South Africa: 12 ways to distribute land equitably

South Africa has the largest gap in the world between the rich and the poor. To eliminate extreme wealth for the white minority and extreme poverty for the poor African majority 12 things must be done. Land is a source of employment and wealth creation. Land is a primary means of production. All necessities of life are in the land. The primary contradiction of the liberation in South Africa was land. The split between the 1957 ANC and Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) was over land. A liberation struggle that does not restore land to a colonially dispossessed people is a failed liberation.

1. There must be a database establishing how much land ownership is in foreign hands.

2. There must be a quick law made in Parliament forbidding sale of land to foreigners, especially those from outside Africa. They must be offered only leasehold not freehold. Too much prime land, especially along the coast, is fast becoming Europe.

3. The state must assess and evaluate land property that is being sold to Africans. The inflated price must be controlled.

4. There must be legislation limiting the size of ownership of land. Those owning excessive land and resisting the reduction must be highly taxed as a deterrent. The money realised from huge land owners must be saved in a trust account and used to acquire land for the landless, especially by training them to become successful food security farmers. They must also be trained technologically in the processing of raw materials for national consumption and international export, as well as in caring for the environment.

5. Large farmland owners who are co-operating with the national agenda on equitable redistribution of land must be well subsidised and empowered to compete with other farmers internationally.

6. Excessive land and its resources in the hands of the minority must be equitably redistributed among the landless majority. Equality in a democratic nation means equitable sharing of national resources, not creating extreme wealth for the minority and extreme poverty for the majority.

7. Research must be done on ownership of land per race in South Africa, in order to bring about racial equality. The fundamental solution to equitable redistribution of land lies more in land presently owned by the minority population of this country than in land owned by the state.

8. All unused land must be nationalised and used to eliminate the filthy squatter camps in the cities and elsewhere. These shacks are unfit for human habitation.

9. More land must be allocated to the rural areas, especially for farming. The land allocated to Africans by the colonialists through the Native Land Act 1913 was an act of genocide. It is worse 100 years later. The population is ten times higher than in 1913. There is unbearable poverty in the rural areas, culminating in diseases, illiteracy, high child mortality and short life expectancy. Rural communities with access to land need the support, training and expertise to generate wealth where they live.

10. There must be serious dialogue with those who own excessive land. They must be challenged on the basis of their morality, their religion and sense of justice to co-operate with a programme of equitable land redistribution. Poverty is the mother of revolutions. Few ‘haves’ and too many ‘have nots’ are an explosion waiting to happen.

11. Land must be used as a form of reparations to compensate the African majority for the colonial robbery of their land and 350 years of colonial looting of the riches of their country and cheap slave labour. The TRC failed to do this.

12. If there is resistance, as a last resort, land must be nationalised and equitably redistributed to the poor and needy. Land is the primary national asset to satisfy the basic needs of all people. Land includes farming, mining of minerals, fishing, water and all natural resources above, in and below the ground. Compensation must be paid only for improvements made on the land, not on the land itself. In African customary land law, land is a national property. Colonially acquired land cannot be compensated. It was expropriated from its original African owners. There must be 15 years imprisonment without the option of a fine for those who are found to be corrupt in the equitable redistribution of land to the needy.

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* Dr. Motsoko Pheko is author of several books, including ‘Land is Money And Power’, ‘How The Freedom Charter Betrayed The Dispossessed’, ‘Apartheid: The Story Of A Dispossessed People’ and ‘The Hidden Side Of South African Politics’. He is a former member of the South African Parliament.
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