It is written: one day land rights will be restored

When I listened to President Cyril Ramaphosa read his Freedom Day speech at the Miki Yili Stadium in Makhanda, Eastern Cape, I asked myself if the country is nearing uhuru or if that is a figment of my imagination.

Ramaphosa mentioned that under colonial and apartheid rule, black South Africans were reduced to servitude in the land of their ancestors. As I internalised his message, I gave a thought to the farm dwellers and labour tenants who today face arbitrary eviction by unscrupulous farm owners who are the descendants of those who used draconian laws like the Native Land Act and the Group Areas Act to dispossess them.

The Native Land Act was promulgated on June 16 1913 and the Group Areas Act took effect on April 27 1950.

Is it some kind of an uncanny déjà vu that makes me want to say what goes around comes around? Those dates put us on some kind of a trajectory that will one day, after years of suffering and misery, turn towards freedom.

Today, everybody knows the significance of the dates and what they symbolise. Freedom Day and Youth Day are dear to South Africans’ hearts.

With freedom came a bouquet of laws and legislation, like the Extension of Security of Tenure Act and the Labour Tenant Act, as well as the UN’s voluntary guidelines on the responsible governance of tenure of land, fisheries and forests.

The laws are closing in to stifle a crusade of minority landowners or farmers who continue to evict farm dwellers and labour tenants.

For this I say we are nearing uhuru and justice will be served.

Themba Mzula Hleko, Rosslyn Gardens