The land question resulting from colonisation is at the heart of current disputes between the United States of America (USA) and SA. Sadly, it has taken time to resolve the land issue and poverty persists. Until the land disparities are addressed, disenfranchised Black people will be discontent, event resorting to violence as a call for justice. In 1994 apartheid ended, but it is clear now dealing with apartheid without dealing with colonisation is a fruitless effort. Our ancestors were dispossessed of land when White people came, made to work on White farms to create wealth that their present generations are enjoying today, yet they refuse to even share the land.
If President Trump is sincere, he should address the land disparities in South Africa, not ignore them and call for the arrest of those seeking their rights. It is absurd Black farmers are not even viewed as farmers simply because they were left with very tiny pieces of land of none when their country was colonised. At least, Black South Africans, including radical ones, are saying, LET US SHARE THE LAND EQUALLY, they are not telling White people who include the Africaner population the current USA leadership has offered refugee status to, to go away and become refugees.
Black people
White people
Coloured people
Asian people
Other
Population
82%
7%
8%
3%
0%
Land owned
4%
72%
15%
5%
4%
The African definition of white people is lungu or zungu. waZungu and baLungu refer to all light skinned foreigners, including those of Europeans, Asian, Middle Eastern ancestry and people with mixed racial ancestry. If the African definition is used, it shows how horrible land colonisation is in South Africa— balungu, own 92% of land in South Africa.
In our profession of social work and development, justice is revered as a key value. Is justice the same for all races? Are other injustices, for example, land injustice ignorable for Black people? Decolonisation is also valued in social work and development. The question is, are these values, for all races?
Julius Sello Malema, the radical land return advocate yet, said:
We are not saying get out of South Africa to go to the ocean or to become refugees, we are saying return the land, let us be equal.
We are not afraid of billionaires or imperialists. They will not dictate to us how we fight for the liberation of our people.
I don’t care about your sanctions; I will never stop fighting for black people to be equal to white people. If that makes me an international criminal, I am proud to be one.
Land colonisation and decolonisation in South Africa
South Africa has a history of colonial conquest that relegated the Black majority into crowded urban and rural reserves. The 1913 Native Lands Act made it illegal for Black Africans to acquire land outside of these reserves, which became known as “Homelands”. Meanwhile, Black Africans account for 80 percent of South Africa’s population, these homelands comprise just 13 percent of the land. Under apartheid, eighty-five percent of South African land was reserved for white people, who then accounted for an estimated seventeen percent of the population. For many Black South Africans, it is unconscionable that the white minority owns 72 percent of the agricultural land, while the Black majority owns a mere 4 percent. The EFF seeks to address these concerns and take back the majority stronghold on these lands (Osman, 2019). Image/table below from This Land Is the Land of Our Ancestors.
The ANC. (African National Congress, SA’s liberation party) was concerned with land from the beginning; the Party was formed largely in reaction to the Glen Grey Act and the laws that followed. Cecil Rhodes initiated the Glen Act and many others, and now that his statues have fallen following #RhodesMustFall, land decolonisation must also be achieved. When the ANC took power, in 1994, it saw land reform as the “central and driving force of a program of rural development” meant to redress centuries of injustice (however, Mandela dropped the ball on land decolonisation, his biggest mistake). There would be a land-claims court to adjudicate restitution for anyone who had been dispossessed of property; in order to avoid conflict, a “willing seller, willing buyer” policy would be instituted, in which landowners were asked to voluntarily sell their land to the government so that it could be restored to those with legitimate claims. A system of tenure reform would secure formal property rights for people who had lived for decades in places that they could not legally own. And, finally, the ANC pledged to redistribute thirty per cent of the country’s farmland within five years. Twenty-five years later, it has managed roughly eight per cent. White South Africans own seventy-two per cent of the land held by individuals in the country. Land represents, in the most graphic way, racial inequality in South Africa—still. The ownership of land as entrenched in 1913 has not changed.
The failure of land reform is one of the reasons that South Africa is among the most unequal societies on earth. Unemployment is at thirty-seven per cent. Only thirteen per cent of South Africans earn more than six thousand dollars a year.
