Focus for new struggles
International Viewpoint #257 June 1994
"OF ALL the processes which have brought about the inequitable distribution of power and wealth that characterises present-day South Africa, perhaps none has been more decisive and of more immediate importance to most black communities than the dispossession of land. Agrarian communities in Africa, as elsewhere, have, by definition, tended to base not only their economic but also their social structure on the distribution of land. This has made dispossession an act akin to national destruction." Mi de Klerk: Harvest of Discontent, IDASA 1991 BRIAN ASHLEY Cape Town
T IS one of the ironies of the South African political struggle that while the question of the return of the land has been central to the organisations of the national liberation movement, until recently none of these organisations has been able to spell out a comprehensive programme of land reform and rural reconstruction. This stands in sharp contrast to the important role that the national liberation struggle has played in the urban centres, where its strategies have intersected with and reinforced the struggles of urban workers around trade union and civic issues.
This is in spite of the fact that racial inequality is most manifest in the way the land has been monopolised by a white minority. As such the ANC-led Government of National Unity (GNU) 18
### LAND faces its greatest and most difficult challenge in redressing this legacy of white minority rule.
Land distribution in South Africa is one of the most skewed in the world, and is summed up in the well-known ratio whereby 87 percent of the land has come to be concentrated in the hands of just 13 percent of the population (White) while the remaining 87 percent of the population (Black) was forced to reside on just 13 percent of the land.
This unequal distribution of land was the result, initially, of colonial conquest, however it was later cemented in law by the 1913 Land Act, segregation and apartheid.
The dispossession of Black people, their confinement to the homelands and their denial of citizenship in South Africa, and the resulting cheap migrant labour system were the foundation stones on which the apartheid system was built. They have given the land question in South Africa a specific meaning.
### White farms
These measures brought into being two categories of rural land. The first category consists of the so-called White farms. Here massively subsidised White commercial farmers own huge tracts of land and employ 1.2 million farm workers under a system of harsh repression and brutality that has guaranteed their total subservience and a source of cheap labour for the farms. About 90 percent of South African agricultural productivity comes from the white farming community, which occupies 85 percent of the agricultural land and represents just 0.17 percent of the total South African population.
The second category consists of land that is largely owned and controlled by the State: the ex-homelands. These house just about 50 percent of South Africa's population, of which the vast majority constitute a rural landless poor living in squalor and depending on wages and pensions from the cities. A large proportion of those living in the homelands are people pushed off the White farms, expelled from their own freehold farms, driven from the cities or concentrated in rural slums as a result of forced removals from "black spots". Because of overpopulation of the "reserves" and lack of development in these areas an environmental disaster has been created which has left large tracts of land unsuitable for agricultural production.
The underdevelopment of the homelands is manifested in the extreme poverty, the lack of infrastructure and the virtual absence of social welfare services in these areas. The rate of illiteracy stands out as a terrible testimony to this. According to recent estimates the illiteracy rate amongst rural people in the homelands and other rural areas of the country is 67 percent, while eight out of ten farm workers are unable to read and write.
Only a tiny proportion of Black people retain direct access to land as peasants or small producers, and only a handful, numbering in the hundreds, are commercial farmers. Their land-holding is concentrated in the homelands and in the few remaining areas of Black-owned land on the so-called white platteland. In the homelands currently there are 0.16 hectares per person and this will drop to 0.1 by the year 2000. There is a general absence of the means of subsistence, a lack of resources with either minimal or no State-support, and the abuse of power by State officials.
### Homelands
The essence of the land problem in South Africa arises from the fact that the homelands were intended to soak up the Black population so that the white farm lands and urban areas could avoid having to bear the social and economic costs of supporting a large Black working class. As agricultural production declined and land-hunger and landlessness became more generalised, the homelands became almost entirely an instrument for the apartheid government to politically and socially control the millions of Black people who, if allowed to urbanise, would have threatened the stability of the apartheid system. Instead of being developed as viable, productive agricultural regions, they were used in a literal sense as "dumping grounds" for the Black people that the government wanted to move from the urban areas.
International Viewpoint #257 June 1994
How people survived once they had been abandoned in the homelands was a question with which the government chose not to concern itself.
