Land reform, knowledge systems, and the reconfiguration of work and livelihoods in Southern Africa

Land reform in Southern Africa is often framed narrowly as a redistributive tool to correct historical dispossession. This article advances a decolonial political economy perspective that conceptualizes land reform as structural reconfiguration across three interlinked domains: labor regimes, livelihood systems, and knowledge/epistemic orders. Using an integrative, theory-informed review of peer-reviewed scholarship and selected policy texts, the study synthesizes literature on land reform trajectories, colonial and post-colonial tenure systems, agrarian change, Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS), and conservation and planning regimes in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia, and Mozambique. The analysis shows that contemporary land reforms operate within enduring colonial land and conservation ideologies, frequently deracialising ownership while reproducing paternalistic state control and hierarchical tenure forms. These reforms generate fragmented classes of labor and hybrid, precarious livelihood portfolios rather than secure agrarian livelihoods. At the same time, land and conservation policies continue to privilege Euro-modern epistemologies and “fortress” conservation, marginalizing indigenous knowledge and communal ontologies, although decolonial and IKS-oriented practices in communal landholding and policy reform reveal countervailing possibilities. The article argues that redistribution without concurrent transformation of labor regimes and knowledge systems risks entrenching the “colonial present.” A conceptual framework is proposed that links land, labor, livelihoods and knowledge to dimensions of agrarian and epistemic justice, and a research and policy agenda is outlined to align land reform with decolonisation, livelihood sustainability and just transitions in Southern Africa.