The Voiceless Ones

By: Fanyana Mazibuko


In silence they have laboured,
Even to the bowels of the earth,
Where the wealth of Africa lies.
Black craggy hands
Scooping out the glittering wealth
To pour it into white satchels,
Whose mouths are snapped shut
By avaricious Midasses,
For a black eye never to see.
Three hundred years of silent toil,
With not a scrap of reward,
Beyond sustentation to keep on toiling.
Slave-driven to mop up all the effluent
Flowing from sordid affluence;
Gorged full of Black sweat.
Ebony physiques toiling in silence
For a stomach full of lead for a wage.
The ire pressure builds up
Like super-heated steam
In a flimsy tin boiler,
Strained to its limit of endurance,
Without a warning or a safety valve –
Doomed only to explode.

FYI: Learnerships for Unemployed Graduates and Matric Holders

Absa’s Employability Programmes, in partnership with Bankseta, is offering learnerships to unemployed school leavers and graduates.

Candidates applying for the Letsema Learnership must be younger than 30, unemployed with a valid Matric certificate and no criminal and credit record.

The unemployed graduates applying for the Kuyasa Learnership must also be under 30, with a B-degree or a three-year tertiary qualification in one of the following fields:
• Human Resources
• Risk Management
• Information Technology
• Marketing
• Financial Accounting
• Financial Management
Recruitment for the above programmes is being handled by Kelly and application forms are available on their website, www.kelly.co.za, as well as on our Employability Programmes site. The closing date for applications is 31 August 2013

We invite you to extend this call to your friends, family members or neighbours who have passed Grade 12, or unemployed graduates to apply for this potentially life changing opportunity, targeting 425 participants.

The 2014 intake follows the successful onboarding of 425 (175 matriculants and 250 graduates) learners on the Bankseta Letsema/Kuyasa learnership in February and another 295 (146 matriculants and 149 graduates) on the Bank Technician Programme in June 2013.

Through our investment in learnerships, we are developing skills for the South African workforce, while actively supporting workplace learning. We are also improving the long term prospects for previously disadvantaged persons while developing a talent pipeline for our organisation.

Celebrating the Eastern Cape through the Eyes and Minds of Young Filmmakers

On 23 July 2013, the Steve Biko Foundation, in partnership with the multi-award winning Big Fish School of Digital Filmmaking, will host the Eastern Cape premiere of “Celebrating the Eastern Cape through the Eyes and Minds of Young Filmmakers.” This presentation will feature films produced by Eastern Cape filmmakers as well as a keynote address from the Province’s MEC of Arts and Culture, Ms. Xoliswa Tom.

“Funded by the National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund, the content being produced by Big Fish offers a fascinating window on South Africa’s complexities through the eyes and minds of young filmmakers. The themes tackled in these films vary enormously – from survival to identity, tradition vs. modernity, humour and history. We aim to produce socially relevant filmmakers telling insightful stories on what it means to be a South African in a newly developing country.” said Dr. Melanie Chait, CEO at Big Fish School of Digital Filmmaking

The Steve Biko Centre—the host institution—is a national legacy project designed to channel interest in the life and work of Bantu Stephen Biko into a driver of social and economic development. Among other facilities, the Centre boasts an auditorium whose presentations include audio-visual material on history, culture, politics, social development and other works from Africa’s diverse communities. As noted by Steve Biko Foundation Director, Obenewa Amponsah, “The Steve Biko Foundation is extremely pleased to host these films at the Centre and to play a role in exposing the works of young South African filmmakers to communities. This premiere is just one aspect of a new partnership between SBF and Big Fish to document and make South African stories known to a broader audience.”

Event Details:

Date: 23 July, 2013
Time: 17:30 for 18:00
Venue: Steve Biko Centre Auditorium
One Zotshie Street
Ginsberg, King William’s Town
RSVP: Ms. Pamela Court before 19 July
021 418 1737
infoct@bigfish.org.za

For event or media enquiries about SBF and the Steve Biko Centre, please contact Ms Dibuseng Kolisang on 011 403 0310 or email dibuseng@sbf.org.za

A World of Their Own - A Rich History of Black Women’s Education

On, Tuesday July 16, The Steve Biko Centre, in partnership with the University of Kwazulu Natal, will host the launch of Meghan Healy's new book A World of Their Own.

