Our farms must advance South Africans first

LAND is dignity, history and heritage; land is wealth at the disposal of the people, and with it comes identity.

Foreign investors sceptical of President Jacob Zuma’s announcement that our land shall not be owned by foreigners, but leased, should bear in mind – this is a progressive move. This conquest of South Africa was not without battles of the indigenous tribes who launched rebellions, which saw the most brutal killing by the colonisers. The most memo- rable is the Bambatha Rebellion, which saw the chief being dispossessed of his chieftaincy due to his protest to the tax imposed by the British colonial rulers. In the confrontation, Bambatha was beheaded.

The formation of the ANC was against this backdrop. People were realising that without a claim to land (and the many unjust laws legislated against black people mainly), they would struggle.

Even the Anglo-Boer was a battle for land as the mining sector was rising, and there was vast foreign investment interest.

Ultimately, the English had great access to the country’s mineral wealth and the Boers concentrated on the political acquisition.

There is this fallacy of a peaceful transmission into a virtually unoccupied country and an impression that African occupation was always more or less confined to the “bantu homelands”, which is a lie.

We can’t move to reconciliation without redressing land issues. Nation-building cannot occur outside land ownership.

Foreign investment scepticism can’t overshadow “the people” as land to the people is economic emancipation.

Land ownership is economic emancipation

Vosloorus, Boksburg