End this rural land travesty

THERE are few issues that stir up emotions like land in a country such as ours, already recognised as one of the most unequal in the world. We are a society where the divide between those who have and those who have nothing appears to grow before our eyes – rendering the poor, to paraphrase Sol Plaatje’s immortal words, pariahs in the land of their birth.

Those pariahs are poor, but they’re also overwhelmingly black – a direct legacy of the 1913 Land Act. At the stroke of a pen, 87% of the population became dispossessed. They were already disenfranchised.

Incredible strides have been made over the past 22 years; billions expended on health, education, proper housing with electricity and running water. Yet the issue of rural land ownership has remained relatively unchanged.

Now with the political stakes never higher, the issue of land restitution has become foregrounded yet again. The problem is that our land redistribution programme since 1994 has been an abject failure. Little ground has been transferred, despite the bureaucracy and budgets set up to achieve this.

The much-lauded principle of “willing buyer willing seller” is derided, but the almost universal disaster in transferring ground to erstwhile landless communities that has either then be sold on or allowed to lie fallow through inexperience and infighting is glossed over.

There’s also the not insignificant amount of land that remains in feudal tribal structures where the old laws are often in direct conflict with the principles in the constitution. We have a situation where the residents remain at the autocratic pleasure of their chiefs – and women remain subordinate, despite national laws to the contrary.

It’s a travesty that land remains in the hands of a privileged minority almost two decades after our democratic liberation. The even greater travesty, though, is the tub-thumping and potential side-stepping of the constitution in a venal bid for political survival, rather than to actually strive to develop this nation’s potential equitably and sustainably for all.