A World of Their Own: A History of South African Women’s Education (University of KwaZulu-Natal Press), examines an important space of the survival of cosmopolitan and egalitarian visions during apartheid: the Inanda Seminary. Founded in 1869 outside of Durban as the first all-female school for black women in southern Africa, Inanda remained an independent school through apartheid, and it continues today. This book explains how Inanda became such an important space in this country’s social and political history. At the same time, it reveals why understanding black women’s education is key to understanding the rise, fall, and legacies of apartheid.

From its founding, Inanda’s history was linked to the Eastern Cape, as its graduates went on to attend and teach at the region’s historic institutions. The first woman to earn a BA at Fort Hare, Gertrude Ntlabati (Fort Hare class of 1928), was an Inanda alumna. The writer and activist Lauretta Ngcobo, whom was interviewed for this book, went on from Inanda to Fort Hare in the early years of apartheid, an experience that shaped her political consciousness. A contemporary Inanda and Fort Hare alumna, Dr Vida Mungwira, became the first African female doctor in the Central African Federation (Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe) in 1961. As Eastern Cape schools suffered under state control, young women from this region came to Inanda, as several alumnae described to me in interviews. Inanda alumnae also continued to attend Fort Hare, where they were at the frontlines of student struggles and Black Consciousness organizing.

Launch Details

Details:
Date: Tuesday, 16 July 2013
Time: 5.30 for 6.00 pm
Venue: The Steve Biko Centre Auditorium, One Zotshie Street, Ginsberg, King William’s Town

RSVP at 033 260 5226 or elliotts@ukzn.ac.za. Alternatively, call Mr. Mwelela Cele on 043 605 6700

One Night with the Fugitives

By Sol Plaatjie

A Chapter in Sol Plaatjie’s book “Native Life in South Africa”, 1913.

“Es ist unkoeniglich zu weinen — ach, Und hier nicht weinen ist unvaeterlich.”
Schiller.

"Pray that your flight be not in winter," said Jesus Christ; but it was only during the winter of 1913 that the full significance of this New Testament passage was revealed to us. We left Kimberley by the early morning train during the first week in July, on a tour of observation regarding the operation of the Natives' Land Act; and we arrived at Bloemhof, in Transvaal, at about noon. On the River Diggings there were no actual cases representing the effects of the Act, but traces of these effects were everywhere manifest. Some fugitives of the Natives' Land Act had crossed the river in full flight. The fact that they reached the diggings a fortnight before our visit would seem to show that while the debates were proceeding in Parliament some farmers already viewed with eager eyes the impending opportunity for at once making slaves of their tenants and appropriating their stock; for, acting on the powers conferred on them by an Act signed by Lord Gladstone, so lately as June 16, they had during that very week (probably a couple of days after, and in some cases, it would seem, a couple of days before the actual signing of the Bill) approached their tenants with stories about a new Act which makes it criminal for anyone to have black tenants and lawful to have black servants. Few of these Natives, of course, would object to be servants, especially if the white man is worth working for, but this is where the shoe pinches: one of the conditions is that the black man's (that is the servant's) cattle shall henceforth work for the landlord free of charge. Then the Natives would decide to leave the farm rather than make the landlord a present of all their life's savings, and some of them had passed through the diggings in search of a place in the Transvaal. But the higher up they went the more gloomy was their prospect as the news about the new law was now penetrating every part of the country.

