‘Backwards to the past’ appropriately describes the MK Party’s proposed final demolition of the Property Act, section 25 of the constitution (The Mercury, April 8).
What are termed ‘sweeping changes’ in the land reform process actually refer to the complete revision of land ownership backdated to 1652. Reference to the “original and rightful custodians of the land” and to “traditional leaders” makes it very clear that the remaining 87% of the country’s land, currently excluded from the restitution and redistribution process, will be exclusively for indigenous ownership.
That reality should be recognized from the MKP’s view that ‘colonialism’ is synonymous with the word ‘foreigners.’ In other words, white land ownership would cease under an MKP dispensation. White access to land and property would be only as tenants on terms determined by traditional leadership.
Underlying the subject of land is the MKP’s claim that all land in South Africa was ‘stolen’ by whites under colonialism and apartheid. Absent from their quaint interpretation of history is that land acquisition was actually marked by invasion and conquest by whites and blacks..
Southward migration of Africans (Bantus) from equatorial regions over centuries, as a result of internecine warfare and the need to evade enslavement, resulted in the original inhabitants of South Africa, the Khoi-San, being displaced.
Certainly, that process of attrition and marginalization was exacerbated by the northward trekking of Dutch settlers from the latter 1600s and beyond. Significantly, however, history records that up until 1775 no indigenous Africans were ever encountered south of Plettenberg Bay.
The nine frontier wars in the Eastern Cape ultimately resulted in the subjugation of the Xhosa. Internally, however, fractiousness amongst the Xhosa had long been a feature of the region.
In Natal, the Khoi-San were victims of Shaka’s imperialism, along with smaller tribes which were decimated or incorporated into the Zulu. The Voortrekkers found vast expanses of unoccupied land in what became the Transvaal and Orange Free State.
In that 1994 was a watershed in political control of South Africa, knowledge of post-colonial African liberation history should have forewarned those who fought for the constitutional inclusion of property rights that, ultimately, there would be a clamour by black radicals to place ethnic limits on such rights. The MKP has now announced the arrival of that process, which is bound to find favour with all parties except the DA, FF, ACDP, Action SA and the IFP.
The history of post-colonial Africa shows that radicals always dominate the democratic process. To resist them means death or at least political persecution, economic marginalization and impoverishment. The brutal experience of the MDC in Zimbabwe provides a graphic example.
Blatantly missing from the MKP’s vision of returning all the land to the “original rightful custodians” is an account of how that land came to be transformed since 1652. Yes, it depended on slavery in the Cape until 1834 and on indigenous and indentured labour elsewhere.
Exactly two hundred years ago, the indigenous people in Natal had never seen wheeled transport, paper, pen or writing. About 160 years ago, Bishop Colenso produced a Zulu translation of portions of the Bible and the first English-Zulu dictionary. Colonialism defeated slavery; brought new forms of clothing, medicine, engineering, Christianity and education.
Notwithstanding the ills and flaws of the past, there is a key question the MKP needs to answer. How is exclusive ownership of all land merited by the ethnically indigenous despite the fact that it was undeveloped until its transformation by the enterprise and initiative of those disparaged for being white?
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