If the injunction of the Freedom Charter is that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, why are we expropriating land without compensation from other South Africans who, seemingly, given the import of this statement, have an equal claim to land ownership?
Who are these “unfortunate” members of the nation who must be dispossessed of their land?
Does this not force the Freedom Charter in some form of reinterpretation, given the current political dynamics? Can the Charter be rewritten or reappraised, or is it that sacrosanct, we enquire?
As the public consultations on land expropriation without compensation are taking place, it is meet that this matter be revisited.
The Freedom Charter celebrated its anniversary on June 26. On that day in 1955 more than 3000 converged on the dusty plain in Kliptown just outside Soweto. From January of that year, volunteers had been sent to all corners of the country to solicit public opinions about the possible future envisaged for South Africa.
The volunteers covered villages and homesteads, churches, institutions of learning, tribal gatherings and trains to solicit the views of the public.
South Africa had never held such a historic gathering of people of all race groups.
The ascension into power by stout and stubborn DF Malan in 1948 ushered in a new era with the promulgation of the policy of apartheid. A generation of racist laws were announced and implemented with speed, sparking intense resistance from the ranks of our people.
Picture: Itumeleng English/ African News Agency/ANA (Archive)
The Defiance Campaign of 1952 marked a rejection of apartheid’s unjust laws, including the Bantu Education Act and Group Areas Act.
It is necessary to disaggregate the various South African racial groups and their claims to land given the historical exigencies.
Africans constitute the largest group and are indigenous to this country in the same vein as the Khoi and the San. Coloureds are interpreted as Africans since they too never came from outside the country. Indians arrived as indentured slaves and have not been involved in any war of dispossession.
Whites arrived as dispossessors and set out, through colonial and imperial tutelage, to rob Africans of their land. Most colonial wars were wars of land dispossession, as vast tracks of land became alienated from Africans after every defeat. Some conquered towns were named after husbands and wives, to wit, Harrismith and Ladysmith.
Expropriation without compensation does not amount to the simplistic dispossession of land owned by whites.
Whites will not be hurled into vans and dumped on the outskirts of town to fend for themselves where there are no amenities, as they did to others in 1913.
They will not be shepherded like sheep to an enclosure of their tribal homeland akin to Orania. But surely as the sun rises from the east, they need to atone for a historical injustice for them to claim a seat at the table of fellow South Africans, therefore, something huge must give.
That South Africa belongs to all who live in it does not accord white compatriots title to territory to their illegitimate historical claim. Their claim to territory is based on the right of colonial conquest and insatiable greed, and for lasting peace to prevail that injustice needs to be remedied.
A state of equilibrium needs to be restored, especially in respect of the land ownership.
South Africa does belong to all who live in it, but those who hold ill-gotten land must give it back.
White South Africans must accept the inevitability of paying the historical debt, since the actions of their ancestors were in stark conflict and a pointed contradiction with the just and harmonious ordering of human society.
So we ask, what aspects, if there are any, of the Freedom Charter need re-evaluation and reinterpretation? Our verdict is that none of all of its provisions needs revisitation. The only revisitation is our feeble resolve to move with speed to implement all of its provisions. We prevaricate on crucial matters and tend to be reactionary. We had to be pushed by students to ensure free education.
Our sinews needs a new injection from the lethargy of complaisance. We must warn that the expropriation of land without compensation must not be watered down to such an extent it becomes infinitesimal.
Picture: Itumeleng English/ African News Agency/ANA (Archive)
Such a risk exists when those who are opposed to it will act as its loudest disciples, only to stifle it and stunt its implementation.
Even those who have no experience of land loss and land dispossession are now our sought-after scholars and go-to opinion makers. The pain of land loss is best known by those who have suffered its excruciating, dehumanisation pain.
We conceded that the Freedom Charter is a futuristic document, but we need to be firm in ensuring we attain its promise in our lifetime.
We must also realise that the Freedom Charter needs a new person, one who would be industrious, conscious, conscientious, devoted to duty and a consummate patriot. All South African compatriots must be signatory to this national pledge.
I find it curious that we speak about expropriation of land without compensation and not about nationalisation. Because if we succeed in nationalisation, expropriation will be its natural by-product.
Land is the totality of a people’s national expression and denotes their sense and sensibility of themselves, their place in the universe and their own meaning of life. The land is an inherited national gift acquired through sustained historical exigencies punctuated by history, economic relations, aesthetics and culture.
The land is a shared commodity that expresses a people’s identity and a sense of being.
South Africa and most of Africa is the inalienable home and possession of the African people.
It was through criminal colonial conquest and domination that she became a subject nation under the yoke of European colonisers and the tutelage of white domination.
The 1913 Land Act came to consummate this injustice and to feed this insatiable greed for farming land and labour demands.
This injustice was perpetuated with callousness and profound disregard to the well-being of Africans, who not only lost land but became impoverished, as all their productive rights to the land and food security were terminated.
The recent land audit has established that blacks, who number about 45465400 of the population, own less than 10%, whereas whites, who number 4493500, own 70%.
Speaking at the Port Elizabeth rally on the eve of the Defiance Campaign in 1952, Professor ZKMathews said: “Only the African people themselves will ever rid themselves of political subjugation, economic exploitation and social degradation.”
The ANC Nasrec resolutions are resolute on the expropriation of land without compensation. We do not gainsay this fact, but must craft an approach on the best possible implementation model.
* Ka Plaatjie is an adviser to Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Lindiwe Sisulu.