One farmer met a wandering native family in the town of Bloemhof a week before our visit. He was willing to employ the Native and many more homeless families as follows: A monthly wage of 2 Pounds 10s. for each such family, the husband working in the fields, the wife in the house, with an additional 10s. a month for each son, and 5s. for each daughter, but on condition that the Native's cattle were also handed over to work for him. It must be clearly understood, we are told that the Dutchman added, that occasionally the Native would have to leave his family at work on the farm, and go out with his wagon and his oxen to earn money whenever and wherever he was told to go, in order that the master may be enabled to pay the stipulated wage. The Natives were at first inclined to laugh at the idea of working for a master with their families and goods and chattels, and then to have the additional pleasure of paying their own small wages, besides bringing money to pay the "Baas" for employing them. But the Dutchman's serious demeanour told them that his suggestion was "no joke". He himself had for some time been in need of a native cattle owner, to assist him as transport rider between Bloemhof, Mooifontein, London, and other diggings, in return for the occupation and cultivation of some of his waste lands in the district, but that was now illegal. He could only "employ" them; but, as he had no money to pay wages, their cattle would have to go out and earn it for him. Had they not heard of the law before? he inquired. Of course they had; in fact that is why they left the other place, but as they thought that it was but a "Free" State law, they took the anomalous situation for one of the multifarious aspects of the freedom of the "Free" State whence they came; they had scarcely thought that the Transvaal was similarly afflicted.

Needless to say the Natives did not see their way to agree with such a one-sided bargain. They moved up country, but only to find the next farmer offering the same terms, however, with a good many more disturbing details — and the next farmer and the next — so that after this native farmer had wandered from farm to farm, occasionally getting into trouble for travelling with unknown stock, "across my ground without my permission", and at times escaping arrest for he knew not what, and further, being abused for the crimes of having a black skin and no master, he sold some of his stock along the way, beside losing many which died of cold and starvation; and after thus having lost much of his substance, he eventually worked his way back to Bloemhof with the remainder, sold them for anything they could fetch, and went to work for a digger.

The experience of another native sufferer was similar to the above, except that instead of working for a digger he sold his stock for a mere bagatelle, and left with his family by the Johannesburg night train for an unknown destination. More native families crossed the river and went inland during the previous week, and as nothing had since been heard of them, it would seem that they were still wandering somewhere, and incidentally becoming well versed in the law that was responsible for their compulsory unsettlement.

Well, we knew that this law was as harsh as its instigators were callous, and we knew that it would, if passed, render many poor people homeless, but it must be confessed that we were scarcely prepared for such a rapid and widespread crash as it caused in the lives of the Natives in this neighbourhood. We left our luggage the next morning with the local Mission School teacher, and crossed the river to find out some more about this wonderful law of extermination. It was about 10 a.m. when we landed on the south bank of the Vaal River — the picturesque Vaal River, upon whose banks a hundred miles farther west we spent the best and happiest days of our boyhood. It was interesting to walk on one portion of the banks of that beautiful river — a portion which we had never traversed except as an infant in mother's arms more than thirty years before. How the subsequent happy days at Barkly West, so long past, came crowding upon our memory! — days when there were no railways, no bridges, and no system of irrigation.

In rainy seasons, which at that time were far more regular and certain, the river used to overflow its high banks and flood the surrounding valleys to such an extent, that no punt could carry the wagons across. Thereby the transport service used to be hung up, and numbers of wagons would congregate for weeks on both sides of the river until the floods subsided. At such times the price of fresh milk used to mount up to 1s. per pint. There being next to no competition, we boys had a monopoly over the milk trade. We recalled the number of haversacks full of bottles of milk we youngsters often carried to those wagons, how we returned with empty bottles and with just that number of shillings. Mother and our elder brothers had leather bags full of gold and did not care for the "boy's money"; and unlike the boys of the neighbouring village, having no sisters of our own, we gave away some of our money to fair cousins, and jingled the rest in our pockets. We had been told from boyhood that sweets were injurious to the teeth, and so spurning these delights we had hardly any use for money, for all we wanted to eat, drink and wear was at hand in plenty. We could then get six or eight shillings every morning from the pastime of washing that number of bottles, filling them with fresh milk and carrying them down to the wagons; there was always such an abundance of the liquid that our shepherd's hunting dog could not possibly miss what we took, for while the flocks were feeding on the luscious buds of the haak-doorns and the orange-coloured blossoms of the rich mimosa and other wild vegetation that abounded on the banks of the Vaal River, the cows, similarly engaged, were gathering more and more milk.

