Reconciling the Past, Present and Future: The Parameters and Practices of Land Restitution in South Africa (original) (raw)
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From land dispossession to land restitution: European land rights in South Africa
Settler Colonial Studies, 2016
Behind every colonial and imperial project laid a persistent constellation of ideas in which rights, obligations and duties were specified to justify colonialism and establish ownership of land. This constellation of ideas provided the reasons for European expansionism, in addition to forming part of the ideological practices of the land-centred settler colonial project of founding new political orders. In this article, I explore the ideologies of land appropriation in colonial South Africa, paying particular attention to the idea of 'empty land' and 'trusteeship'. As well as attending to this partly neglected aspect of South Africa's colonial history, I argue that land restitution today continues to be informed by norms that were used to justify occupation and the appropriation of lands inhabited by indigenous peoples.
‘After years in the wilderness’: The discourse of land claims in the New South Africa
Journal of Peasant Studies, 2000
The paper examines land restitution in the new South Africa, and looks at the intersecting roles of land-claiming communities who were forcibly resettled from their land during the apartheid years and the NGOs and-since 1994-Government Commissioners who have helped them to reclaim the land. Ideas and practices concerning land, community and development that have emerged from the interaction between these different players have been mutually constitutive but are sometimes mutually incomprehensible. A populist rhetoric, evident both in discussions with former land owners, and in much of the writing in NGO publications such as Land Update, depicts land as something communally owned which must be communally defended. This sense of a uniformly experienced injustice and a shared resistance against outside intervention obscures the fact that claims on land derive from a series of sharply differentiated historical experiences and articulate widely divergent interests, such as those-in the case of the farm Doornkop for example-between former owners and their former tenants. The restitution of land to these former owners, while being of great importance to them as a source of identity and as a redress of past injustices, is not necessarily the key to solving "poverty, injustice and misery" as has been claimed for the process of land reform as a whole.
South African Land Restitution, White Claimants and the Fateful Frontier of Former KwaNdebele
Journal of Southern African Studies
South African land restitution, through which the post-apartheid state compensates victims of racial land dispossession, has been intimately linked to former homelands: prototypical rural claims are those of communities that lost their rights in land when being forcibly relocated to reserves, and they now aspire to return to their former homes and lands from their despised 'homelands'. However, white farmers, who were also dispossessed (although usually compensated) by the apartheid state in its endeavour to consolidate existing homelands, have lodged restitution claims as well. While the Land Claims Court has principally admitted such restitution claims and ruled upon the merits of individual cases, state bureaucrats, legal activists, and other members of the public have categorically questioned and challenged such claims to land rights by whites. Focusing on white land claimaints affected by the consolidation of former KwaNdebele, this article investigates the contested field of moral entitlements emerging from divergent discourses about the true victims and beneficiaries of apartheid. It pays particular attention to land claims pertaining to the western frontier of KwaNdebele-the wider Rust de Winter area, which used to be white farmland expropriated in the mid-1980s for consolidation (which never occurred) and currently vegetates as largely neglected no-man's-(state-)land under multiple land claims. Being the point of reference for state officials, former white farmers, Ndebele traditionalists, local residents, and other citizens and subjects, this homeland frontier is hence analysed as a fateful zone of contestation, in which the terms of a new South African moral community are negotiated.
Land Reform in South Africa: The Conversation That Never Took Place
The Qualitative Report, 2018
After independence, South Africa embarked on a land reform programme that is meant to redress the highly inequitable land ownership which resulted from Apartheid. The programme comprises land redistribution, land restitution and land tenure. On restitution projects, the maintenance of production has been highly problematic. Loss of production means there is very little or no livelihoods impacts from restitution. The beneficiaries of restitution projects usually have neither farming experience nor capital to continue or restart the farm operations. As a result, most restitution projects are either non-functional or are functioning at a meager fraction of previous levels. Most studies on restitution have been carried out by studying the beneficiaries but not previous owners. I use the social constructivist paradigm to explore personal experience through engagement using the interview as a data collection tool. I explore the perspectives of a previous land owner who provides insights into how the restitution programme could be made more successful by letting a conversation occur between the previous owners and beneficiaries. I posit that it is essential to include the previous owners to reduce the trauma from loss of their lifestyle while also reducing beneficiaries' trauma caused by lack of benefits from restitution.
