The struggle for land in South Africa touches food security, identify and economic equality. For the Land and Accountability Research Centre (Larc), this reality is the driving force behind its work, including the uMhlaba Talks podcast. Reverend Mbhekiseni Mavuso faced his community being forcibly removed from their ancestral land in the 1960s.
Today, they face renewed threats from a proposed iron ore mine that could displace thousands, destroy fertile agricultural land and desecrate ancestral graves in Entembeni, Melmoth, KwaZulu-Natal. Despite past resistance, the pressure to allow mining resurfaces, underscoring the real-world dangers faced by land defenders who often endure intimidation and threats. Mavuso was one of the guests of a podcast series, uMhlaba Talks.
The series was released mid 2025 and saw episodes pick up momentum on platforms such as TikTok in late 2025 and currently in 2026, with thousands of views and engagement on the topics. One of the hosts of the uMhlaba Talks podcast, a project of the Land and Accountability Research Centre, argues that until South Africans stop seeing land purely as an economic asset and instead recognise it as central to identity, dignity and survival, the country will continue to battle profound social and political crises. Thiyane Duda was also a researcher at the Land and Accountability Research Centre in the Department of Public Law at the University of Cape Town, he told Daily Maverick.
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“The discourse around land in SA is often siloed, treated as a narrow legal or policy issue detached from the broader political and economic landscape. However, for the centre, the issue of land is the pivot around which so many of the country’s intractable social problems turn,” Duda said. The centre’s core mandate is supporting struggles for the recognition and protection of land rights and living customary law in the former homeland areas.
The organisation in a written response to Daily Maverick said its work was the foundation for its podcast, uMhlaba Talks. It said that what first drew it to this central theme was the way “land dispossession cuts across so many social, economic and political issues”. The need for a platform to bridge this gap and situate land within wider struggles for social change and historical justice led to the creation of uMhlaba Talks.
When asked why a podcast as a medium the centre said that it recognised the necessity of reaching people where they were in the digital age, with the aim of making complex issues of customary law, land and rural governance more accessible and engaging. “The broader aim is to build knowledge and capacity, especially among young people, women and rural activists, enabling them to engage meaningfully with the decisions that shape their lives,” the centre said.
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