The gods are cruel, and one of their cruellest acts of omission was that of giving us no hint that in very much less than a quarter of a century all those hundreds of heads of cattle, and sheep and horses belonging to the family would vanish like a morning mist, and that we ourselves would live to pay 30s. per month for a daily supply of this same precious fluid, and in very limited quantities. They might have warned us that Englishmen would agree with Dutchmen to make it unlawful for black men to keep milk cows of their own on the banks of that river, and gradually have prepared us for the shock.

Crossing the river from the Transvaal side brings one into the Province of the Orange "Free" State, in which, in the adjoining division of Boshof, we were born thirty-six years back. We remember the name of the farm, but not having been in this neighbourhood since infancy, we could not tell its whereabouts, nor could we say whether the present owner was a Dutchman, his lawyer, or a Hebrew merchant; one thing we do know, however: it is that even if we had the money and the owner was willing to sell the spot upon which we first saw the light of day and breathed the pure air of heaven, the sale would be followed with a fine of one hundred pounds. The law of the country forbids the sale of land to a Native. Russia is one of the most abused countries in the world, but it is extremely doubtful if the statute book of that Empire contains a law debarring the peasant from purchasing the land whereon he was born, or from building a home wherein he might end his days.

At this time we felt something rising from our heels along our back, gripping us in a spasm, as we were cycling along; a needlelike pang, too, pierced our heart with a sharp thrill. What was it? We remembered feeling something nearly like it when our father died eighteen years ago; but at that time our physical organs were fresh and grief was easily thrown off in tears, but then we lived in a happy South Africa that was full of pleasant anticipations, and now — what changes for the worse have we undergone! For to crown all our calamities, South Africa has by law ceased to be the home of any of her native children whose skins are dyed with a pigment that does not conform with the regulation hue.

We are told to forgive our enemies and not to let the sun go down upon our wrath, so we breathe the prayer that peace may be to the white races, and that they, including our present persecutors of the Union Parliament, may never live to find themselves deprived of all occupation and property rights in their native country as is now the case with the Native. History does not tell us of any other continent where the Bantu lived besides Africa, and if this systematic ill-treatment of the Natives by the colonists is to be the guiding principle of Europe's scramble for Africa, slavery is our only alternative; for now it is only as serfs that the Natives are legally entitled to live here. Is it to be thought that God is using the South African Parliament to hound us out of our ancestral homes in order to quicken our pace heavenward? But go from where to heaven? In the beginning, we are told, God created heaven and earth, and peopled the earth, for people do not shoot up to heaven from nowhere. They must have had an earthly home. Enoch, Melchizedek, Elijah, and other saints, came to heaven from earth. God did not say to the Israelites in their bondage: "Cheer up, boys; bear it all in good part for I have bright mansions on high awaiting you all." But he said: "I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows, and I am come down to bring them out of the hands of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey." And He used Moses to carry out the promise He made to their ancestor Abraham in Canaan, that "unto thy seed will I give this land." It is to be hoped that in the Boer churches, entrance to which is barred against coloured people during divine service, they also read the Pentateuch.

It is doubtful if we ever thought so much on a single bicycle ride as we did on this journey; however, the sight of a policeman ahead of us disturbed these meditations and gave place to thoughts of quite another kind, for — we had no pass. Dutchmen, Englishmen, Jews, Germans, and other foreigners may roam the "Free" State without permission — but not Natives. To us it would mean a fine and imprisonment to be without a pass. The "pass" law was first instituted to check the movement of livestock over sparsely populated areas. In a sense it was a wise provision, in that it served to identify the livestock which one happened to be driving along the high road, to prove the bona fides of the driver and his title to the stock. Although white men still steal large droves of horses in Basutoland and sell them in Natal or in East Griqualand, they, of course, are not required to carry any passes. These white horse-thieves, to escape the clutches of the police, employ Natives to go and sell the stolen stock and write the passes for these Natives, forging the names of Magistrates and Justices of the Peace. Such native thieves in some instances ceasing to be hirelings in the criminal business, trade on their own, but it is not clear what purpose it is intended to serve by subjecting native pedestrians to the degrading requirement of carrying passes when they are not in charge of any stock.

