Let’s talk about the land issue again
THIS opinion piece is neither a follow-up nor a reminder to the readers of the opinion piece I wrote in 2013.
Far from it. I am the first one to concede that the anthropology of society is often situational.
Perhaps in 2013, when I scribed it, the pulse of South African citizens had focused on some incidental critical priorities. The land question drips out of our saliva at the slightest opportunity we get to engage on serious matters of national interest. In Parliament and other fora, no discussion ends without traversing the land issue.
What prompts me to enter the ring without being invited to engage on the land issue is the energy exuded by two young intellectuals who once led the ANC Youth League together: one as the president thereof and the other as the deputy president. They are young leaders who, when they voice their positions on any matter of public interest, I, for one, listen.
By now, you probably have puzzled out that I am talking about the Commander-in-Chief of the EFF, Julius Malema, and Minister Ronald Lamola. Where I part ways with them is when they tackle each other as southpaws.
The former ANCYL leaders posit diametrically opposed theses on how we should deal with the land question. This they do in spite of the fact that Section 25 of our Constitution somewhat clarifies the issue.
I am more inclined to follow the thesis proffered by Minister Lamola on this matter. Malema is a strong proponent of a view which propagates that the land should be owned by the state. Long before these two young leaders took each other on, I had in 2013 already in the opinion piece I penned argued that government must give Rural Folks Title Deeds. Lamola’s views are in a way in sync with mine.
I submit that as a developmental state, giving rural folks title deeds to land will not only open socio-economic opportunities for them, but it will also halt largely the in-migration of many young people from rural areas into Gauteng province in search for better socio-economic opportunities, be they business or employment opportunities.
Armed with a title deed one is able to access loans from conventional financial institutions for a variety of reasons, including for business purposes.
Urban folks, before the dawn of our democratic South Africa, did not own the houses they lived in. Our parents had no rights to own properties in Soweto. The title deeds of the houses the apartheid government built many decades ago in the townships belonged to the government. In short, our parents, before the advent of a democratic South Africa, had limited possession rights of the houses they occupied.
The apartheid government, in its diabolically warped mentality, directed that black people were only permitted to live in the urban areas to sell their labour and sweat to white-owned businesses.
Those like me, who lived throttled by the apartheid regime, remember too well the “permit system”. Both my paternal and maternal grandfathers worked for a steel manufacturing factory in Croesus Johannesburg.
My grandfathers were both machine operators in that steel factory. They neither had ownership rights to property, nor workers’ rights.
Back home in the then Northern Transvaal, with their health failing after being exploited by the owners (white) of a steel company in Johannesburg, even agrarian farming on the land they possessed no title deeds for was no longer an option. They slipped into the life yonder without leaving any inheritance to us.
Contrast their dire situation with that of the owners of the steel company in Croesus Johannesburg. Their descendants inherited real wealth from them because their rights to the steel business weren’t relative but real ownership rights.
Soweto residents who are titleholders of their houses enjoy fully the benefits of these real rights. I do too, because my parents got the title deed of my home in Tshiawelo, Soweto.
There is so much merit in ensuring that all who deserve to own land and property anywhere in South Africa be accorded these sacrosanct real rights.