Cool heads needed to deal with explosive issue of land reform

LAND has always been a prominent and emotive issue in South Africa.

Our history of colonialism, violent conquest, dispossession, forced removals and racially skewed distribution has left us with a complex and difficult legacy.

Redress, accountability and rural land reform are key components of the progressive realisation of human rights.

Land represents the soul and dignity of the people. Deprive people of their land, and you deprive them of their souls and their dignity.

That is what the apartheid government did to our people. The oppressive regime that made black South Africans landless produced inequality.

More than 26 years into our democracy, South Africa still grapples with the issue of land ownership.

For South Africans, land is as precious a commodity as water, and an issue as emotional and as deeply rooted as cultural expression.

Perhaps more than any one other thing, the ownership of land symbolises our freedom.

Land continues to be of growing importance in today’s age of technology and development and the essence of land is etched deep within the history of South Africa.

Land is a finite resource, it sustains our country through the process of food production; it determines our sovereignty as a nation; it is the foundation of our diverse culture, and is at the heart of our being.

The land which we farm on, conduct business on and build on has immense and remarkable value in terms of socioeconomic development of our country. Our land is the basis for the prosperity of South Africa and her people.

South Africa will only prosper if all human and economic needs are met. However, the country needs cool heads in dealing with land reform as it may trigger civil war and divide people on racial lines.

Those against land reform in our country should try hard to understand that it is about much more than just reorganising ownership patterns.

It is also about symbolism, history and inequality, and even, among some quarters a need to have the white minority “put in its place”, to make them feel the pain the majority felt for so long.

Our economy is fragile and we do not need political posturing and rhetoric by some parties.

No wonder expropriation without compensation has become a rallying cry for many who have no interest in farming but who feel that a quarter century of democracy has not ended white privilege.

It symbolises a much broader demand for change. The first thing to empower black people is to give them back their land and then teach them how to utilise that land by producing food and other goods including livestock farming.

Black empowerment initiatives are useless without giving back land because everything comes from the land.

We really need to rekindle the class of black commercial farmers that was destroyed by the 1913 Natives Land Act. South Africa is an open, middle income developing economy.

If you deny Africans their land, you are denying them to be part of the economy.

Everything that is produced under the sun comes from the land, if black people are without land that means they are denied their basic human right of being part of the economy.

You cannot talk about respect for human rights if you deny other people land.