The Premier of the Western Cape, Honourable Helen Zille
The Junior Mayor of Cape Town, Ms. Thandokazi Sineke,
Councillors,
Land claimants,
Honoured guests,
Ladies and gentlemen.
Good morning, goeie dag, molweni.
I am privileged to welcome you all here today to commemorate this historic day.
Most of you have filed land claims in the interests of claiming what was unjustly taken from your families.
While many of you have seen some resolution, many still bear the pain of waiting for a long-sought sense of justice and closure.
For there are certain tragedies so vast in scope that their legacies live on.
Their injustice runs through our history and into our foreseeable future.
We are forced to live with their affects.
In ways, seen and unseen, they have shaped us and the country in which we live.
Few events fall into this category of sadness as neatly as the Natives Land Act of 1913.
In and of itself, it was a fundamentally wicked device.
It was based on the racist determination that this country and its land must be built on division.
But that was only its point of departure for that division would not be equal.
Indeed, the underlying philosophy was one of racial hierarchy.
And in this hierarchy, there was little place for the majority of the population.
Indeed, for black and coloured people, they were to be assigned 13% of the entire land mass of what was then the Union of South Africa.
This devastated the majority of people, and their descendants, both socially and economically.
It expropriated land from those whose identities and livelihoods were closely bound to it.
This was not only an assault on identity- it was an assault on natural justice.
Furthermore, in historical terms, it was a cornerstone of the architecture of apartheid that took the devices of prejudice to new lows.
It was a milestone in determining the structural nature of inequality that defined 20th century South Africa.
In reaching this conclusion, we must take note of the fact that before the Union of South Africa, there had been similar legislation in the Orange Free State in 1876 while the Cape’s Glen Gray Act of 1894 had the effect of undermining African communal rights.
But the 1913 Natives Land Act was the ultimate formalisation of colonial oppression in the South African state.
And it was the keystone of apartheid law and the apartheid state.
Indeed, the Native Land Act worked to the advantage of white farmers by getting rid of independent black tenancy while creating ‘reserves’ from which industry and agriculture could source cheap labour.
And it is those patterns of migrancy, linking areas of historical neglect, which lie as a barely-hidden network just behind the face of the new South Africa.
But since 1994, the country has been working to address this legacy, though with limited success.
I am reminded of a speech that the Deputy Chief Justice, Dikgang Moseneke, gave on this subject last month.
He said, and I quote: ‘In short, restitution of land is smothered under the burden of legal formalism and low access to courts and bureaucratic bungles…There are ample constitutional and legal instruments to tackle land equity. Seemingly very little has been done to facilitate land redress.’
He further remarked that new, innovative ways needed to be found to address land equity.
While the function of land reform does not directly lie with local government, we can play a role.
Indeed, in Cape Town, I believe that our drive for redress and reconciliation has already achieved great results. Indeed, during my tenure as mayor, three examples stand out for me.
In the Steurhof community in Diep River, we were able to hand over 23 agreements of sale for transfer of ownership to tenants of City-owned housing, kicking off a process of transferring title deeds to 130 tenants.
In Somerset West, we were able to settle a long-standing claim going back to 1969 for families who were dispossessed due to discriminatory ordinances by releasing land well-under market value for the purposes of restitution.
And in Claremont, where we are today, we have done our utmost in the process of the restitution of 60 claimants by releasing land to the Regional Land Claims Commission.
In the value chain of restitution, the City of Cape Town plays its part to ensure that the Land Claims Commission is in a position to conduct its social function with those waiting for justice.
And most significantly, land restitution is featured as an objective in our strategic blueprint for the city, the Integrated Development Plan (IDP), unlike other cities.
In conclusion, to those gathered here, my career has been focused on fighting to address the imbalances of our history.
It is about fighting for justice, both in the here and now, and in the future.
But it is also personal for me.
I can remember being a little girl sitting on my grandmother’s stoep.
She lived at number 39 Tenant Street in District 6.
She was forced to move to Lavender Hill because of the Group Areas Act, which was the child of the Natives Land Act.
Today, when I drive past the address, my happy childhood memories are mixed with the pain I feel because of her forced removal.
It is pain that will remain with me.
That is why we are still fighting for the future.
It’s why we are working hard to build a caring and inclusive city.
Our mission is to ensure that everyone has a stake in Cape Town.
And to build that future, we must ensure that we face up to our history, as painful as it is.
That truth allows us to move forward and build the future, together.
Thank you, baie dankie, enkosi.
