHAMI SHIRINDA AND PHILLAN ZAMCHIYA One of the less studied legacies of settler colonialism and agrarian dualism in South Africa is the substantial population of people living and working on (still mostly) white-owned commercial farms – a feature distinct from most other countries in Southern Africa. Many farm workers and farm dwellers in South Africa experience precarious tenure, and poor housing and labour conditions.This paper explores what is happening to farm labour and to agricultural capital in Limpopo province. Findings from field research on four horticultural and livestock/game farms illustrate how economic pressures, combined with land restitution and labour migration, have produced new and contested trajectories of agrarian change – largely cementing a historical shift from independent land tenure to wage labour but also prompting diversification of livelihoods.We explore the ways in which actors on farms – workers, dwellers, owners and managers – have responded with regard to three spheres of contestation: ownership, production and employment; tenure and livelihoods; and family, gender and children.We argue that, contrary to official visions of reform, long-term processes of agrarian change predating political transition – proletarianization, casualization and the externalization of farm labour – are being accelerated. These processes, and the ways in which they are producing new contours of social differentiation, are illustrated at farm level. Keywords: farm workers, agricultural labour, land reform, rural livelihoods, South Africa INTRODUCTION ‘Social classes do not simply end and die; they live and are transformed through social struggles’ (Araghi 2009, 138) Worldwide, agricultural labour is predominantly supplied by poor and marginalized groups, including migrants who lack full protection of the law. In South Africa, insecurity – of employment,tenure and livelihoods – among workers on commercial farms has been shaped by Ruth Hall, Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, Private Bag X17, Bellville 7535, South Africa. E-mail: rhall@uwc.ac.za. Poul Wisborg, Department of International Environment and Development Studies, Noragric, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, P.O. Box 5003, NO-1432 Aas, Norway. E-mail: poul.wisborg@umb.no. Shirhami Shirinda, P.O. Box 844, Elim Hospital, 0960, South Africa. E-mail: shirhami@yahoo.com. Phillan Zamchiya, Oxford International Development Centre, Queen Elizabeth House, 3 Mansfield Road, Oxford OX1 3TB, UK. E-mail: phillan.zamchiya@sant.ox.ac.uk The authors are grateful to farm dwellers, workers and managers for conversations during visits to farms in Limpopo.The research on which this paper is based was part of the collaboration between the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) of the University of the Western Cape and the Department of International Environment and Development Studies, Noragric, at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, and funded by the Norwegian government through the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights at the University of Oslo.We thank the co-editors of this special issue and three anonymous reviewers for detailed comments and helpful guidance on this paper. Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 13 No. 1, January 2013, pp. 47–70. © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd