THE COMPLEXITY OF THE STORY OF THE IDEA OF SA

CRITERIA

The winner should demonstrate the illumination of truthfulness, especially those forms of it that are new, delicate, unfashionable and fly in the face of power; compassion; elegance of writing; and intellectual and moral integrity.

We asked Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, author of Land Matters: South Africa’s Failed Land Reforms and the Road Ahead (Penguin Non-fiction), some questions about the book, which is shortlisted for the non-fiction award.

What were your sources for the research?

My research is based on primary sources. This tends to include 19th- and early 20th-century newspapers, such as the Grahamstown Journal, the King Williams Town Journal, the Queenstown Report, most of which are no longer in print. I also used 17th- and 18thcentury archives to reconstruct the events in the cattle loss chapter, such as the Journal of Jan van Riebeeck. In the later chapters, I included personal discussions with Dumisa Ntsebeza; the president of Namibia, Hage Geingob, and Mangosuthu Buthelezi, which I recorded. There are also a few legal cases which are referenced.

Your previous book, The Land is Ours, also examined a history of our land that is not widely known. What new insights did this book reveal?

South Africa was an idea. The attempt to excavate the full extent of the losses sustained by native people of South Africa because of the disruption by the various episodes of European invasion is an ongoing project.

Unlike The Land is Ours, which focused on British settlement, in Land Matters

I tried to commence the enquiry from 1647, a few years before the arrival of Jan van

Riebeeck. This enabled me to place in focus the shifting motives of the directors of the Dutch East India Company and their first encounters with the Khoikhoi.

I also explored the origins of the idea that land could be privately owned and traded as a commodity. Fundamentally, this is a European idea, but in the early 20th century it came to be accepted as a demand of the struggle by the founders of the ANC because of its connection to the right of franchise. This is what made the demand to own land, privately to the exclusion of others, a core demand of the struggle. Hence the ANC remains resistant to any notions of communal ownership of land or nationalisation of land.

Another distinctive feature of Land Matters has been an attempt to uncover the ambiguity of British policy towards women’s ownership of land. Through the example of Emma

Sandile, the eldest daughter of Ngqika chief Mgolombane Sandile, I try to show the instances where the British were prepared to give land ownership to women if it was aligned to their larger goals of expansion of empire.

Land Matters is really a book about the complexity of the story of the idea of South Africa. It uses multiple lenses of history, law, comparative experiences to illustrate this complexity, and to show that there is no single answer to the problems of creating the idea of South Africa.

In what way do you think the book “illuminates truthfulness”?

First, by drawing an evidential correlation and causation between white wealth and ongoing black impoverishment — white wealth was built over centuries by the taking of land, seizure of cattle, and black labour. But it was sustained by law. This is what created “structural inequality”, which ensures that wealth calcifies and transfers across generations, and poverty also self-replicates — so a child of poor parents is also likely to be poor.

Second, by showing that freedom was about the reimagination of an old idea — the idea of South Africa — under new conditions. But now it came with a new promise: freedom and economic prosperity. The possibility of the realisation of the promise of the idea is trapped by its past, despite the appearances of a “new” South Africa. And this new South Africa is not possible if it simply sanitises its past.

To be possible it needs rupture. But what kind of rupture? Land Matters ends by suggesting that although the law has been used as an instrument of domination, it is also an ally for the poor if its character is antiracist, pro-poor and embeds justice.

What was the most difficult part of writing this book?

Probably the impact on the financial system of expropriation without compensation, which required me to understand how the banking system works!

Do politicians pay enough attention to history? Should they?

No. If they did, they would not have attempted to temper with the constitutional foundations of the country like during their attempt to change the constitution. They would have realised that a country which once tried to do that ended in ruins for no discernible benefits.

Yes, they should care about the past — if not to learn from it at least to get a sense of their own place in history.