The Sunday News
Cetshwayo Mabhena
The land question is at the very deep end of the abyss of South African post-apartheid politics.
Leftist black radicals cry “black first and land first” or the country must be rendered once again ungovernable. Extremist white right wingers claim that a genocide of white people by angry and unreasonable black fundamentalists is approaching.
Some of them are dramatically and much spectacularly seeking asylum and exile in western countries. The international neo-liberal regime is forcefully pressing it upon the South African government that global investor confidence in South Africa will depend on how carefully and orderly the land question is answered and the redistribution process handled.
Not in so many words, the world economic and political system is threatening South Africa with the end of the world should the Republic dare recover the land from white beneficiaries of conquest and colonisation.
Academics, intellectuals and other members of the thinking community are called upon to reflect, converse and supply sound and durable suggestions towards a solution to the historical and political dilemma.
On the evening of Thursday, 22 November, I found my pathetic self one among four panelists that were elected to participate in such a debate that was sponsored by a collaboration of the University of South Africa’s Business Leadership School in Midrand and The Sowetan newspaper. The land debate, in this part of the world is a true intellectual and political hard hat area where the uncircumcised should not dare tread.
Tempers are volcanic and the conversation is more frequently couched in high voltage tones and accents than in sober renditions, yelling and screaming are the elected mode of communication.
I went all the same. Decoloniality, especially the Philosophy of Liberation province that I occupy does not shy away even from the very cross of the crucifixion.
The same debate last year ended in brawls and much blood; some delegates being wheeled in ambulances to central hospitals and others in police vehicles to holding cells and remand stations of Sunnyside. That is how charged the debate is. There are no opponents but enemies.
The clash of definitions
The word “land” is an English word that refers to “the part of the earth that is not covered by water.” In my mother tongue we refer to “umhlaba” which means the same as, not only a country which is izwe/ ilizwe, but the entire world.
In veracity, the majority black natives that are clamouring for what is called “land” are demanding more than just the dry soil and its other properties but being, belonging, possessions, dignity and freedom in the world.
For dispossessed and displaced black peoples of the Global South there is more to the land than just the soil.
In other words, what is called land and which is the subject of this important debate means much more to native black people that do not have it than it does to the white privileged beneficiaries and monopolists that presently hold and enjoy it.
The clash of definitions of what fundamentally it is that is called land and umhlaba must be addressed for purposes of veracity and clarity, and for the benefit of this important conversation, I argue.
For those prosperous and powerful people that have and hold it, the land is a natural resource to be exploited, and for those that do not have it or do they hold it, land is the world and life without which they see no future. And for which they are willing to die, some of them.
A warning on Liberation
To conquer the land and its people was easy for the colonial victors. They had enough will and evil in their hearts.
Technology and drive were on their side and massacres, genocides and other spectacles of cruelty ensured the native was cleared off the land and the land cleared off his hands.
* To be continued next week