2012
This study is an attempt to contribute to the discussion on theology and land restitution. The researcher approaches it from a theological background and acknowledges the many contributions on this subject in other fields. Since this is a theological contribution, this research has the Bible as its point of departure. Black people are deeply rooted in the land. Land dispossession destroyed the God-ordained and created bond between black people and their black selves. Land dispossession also had a terrible economic impact upon black people. As result of land dispossession Bantustans were established. These black areas were economically disadvantaged and black people were forced to live in impoverished conditions. Land, which was a primary source of life for black people, was brutally taken away from them. Consequently, black people were forced to leave the Bantustans in search for employment in "white" South Africa. Because of this, they were made slaves and labourers in the country of their birth. The Bantustans were not considered to be part of South Africa; hence black people were aliens in their ancestral motherland. The black communal economic system was destroyed as a result of land dispossession. (The black communal economic system refers to an economic system where everyone works the land and thus benefits economically from the land.) The results of this are still seen in present-day South Africa. The majority of black people are still living at the margins of society because in the past, they were made subservient and dependent on white people to survive economically. Since apartheid was a system that was sustained on cheap black labour, this dependency on the white economy was systemic and generational. It is for this very reason that we see the very disproportionate face of the economy today. In an attempt to arrest the imbalance, the restoration of land to black people is inevitable. It is only then that black people will be liberated from being overly dependent on white people for their 3 survival. Land dispossession also had a terrible impact upon the identity and "blackness" of black people; black people internalised oppression as a result of the apartheid system, which was affirmed by the Dutch Reformed Church as a God-ordained system. This system officially paved the way and was used as the vehicle for land dispossession in South Africa; it destroyed black people and it is therefore not by chance that black people have become the greatest consumers. The identity of black people is deeply rooted in their ancestral motherland and land dispossession had a brutal impact upon the blackness of black people. Black people, as a result of land dispossession, started to doubt their humanness. Land dispossession also had a dreadful impact upon the relationships of black people with themselves and the relationships between white people and black people. These relationships were immorally and officially damaged by the apartheid system, which was deeply structural. Thus, when dealing with the land question in South Africa, the fact that it is deeply structural should be kept in mind. The church is entrusted with the task of reconciling the damaged relationships in a transformational manner. This can only be done when black people and white people engage and embrace each other on an equal basis. But black people and white people in South Africa cannot be on an equal basis as long as structural divisions which still advantage some and disadvantage others are not dealt with in a transformational manner. Therefore the need for land restitution in South Africa is necessary today because it does not only relate to the issues of faith and identity, but it is also economic. The consequences of the dispossession of land in the past are still evident in presentday South Africa. Land dispossession has had a terrible impact upon the faith of black people, whose faith is strongly linked to land (place). Faith and belonging are interrelated. The restoration of land to black people is necessary to reconcile black people with their faith and consequently with themselves.
Fundamina, 2019
The pastoral indigenous communities living in southern Africa at the start of the colonial period were the fi rst to be dispossessed of their rights in land. They had exercised these rights in terms of their customary law systems for centuries before the arrival of non-indigenous settlers in 1652. During the nineteenth century, the fi nal acts of dispossession of land took place in terms of racially discriminatory legislation and administrative actions, just like the dispossession of land that took place after 19 June 1913. However, the descendants of these communities are unable to claim restoration of their rights in land in terms of the constitutional land reform programme. This contribution identifi es the customary law rights in land of these communities and compares such rights with the rights that non-indigenous settlers had in the land used as grazing on loan places. This comparison shows that the rights in land used * BA (Stell) LLB LLM (RAU) LLD (Pretoria); advocate of the High Court, state law adviser in the Offi ce of the Chief State Law Adviser. This contribution is based on parts of my doctoral thesis entitled The History of the Occupation of Land in the Cape Colony and the Eff ect Thereof on Land Law and Constitutionally Mandated Land Reform (University of Pretoria, 2019). as grazing of non-indigenous settlers and pastoral indigenous communities were in essence the same. However, from 1813 the colonial government implemented legislation in the Cape Colony that created big disparities with regard to rights in land between them. In this contribution, it is argued that colonial dispossession of land from pastoral indigenous communities should be rectifi ed by adopting legislation in terms of section 25(8) of the Constitution that will enable the descendants of these communities to claim restoration of their ancestral land.
Land and justice in South Africa
The Boolean: Snapshots of Doctoral Research at University College Cork, 2010
When Nelson Mandela took office on 10th May 1994 as South Africa’s first democratic president, he pledged that out of “an extraordinary human disaster” would come “a society of which all humanity will be proud”. Since then, South Africa has been praised for overcoming racial division and hatred in a peaceful manner while developing economic growth. This positive picture of post-apartheid South Africa has been compromised in recent years by rising crime, xenophobic violence, unemployment, and service-delivery protests. My research looks at how the new democracy has redistributed land and why less than 1% of the population still own the majority of the land. To understand the slow pace of land reform, I have examined the policies of the ANC, the polarised public debates on land reform, and the constraints on economic transformation. In order to achieve justice and ultimately reconciliation, problems with redistribution must be addressed. This requires not ...
Development and Change, 2014
Based on a case study of the so-called 'Kafferskraal' land claim, this article scrutinizes the ongoing land restitution process in post-apartheid South Africa with regard to its capacity to provide a transition towards 'justice'. After sketching the legal and institutional setup of land restitution, the justice of the actual restitution process is explored with reference to conflicting interpretations by various actors involved in this exemplary case. Here, a focus on divergent understandings of what historically constituted valid rights in land as well as forms of past compensation reveals continuing discrepancies regarding the legitimacy of various property regimes. These differences, leading to divergent evaluations of 'the justice' of this claim's final outcome, are shown to be ultimately rooted in incompatible logics of exceptionality and the ordinary, which conceive of land restitution in terms of either 'law making' or 'law preserving'. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of such a configuration of land restitution as a measure of transitional justice.