This article was first published by Daily Friend on 20 February 2025
Racially motivated land reform is one of the most nonsensical, irrational and misunderstood obsessions among the politically minded in South Africa. Alongside Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) legislation, it is one of the biggest obstacles to South Africa becoming a serious country set on progress and success.
In response to US President Trump’s executive order condemning South Africa’s adoption of Expropriation Without Compensation (EWC), many South Africans have flocked to social media to insistently claim that white people still hold most of the land that they stole from black people in South Africa.
We know without a doubt that there were mass forced removals and the creation of racialised areas under Apartheid. Since 1994, over 80,000 land claims have been settled, benefiting 2.1 million individuals receiving land restitution amounting to a total of 3.5 million hectares.
Despite this high number, politicians and social media activists see it as too little. They don’t appreciate the fact that land restitution is a delicate and complex process. And the reason for this is that they don’t see land and owners as individuals and property. They live within a fictional reality in which all black people owned the entirety of South Africa – despite the country of South Africa itself being a colonial invention.
Before the passing of the Expropriation Act, which allows the government to seize any property it deems fit if it so likes, restitution required individuals to prove that their ancestors owned land that was stolen from them. This is reasonable; you can’t just go to a police station and demand your neighbour’s car, claiming it was stolen, without showing proof that it was your car to begin with.
Just because someone is white doesn’t mean they didn’t acquire their property rightfully. South Africa is a huge country which still has huge amounts of unoccupied land. During the early days of colonialism, there were even fewer people and much more empty land. There were no sprawling cities for the Dutch, British and Boers to conquer and oust their inhabitants. While there was conquest, most land settlement was done on empty land. In the case of Boer settlers, settling on empty land was necessary, as Boer settlement was sporadic and undertaken by small families, not roving armies capable of displacing civilisations.
Conquest of land in South Africa also wasn’t just a white thing. Shaka Zulu caused the brutal displacement and conquest of countless black South Africans, pushing many into what is now modern-day Zimbabwe and other parts of South Africa. Why are Europeans seen as the only colonisers in South Africa when the Zulus engaged in violent imperialism as well?
Black South African ethnic groups are treated in a similar fashion to Native Americans. Activists and ideologues lump them all together, treating them like a homogeneous group. They also hold this weird idea that because, for example, Native Americans were present in some parts of North America, that they therefore, as a collective, have a claim over the entire continent. By this logic, the French should own Beijing, as there is a continual land connection across Eurasia.
This notion is of course absurd. But why then is it so popular to believe that Zulu people in modern-day KwaZulu-Natal have a right over land on the west coast of the Northern Cape? Land rights are determined by who settled it first, and who established a permanent claim over said land. These land rights can be collective insofar as a community established a permanent claim over land, as did many tribes in not just Africa but Europe as well. But their ownership over the land only stretches as far as they can express their control – up until formal land ownership became a thing.
In this way, it is absurd to deny European settlers the right to settle uninhabited land. And in cases where there was conquest, there needs to be proof that there was conquest and that the current property owners are descendants of the aggressors, and that the claimants are descendants of the people who lost their land. And some vague notion of blackness is not sufficient proof.
Trying to enforce land restitution for land lost during colonialism is impossible to do properly. And just as Europeans have mostly given up trying to restore land lost during their countless wars, South Africans need to give up trying to right the wrongs of centuries of vague, confusing, and unrecorded history.
Rather, there needs to be a firm focus on forced removals during Apartheid. Records were kept for these cases, and it is recent enough history that legitimate claimants can provide proof that they or their parents and grandparents owned land that was illegally seized from them.
‘Land’ is an irrational issue in this country because politicians and ideologues lie so much about it. They keep pushing the lie that whites control most of the land in South Africa, and that this land was seized from black people. This directly breeds resentment and racial hatred. The romanticised notion of farm-life that the EFF and MK push on South Africans must also end. Most South Africans wouldn’t want to farm. It’s a terrible way to make a living.
Another fact that needs to be made clear is that most people world-wide, and historically, are not going to be landowners. Especially over vast tracts of land. Throughout human history, most people have been tenants. Or feudal lords, capitalist landlords, or tribal chiefs (as is the case in South Africa). And while cases of feudalism and chiefdoms deny people control over their economic futures, renting of property is not a bad thing.
The idea that white people are still benefiting from Apartheid and colonialism is patently false and needs to end. Rather, there needs to be a concerted effort to liberalise the economy, so more South Africans can get jobs, earn money and control their own economic futures. We need to stop fixating on the past and look towards the future. That is the only way we become successful as a country.
