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This paper traces the history of grazing policy, its conceptual basis, practical implementations and outcomes, in three southern African countries. In spite of the divergent environmental conditions facing pastoralists in the Highlands of Lesotho, Botswana's southern Kalahari and the Namaqualand succulent karoo in South Africa, they have all been subjected to similar grazing and rangeland management policies. The theoretical underpinnings of such policies have their origins in a development paradigm and ecological theory derived from northern temperate environments and are directly related to two persistent and powerful narratives: 'land degradation' and 'the tragedy of the commons'. Policy and development initiatives were implemented in order to overcome the perceived causes of these negative scenarios, such as overstocking, open access tenure and low output subsistence production. They typically ignored the multi-purpose goals of traditional pastoral systems and emphasized commercialisation of livestock farming and privatisation of communal land, which resulted in the weakening or destruction of local, traditional land management institutions. Such policies have survived the transitions from colonial rule to independence and from apartheid to democracy. We argue that these powerful and pervasive ideas, when applied to grazing policies, have caused the very problems they were formulated to prevent.