In a few moments the policeman was before us and we alighted in presence of the representative of the law, with our feet on the accursed soil of the district in which we were born. The policeman stopped. By his looks and his familiar "Dag jong" we noticed that the policeman was Dutch, and the embodiment of affability. He spoke and we were glad to notice that he had no intention of dragging an innocent man to prison. We were many miles from the nearest police station, and in such a case one is generally able to gather the real views of the man on patrol, as distinct from the written code of his office, but our friend was becoming very companionable. Naturally we asked him about the operation of the plague law. He was a Transvaaler, he said, and he knew that Kafirs were inferior beings, but they had rights, and were always left in undisturbed possession of their property when Paul Kruger was alive. "The poor devils must be sorry now," he said, "that they ever sang `God save the Queen' when the British troops came into the Transvaal, for I have seen, in the course of my duties, that a Kafir's life nowadays was not worth a ——, and I believe that no man regretted the change of flags now more than the Kafirs of Transvaal." This information was superfluous, for personal contact with the Natives of Transvaal had convinced us of the fact. They say it is only the criminal who has any reason to rejoice over the presence of the Union Jack, because in his case the cat-o'-nine-tails, except for very serious crimes, has been abolished.

"Some of the poor creatures," continued the policeman, "I knew to be fairly comfortable, if not rich, and they enjoyed the possession of their stock, living in many instances just like Dutchmen. Many of these are now being forced to leave their homes. Cycling along this road you will meet several of them in search of new homes, and if ever there was a fool's errand, it is that of a Kafir trying to find a new home for his stock and family just now."

"And what do you think, Baas Officer, must eventually be the lot of a people under such unfortunate circumstances?" we asked.

"I think," said the policeman, "that it must serve them right. They had no business to hanker after British rule, to cheat and plot with the enemies of their Republic for the overthrow of their Government. Why did they not assist the forces of their Republic during the war instead of supplying the English with scouts and intelligence? Oom Paul would not have died of a broken heart and he would still be there to protect them. Serve them right, I say."

So saying he spurred his horse, which showed a clean pair of hoofs. He left us rather abruptly, for we were about to ask why we, too, of Natal and the Cape were suffering, for we, being originally British subjects, never "cheated and plotted with the enemies of our Colonies", but he was gone and left us still cogitating by the roadside.

Proceeding on our journey we next came upon a native trek and heard the same old story of prosperity on a Dutch farm: they had raised an average 800 bags of grain each season, which, with the increase of stock and sale of wool, gave a steady income of about 150 Pounds per year after the farmer had taken his share. There were gossipy rumours about somebody having met someone who said that someone else had overheard a conversation between the Baas and somebody else, to the effect that the Kafirs were getting too rich on his property. This much involved tale incidentally conveys the idea that the Baas was himself getting too rich on his farm. For the Native provides his own seed, his own cattle, his own labour for the ploughing, the weeding and the reaping, and after bagging his grain he calls in the landlord to receive his share, which is fifty per cent of the entire crop.

All had gone well till the previous week when the Baas came to the native tenants with the story that a new law had been passed under which "all my oxen and cows must belong to him, and my family to work for 2 Pounds a month, failing which he gave me four days to leave the farm."

We passed several farm-houses along the road, where all appeared pretty tranquil as we went along, until the evening which we spent in the open country, somewhere near the boundaries of the Hoopstad and Boshof districts; here a regular circus had gathered. By a "circus" we mean the meeting of groups of families, moving to every point of the compass, and all bivouacked at this point in the open country where we were passing. It was heartrending to listen to the tales of their cruel experiences derived from the rigour of the Natives' Land Act. Some of their cattle had perished on the journey, from poverty and lack of fodder, and the native owners ran a serious risk of imprisonment for travelling with dying stock. The experience of one of these evicted tenants is typical of the rest, and illustrates the cases of several we met in other parts of the country.