The demand for the return of the land has become central not only because of its implications for the large numbers of people who presently live under the most extrme forms of poverty, deprivation, backwardness and powerlessness in the rural areas but because the resolution of the land question will also profoundly affect the lives of the most urbanised, industrialised communities in South Africa. This is because the land question concerns the millions of Black people who are still nominally migrant workers living in mining compounds and hostels in or near the urban centres. It equally has to do with millions more who fled the poverty of the homelands to seek work in the cities. Because of the government's lack of housing provision and urban planning millions of Black people are condemned to squat in shacks on open land around the town and city centres. For this reason the land question touches almost all strands of Black society both rural and urban.
Hence, in the consciousness of Black people, the land question is inseparable from the issue of national oppression, of colonial conquest and dispossession by the whites. The solution of the land question and the future of the rural population are bound up with the demand for political rights, for land on which to live and land on which to work. For this reason the ANC was quick to indicate that they intended to undertated to such cases that occurred after June 1913 and where the State "certifies that it is feasible"!
Now that the transition to a post-apartheid society is taking place, increasing interest and attention are being focused on the issues of land reform and rural development by formations of the mass democratic movement and progressive NGOs. This has resulted in mobilisation of particularly dispossessed communities for the return of their land and a number of these communities have been successful. It has also spawned a number of incidents where people have gone onto their former land and occupied it in a kind of land-grab movement.
### Demands
A very significant National Conference was held earlier this year. Hundreds of rural communities came together to formulate their demands for land reform. The mood was very militant. Delegates challenged the constitution saying that they demand the right to reclaim land from 1652 onwards (when the first white settlers came to South Africa) and not only from 1913 onwards. In response to the Constitution which requires people to come to a court to make their claim, one delegate, rejecting this as a suitable mechanism, said: "You don't take the victims to court, you take the thieves." Delegates at the Conference warned the ANC that while they will law. The Conference saw a heated debate where women demanded the right to own land in their own right and an end to the practices of polygamy. These issues could not be settled at the Conference because of the opposition of traditional chiefs and has been referred back to regions for further discussion.
To show their seriousness, shortly after the conference delegates marched on the Transitional Executive Council (TEC) and presented their demands.
In the coming months the contradiction and pressures around land reform will confront the new government. They will be faced with the contradiction of having to satisfy the demands of the people for redress on the one hand, and on the other with ensuring the continuity of food production which is undertaken primarily on the White commercial
The resolve of the ANC to continue to be a popular movement of the people will be severely tested. How responsive the ANC will be to the demands for large-scale land redistribution remains to be seen. One possibility for land redistribution lies in obtaining the land of White farmers heavily in debt. It is estimated that White farmers have incurred about R17 billion in debts. If the banks were to insist on repayment, about 40 percent of the 67 thousand white farmers would be immediately liquidated and their land could be made available by government by acquiring it from the bank.
The protection of private property ke a programme of land redistribution almost immediately, particularly as it and existing rights will have a became clear that they had won a clear crippling effect on any serious majority.
However, the protection in the new constitution of private property and the existing property rights will have a crippling effect on any serious land reform programme. Although the new constitution makes provision for expropriation of property it can only take place on the basis of compensation and only for
"public purposes". Public purpose refers to the cases when property must be expropriated to make way for the building of public roads, building, and so forth.
In this case land redistribution will only be possible with State land and private land obtained on a "willing seller, willing buyer" basis.
Although the constitution does make provision for the right to restoration to those who lost land and property as a result of apartheid measures it is restricsupport them in the coming election they are giving them five years within which to make progress in returning the land or they will face their opposition.
The land question touches on another aspect central to the struggle for freedom, namely that of women's emancipation. Black women are the most disadvantaged in rural society. Although the majority of farm workers are women, few are employed full-time. Most women who work on the farms are employed as casual and seasonal workers, and compete with children. While black women represent the backbone of small-scale agricultural production in the reserves, their link to the land is totally dependent on men through whom their access to land is rooted both in the formal legal system and in indigenous land reform programme
With the support of the PAC and other smaller parties, the ANC may be able to muster the necessary two thirds majority to change the constitution and ensure greater flexibility to make available land for redistribution sooner than later. But it is doubtful that they would do this given that it would create considerable tension in the GNU.
Ultimately, however, the nature and strength of rural organisation will be critical determinants of the shape of any programme of land reform and of a range of material resources that will be needed for rural reconstruction. One thing is clear: the land question will not disappear and it could become a focus for new struggles and organisation. *
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• COMMUNIST PARTY