The long arc of history bends towards land restitution

Yep, I've taken the liberties with Martin Luther King's famous quote "The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice...", but I'm sure he'll forgive me.

Every developing and developed country has initiated major land reform in varying degrees to move away from the oppressive feudal systems that created landless peasants out of the majority that almost invariably ended in bloody revolutions. Here in South Africa however, we have an even more poisonous history of land grabs that were sanctioned initially by colonialism, then imperialism, followed by apartheid - one of the greatest crimes against humanity. Today, a more insidious form of land grab, unbridled gentrification of certain parts of our country, that has gained momentum since our liberation in 1994.

The Problem

A groundswell of support from our youth are now demanding economic liberation in their lifetimes!

This is hardly surprising given the stark socioeconomic disparity along racial lines that's seemed to have worsened in the last decade. The visible component of this disparity is that whites still control the major part of our economy with white men dominating corporate boards since they occupy over 91% of CEO positions, and balk at government affirmative-action initiatives. The invisible component meanwhile is not immediately obvious, but much worse, since true land ownership can be easily be masked by holding companies, fronting entities etc.

Throughout human history, land ownership has been the single biggest generator of wealth in western style governments and leveraged as a mechanism to pass down wealth from generation to generation. Furthermore, in the western tradition, governments made use of awarding and controlling land use rights to expand the power of the state. In Africa the land grab began with the tide of colonialism that swept over the entire African continent as colonial powers plundered the vast natural resources of the indigenous populations. This went on for centuries and is still continuing in various incarnations under the guise of "free trade". In SA however, this problem was further exacerbated by apartheid's draconian laws that dispossessed blacks from over 90% of their lands.

The economic significance of land ownership can be better understood by this incident in the Americas. When black slaves in the US were freed in January, 1865 they were promised 40 acres and a mule - the idea was to provide arable land to enable former slaves to be self-sufficient. The very least they could do to atone for slavery. When the presiding US President Lincoln was assassinated a few months later in April 1865, this promise was immediately revoked! This underscores the value placed on land ownership.

The Causes

Centuries of conflict over land began when colonialists first arrived on our shores but got progressively worse with each regime culminating in an orgy of land grabs during apartheid. Since our liberation, all attempts to correct this through negotiated land reform has had almost negligible success and simply touched just the tip of the iceberg. Meanwhile our mainstream media, who are supposedly acting in the public interest have been strangely silent on this crucial issue for decades!

"The Native Lands Act of 1912 prohibited the establishment of new farming operations, sharecropping, or cash rentals by blacks outside of the reserves, which made up only 7.7% of the country’s area. Inside the, reserves an artificial form of “traditional” tenure with maximum holding sizes and restrictions on land, transactions was imposed. Subsequent policies of “black spot removal” transferred the large majority of, black farmers who had legitimately owned land outside the reserves into the homelands where tenure, restrictions, high population density, and lack of capital and market access made commercial agriculture, virtually impossible. Labor laws that discriminated against blacks in favor of white workers and generous, capital subsidies contributed to successive evictions of large parts of the black population from white, farms, where they had been employed as labor tenants and farm workers (Binswanger and Deininger, 1993)."

The destruction and generations of suffering that these laws wrought on black communities, is the real evil of apartheid!

1. Not only were 80% of the population pushed onto 8% of the land that whites did not want, but black farmers where further destabilized inside these reserves as well.

2. The Native Lands Act of 1912 was only repealed in 1993, just one year before our liberation! More damning evidence that whites were not prepared to give an inch until they were forced to.

3. For almost a century, the massive land grab by the whites were "legitimized" by these inhumane laws. Since our liberation, more rules (e.g. willing buyer-willing seller) and more bureaucracy (e.g. Land Claims Commission) have been injected into the process slowing down land redistribution even further.

The Group Areas Act of 1950, lay the foundation for a systematic ethnic cleansing by apartheid government in order to speed up the land grabs. Since these "mixed areas" were a thorn in the side of the apartheid regime's false ideology of "apart-ness" and "group identity", these forced removals also ripped apart the social fabric of settled communities for generations and caused untold pain and suffering for millions of African. Coloureds and Indians. Many of the South Africa's freedom fighters that spearheaded the resistance came from these mixed communities like Seapoint, Sophiatown, District Six, Cato Manor, South End and countless other undocumented, untold stories of pain and suffering brought on by forced removals. The destabilization and destruction of these mixed communities also sought to quash any pockets of resistance to apartheid's grand plans. Another apartheid tactic was to utilize vast swaths of lands as buffer zones to keep races separated and as a means of militarily controlling these townships and in the case of uprisings.