Kgobadi, for instance, had received a message describing the eviction of his father-in-law in the Transvaal Province, without notice, because he had refused to place his stock, his family, and his person at the disposal of his former landlord, who now refuses to let him remain on his farm except on these conditions. The father-in-law asked that Kgobadi should try and secure a place for him in the much dreaded "Free" State as the Transvaal had suddenly become uninhabitable to Natives who cannot become servants; but "greedy folk hae lang airms", and Kgobadi himself was proceeding with his family and his belongings in a wagon, to inform his people-in-law of his own eviction, without notice, in the "Free" State, for a similar reason to that which sent his father-in-law adrift. The Baas had exacted from him the services of himself, his wife and his oxen, for wages of 30s. a month, whereas Kgobadi had been making over 100 Pounds a year, besides retaining the services of his wife and of his cattle for himself. When he refused the extortionate terms the Baas retaliated with a Dutch note, dated the 30th day of June, 1913, which ordered him to "betake himself from the farm of the undersigned, by sunset of the same day, failing which his stock would be seized and impounded, and himself handed over to the authorities for trespassing on the farm."

A drowning man catches at every straw, and so we were again and again appealed to for advice by these sorely afflicted people. To those who were not yet evicted we counselled patience and submission to the absurd terms, pending an appeal to a higher authority than the South African Parliament and finally to His Majesty the King who, we believed, would certainly disapprove of all that we saw on that day had it been brought to his notice. As for those who were already evicted, as a Bechuana we could not help thanking God that Bechuanaland (on the western boundary of this quasi-British Republic) was still entirely British. In the early days it was the base of David Livingstone's activities and peaceful mission against the Portuguese and Arab slave trade. We suggested that they might negotiate the numerous restrictions against the transfer of cattle from the Western Transvaal and seek an asylum in Bechuanaland. We wondered what consolation we could give to these roving wanderers if the whole of Bechuanaland were under the jurisdiction of the relentless Union Parliament.

It was cold that afternoon as we cycled into the "Free" State from Transvaal, and towards evening the southern winds rose. A cutting blizzard raged during the night, and native mothers evicted from their homes shivered with their babies by their sides. When we saw on that night the teeth of the little children clattering through the cold, we thought of our own little ones in their Kimberley home of an evening after gambolling in their winter frocks with their schoolmates, and we wondered what these little mites had done that a home should suddenly become to them a thing of the past.

Kgobadi's goats had been to kid when he trekked from his farm; but the kids, which in halcyon times represented the interest on his capital, were now one by one dying as fast as they were born and left by the roadside for the jackals and vultures to feast upon.

This visitation was not confined to Kgobadi's stock, Mrs. Kgobadi carried a sick baby when the eviction took place, and she had to transfer her darling from the cottage to the jolting ox-wagon in which they left the farm. Two days out the little one began to sink as the result of privation and exposure on the road, and the night before we met them its little soul was released from its earthly bonds. The death of the child added a fresh perplexity to the stricken parents. They had no right or title to the farm lands through which they trekked: they must keep to the public roads — the only places in the country open to the outcasts if they are possessed of a travelling permit. The deceased child had to be buried, but where, when, and how?

This young wandering family decided to dig a grave under cover of the darkness of that night, when no one was looking, and in that crude manner the dead child was interred — and interred amid fear and trembling, as well as the throbs of a torturing anguish, in a stolen grave, lest the proprietor of the spot, or any of his servants, should surprise them in the act. Even criminals dropping straight from the gallows have an undisputed claim to six feet of ground on which to rest their criminal remains, but under the cruel operation of the Natives' Land Act little children, whose only crime is that God did not make them white, are sometimes denied that right in their ancestral home.

Numerous details narrated by these victims of an Act of Parliament kept us awake all that night, and by next morning we were glad enough to hear no more of the sickening procedure of extermination voluntarily instituted by the South African Parliament. We had spent a hideous night under a bitterly cold sky, conditions to which hundreds of our unfortunate countrymen and countrywomen in various parts of the country are condemned by the provisions of this Parliamentary land plague. At five o'clock in the morning the cold seemed to redouble its energies; and never before did we so fully appreciate the Master's saying: "But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter."

A World of Their Own: Book Launch

The Distribution of Land in South Africa: An Overview

Authors: Cherryl Walker, Stellenbosch University with Alex Dubb, PLAAS

Over-simplified accounts of how land is distributed misrepresent the current dispensation. It is often claimed that:

1. In 1994, as a result of colonial dispossession and apartheid, 87% of the land was owned by whites and only 13% by blacks. By 2012 post-apartheid land reform had transferred 7.95 million hectares into black ownership (Nkwinti 2012), which is equivalent, at best, to 7.5% of formerly white-owned land. Whites as a social category still own most of the country’s land and redressing racial imbalances in land ownership is land reform’s most urgent priority.

OR

2. The post-apartheid state currently owns a quarter of the country and redistributing this should be land reform’s first priority. When this is added to the 7.95 million hectares already acquired through land reform, plus the significant though unknown amount of land blacks are buying privately, the discrepancies between white and black ownership are sharply reduced and in some provinces may even be equitable.

Total area of South Africa: 122,081,300ha

67% ‘White’ Commercial Agricultural Land

15% ‘Black’ communal areas (most state-owned)
• 1% Former ‘coloured’ reserves
• 2% Ingonyama Trust (former KwaZulu)
• 2% Other customary lands held in trust by the state
• 10% Ex ‘homelands’ other than KwaZulu

10% Other State Land
• 1% Other provincial, including schools, hospitals, agricultural
• 1.6% Other national, including Home Affairs Justice, Agriculture
• 0.4% Military, police, prisons
• 7% Conservation Areas

8% Remainder, including urban areas
• 2% Metro
• 6% Other, including non-metro urban areas

The origins of the 87/13% figure for white/black land ownership

The 87:13 ratio of white to black ownership of land derives from an apartheid blueprint based on the Land Acts of 1913 and 1936 that had not been completely implemented by 1994. Under apartheid South Africa was divided between a core of about 85% of the country deemed ‘white’ politically, and a periphery of ten ethnically defined ‘African’ ‘homelands’, plus a number of tiny ‘coloured’ reserves. Race-based land dispossession and relocation caused suffering and hardship for millions of black South Africans (SPP 1983) but failed to realise the master plan. Throughout the twentieth century growing numbers of ‘Africans’ and most ‘coloureds’ continued to live in so-called white South Africa, with varying levels of tenure security: on white-owned farms and conservation lands, in urban areas, and even on a small number of black-owned properties that escaped forced removals.

67% White’ Commercial Agricultural Land

The racial classification of national land as ‘white’ and ‘black’ bears testimony to the past but fails to do justice to current economic, demographic and environmental conditions. In the early 1990s just under 60 000 white-owned farms accounted for about 70% of the total area of the country. Today there are under 40,000 farming units covering about 67% of the country (Stats SA 2009). The agricultural quality of this land varies, with only 13% classified as arable and over a third located in the arid Northern Cape where just 2% of the population resides. Most farmers are white but small numbers of blacks with access to capital are acquiring land through the market independently of land reform.

15% ‘Black’ Communal Areas

The former ‘homelands’ or communal areas cover some 17,2 million hectares, of which around 14,5 million hectares was classified as ‘agricultural’ in 1991 (DAFF 2011). (The balance includes small towns and protected areas.) Most of this land is state-owned and densely settled by black households under various forms of customary tenure, with tenure reform a contested but neglected area of state policy. As a result of regionally specific histories the extent of black communal areas varies considerably across the provinces, from over 36% in KwaZulu-Natal to under 0.05% in the Northern and Western Cape (DLA 2002). Former ‘coloured’ reserves comprise a further 1,28 million hectares, mostly in the Northern and Western Cape.