This Act alone resulted in the wholesale expropriation of prime real estate across the entire country and displaced communities were pushed out to outlying areas far from the cities or desirable locations. More destructive however, was the resulting instability endured by millions of Africans, Coloureds and Indians for many generations, who lived in a constant state of limbo, waiting for the order to move out when alternative housing became available in one the numerous apartheid ghettos that were largely pits of poverty, crime, gangs, drugs etc. and lawlessness since the old established communities, with well defined social hierarchies that had existed for generations, were suddenly obliterated.

Thus the grand theft of apartheid intensified.

These days however, a silent gentrification of the Western Cape is currently underway since 1994, under the influence of the Democratic Alliance. This YouTube clip on the Rogues of Cape Town or Tourism is stepping on us highlights one aspect of the tragedy caused by gentrification in Cape Town and surrounding cities. Property in Cape Town in now beyond the reach of over 99% of local Africans, Coloureds and Indians. This is just the tip of the iceberg, since this phenomenon is prevalent throughout the Western Cape. The old money from the spoils of apartheid is now protected under the guise of capitalism and free markets by the government in the Western Cape seeking to turn the City of Cape Town into a "model city" for South Africa through the marginalization of blacks to prove their "white efficiency" in governance - again, more flawed thinking from a political party that was once closely aligned with the old National Party.

The Results

South Africa now has greatest per capita racial economic disparity in Africa, and quite possibly in the entire world! So its no surprise that the latest UN-HABITAT report shows South African cities topping the list of most unequal cities in the world.

The economics of centuries of artificially created land shortage coupled with the the bureaucratic morass of arcane, complex rules, regulations and documentation has taken its toll. To add insult to injury, this embarrassing situation is made worse by the fact that the historic grand theft of land now has to be redressed by the victims paying the perpetrators for land restitution! This has taken the form of an outlandish and totally failed strategy of "willing buyer, willing seller" - a cruel joke which has resulted in the entire democratization of land redistribution coming almost to a grinding halt! At this rate real land reform may only be feasible at the end of the century - 2099!

For many centuries before 1994, white owned farms were heavily subsidized by successive regimes in an attempt to expand its reach and control into the rural areas. This trend has striking similarities to the how American colonizers grabbed most of Mexico and Native American Indian Lands (compared to the early tribes that roamed the east and west) until the days of the brutal frontier expansion into what was commonly referred to as the "Wild West" where the word genocide was not even conceived yet.

The townships, locations, homelands etc. were usually located in lands that whites did not desire or was conveniently located to facilitate a migrant labor pool that usually involved long commutes. The artificial shortage of land created by these laws also resulted in inflated home prices in some of the "wealthier" black neighborhoods. After our liberation, the repeal of these laws resulted in another property bubble as blacks were finally allowed to spread into other areas. In an obscene act of double-dipping, whites largely in control of the private real estate economy, stacked the deck and further capitalized on this frenzied property bubble by selling off their homes at exorbitant prices since banks, in cahoots with wealthy real estate investors, suddenly became lax in their usually strict lending policies. This widened the vast socioeconomic disparity along racial lines since whites were in the prime position to capitalize on generations of property ownership.

Where to now?

Well it all depends...

When the youth of South Africa now demand "Economic liberation in our lifetime", the mainstream media controlled by our powerful media cartel - a relic of the old apartheid propaganda machine, are quick to label it a "land grab" instead of what it actually is in reality, LAND RESTITUTION. Strange that our media elite never exposes the obscene land grabs during apartheid or nobody is stepping forward to relinquish some of their ill-gotten gains!

With youth unemployment at stratospheric levels and a world wide recession that is still ravaging countries across the world, South African youth need to be empowered to spark that entrepreneurial flame and become more self-sufficient. Land ownership is be one way help our youth move towards greater self-sufficiency. There are many novel ways to leverage our natural resources and sustain our economy e.g. subsistence agriculture (similar to densely populated villages in China and India), eco-friendly housing - much of which is already an intrinsic part of African culture, ecotourism - allows tourists to get a real taste of South Africa away from those sterile five-star hotels etc. This will enable our younger generation to participate in building real wealth and creating family owned businesses that could be handed down to future generations.

Its imperative that the beneficiaries of apartheid's great land grab now engage honestly and expeditiously with the government in a good faith attempt to bring about true land reform or face even dire consequences.

The time already squandered since 1994 by legal wrangling, political games, finger pointing, and delay tactics were shortsighted and will certainly result in a even more disadvantaged negotiating position for current apartheid landowners. Claiming the sky is falling because of land restitution, blaming the government, denying that apartheid's land grabs were illegal, equating farming to a rocket science that blacks are incapable of, or simply saying that blacks cannot be trusted with farming land, are all insulting and grossly demeaning to millions of blacks who have borne the brunt of apartheid's evil for generations. On the other hand, acknowledging the current mess and the need for immediate action is a prerequisite to honest negotiations. As many astute observers, analysts and historians have pointed out repeatedly to the beneficiaries of apartheid, that this time around, time is not on their side.