8% Remainder, including urban areas

State land cannot be conflated with black ownership, nor seen as an unproblematic source of land for redistributive reform. Most state land outside the communal areas is demarcated for public purposes that should be directed towards the common good. State-owned protected areas accounted for about 7% of the country by 2012 (DEA 2012).

Implications For Land Policy

• Land and agrarian policies need to be attuned to regional specificities and regional differences, including those deriving from history and ecology
• Aggregate figures for the number of hectares acquired by the state are poor indicators of effective land and agrarian reform; land targets need to be regionally calibrated and judiciously applied
• State-owned land is not a significant resource for land redistribution, and state ownership is not a proxy for black ownership of land
• Increased black ownership of land can be achieved through the market but a land reform programme aimed at improving livelihoods and tenure security for the rural poor has to be driven by the state
• Class is slowly becoming a more significant determinant of land ownership than in 1994
• Rapid urbanisation in both large and small urban centres is impacting on the nature and location of land demand; aligning rural and urban land policy and addressing urban land demand are major challenges

Sources

Department of Agriculture, Forestry & Fisheries (DAFF), 2011. Abstract of Agricultural Statistics 2011.
Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA), 2012. Annual Report 2011/12.
Department of Land Affairs (DLA), 2002. The extent of state land in the Republic of South Africa.
National Planning Commission, 2012. National Development Plan 2030.
Nkwinti, G, 2012. Speech by the Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform, 2012 Policy Speech.
South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR), 2012. 2012 South African Survey.
Statistics South Africa, 2009. Census of Commercial Agriculture 2007 (preliminary).
Surplus People Project (SPP), 1983. Forced Removals in South Africa. The SPP Reports, volumes 1–5.


This article was retrieved from the PLAAS website at http://www.plaas.org.za/sites/default/files/publications-pdf/No1%20Fact%20check%20web.pdf

100 Years since the Native Land Act, Where Are We?

On July 30, 2013, the Steve Biko Foundation, in collaboration with YFM, will host the ninth session of the FrankTalk Radio Dialogues. Titled after the pseudonym under which Biko wrote, FrankTalk is designed to engage young people in discussion on salient issues impacting South Africa’s political, economic and social development.

As 2013 marks the 100th anniversary since the Native Land Act and 19 years since the advent of democracy, questions of land, equity and justice are central to debates about political and socio-economic development. The upcoming FrankTalk dialogue will reflect on these issues under the title, 100 Years since the Native Land Act, Where Are We?

Please join us as part of the Live Studio Audience.

DATE: Tuesday 30 July, 2013
VENUE: YFM studio, 4 Albury Road, Dunkeld Crescent,
South West Blocks, Dunkeld West, Ext 8, Sandton
TIME: 18:30 for 19:00

Limited Space!

Please RSVP to Dibuseng Kolisang via email: dibuseng@sbf.org.za or call on 011 403 0310 to indicate your attendance
You can also tune into the dialogue on DSTV Channel 859

Biko’s Quest at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival

The Steve Biko Centre’s Abelusi Performing Arts Corps and the Jazzart Dance Theatre collaborate on a dance production entitled Biko’s Quest at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival.

Date: 2nd and 3rd July, 2013
Venue: Transnet Great Hall
Time: 12:00 and 18:00 both days

Biko’s Quest is a dance production inspired by the Steve Biko Foundation’s (SBF) exhibition, The Quest for a True Humanity, commissioned by the Department of Education in 2007, and developed in partnership with the Apartheid Museum. The exhibition has toured South Africa.Biko’s Quest draws inspiration from the exhibition’s portrayal of Biko’s life and death through photography. Drawing from the original work, this dance production translates Biko’s Quest for a True Humanity from one art form (photography) to another (dance and performance). In so doing, the production re-visits the contemporary relevance of Steve Biko and his quest for a true humanity.Through Biko’s Quest, the Steve Biko Centre brings you an interpretation of Biko’s vision and interrogates how far the South African society has progressed in becoming a nation with a more human face.