Chairperson, Prof Legassick,
Ms R Omar, CEO of Iziko Museums of South Africa,
Prof L Ntsebeza, Chair of the Centre of African Studies, at UCT, Mrs B Bennet, Director of the District 6 Museum,
Dr M Molaudzi, Prof of Historical Studies at UCT,
Ms M Twalo, Chairperson of the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, Mr Z Khoisan, Cultural activist and journalist,
Ladies and gentlemen.
It is indeed a great pleasure and honour to be delivering the keynote address today. I extend my appreciation to Iziko Museum for inviting me to this discussion, and congratulate you on undertaking this important public dialogue.
The topic of today’s discussion lies at the core of what the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform has set as its objective, that is, achieving social cohesion and development, through the programmes it is implementing. All efforts undertaken in achieving this, are set out under the theme ‘Reversing the legacy of the 1913 Natives Land Act’. We must however go beyond this in order to achieve full social cohesion; we must also address the devastating effects that colonialism had on our people, pre-1913.
The dispossession of our people of land, their means of cultural expression, by successive colonial and apartheid regimes, lies at the heart of our endeavors as a nation, to finding healing, and lasting social cohesion for our country.
Our history is littered with stories of how, during the 16th and 17th centuries, the Khoi and the San bravely battled against the invasion of their land first by the Dutch and then the British. Stories of the wars of resistance fought on the eastern front, which is today the Eastern Cape, have now become legendary.
This history is however bias against us, as it is often written about us, and not by us. It is written about conquests over us, yet very little is said about our galiant resistance to the dispossession of our land and erosion of our culture as a result of this, and many other cruel and inhumane practices.
The following passage, taken from the book ‘Land Title in SA’ (2000) by DL Carey Miller and Anne Pope, gives a depiction of what lies at the heart of today’s theme. It reflects what could possibly be the beginning of the resistance to the colonial invasion.
It reads as follows:
“there was strong opposition to the land tenure system adopted by the Company in the Cape. According to Miller and Pope (p7), van Riebeek’s Journal shows that ‘in the very first years of the Company settlement at the Cape, Hottentot people raised the issue of land tenure rights.’
The Journal further reflects on the tension which grew between the native Hottentot people and the Company where it states that on the 10th of February 1655 a delegation of Hottentots, ‘threatening attack and robbery’, responded to a proposal of trade by stating: ‘that we were living upon their land and they perceived that we were rapidly building more and more as if we intended never to leave, and for that reason they would not trade with us for any more cattle.’ Later on, on the same day, the Journal noted that ‘about 59 of these natives wanted to put up their huts close to the banks of the moat of our fortress, and when told in a friendly manner by our men to go a little further away, they declared boldly that it was not our land but theirs and that they would place their huts wherever they chose’ (Miller and Pope, p7).
All anti-colonial struggles are, at the core, about two things: repossession of lost land and restoring the centrality of indigenous culture. To deepen one’s appreciation of this statement, one has to look, in-depth, at colonialist use of land to subdue conquered populations; and, the use of tribal or ethnic sub-cultures to submerge the cross-cutting culture which characterises all tribal or ethnic groups – Ubuntu or human solidarity, in the case of Africans.
The super-profiling of ethnic or tribal subcultures by colonialists is deliberately meant to create competition and conflict amongst them – the divide and rule tactic generally used to deepen subjugation. Ubuntu, the over-arching African way of life, is integrally linked to land. Any attempt to restore Ubuntu without a concomitant land restoration is futile.
Social cohesion is a direct function of the restoration of land and indigenous culture. The important question that is to be answered is how to we give effect to the restoration of lost land, and through this, the restoration of Ubuntu and indigenous culture, as a means to achieving social cohesion.
The President recently announced that the government will be:
- re-opening the lodgement for land claims; and,
- introducing exceptions to the 1913 cut-off date, to accommodate descendants of the Khoi and San, national heritage sites, and historical land marks.
Work in this regard is underway and much of it will be completed during this year. As a nation, we cannot celebrate the centenary of the 1913 Natives Land Act, but rather mark this occasion in remembrance of the devastating effects it had.
The department has conceptualised Project 2013, which aims to put in place a series of national and provincial events that will mark the legacy that colonialism and apartheid had left on our country and people. This project will also set out our plans to reverse this legacy!
I invite the Iziko Musuem, and my fellow panellists, to play an active part in this.
I want to leave you with the following question, in the hope that it will spur today’s discussions, and those that will ensue as we mark the centenary of the 1913 Natives Land Act:
If the great leaders such as Sol Plaatje, Dr John Langalibalele Dube, and the great Captains and Leaders of Cultural Groups, who led our people in the wars and campaigns of resistance, were to rise today - what would they see; and how would we respond to them if they were to ask us – ‘what have you done to reverse the legacy of colonialism and apartheid?’
This is a fundamental question we must answer, but one which we can only answer through a collective resolve. We must thus, together, as a nation, give effect to the objectives of social cohesion and development, through a pragmatic, yet comprehensive land reform programme; this in response to the above question.
In their seminal Paper entitled, The Bantustan and Capital Accumulation in SA (1976), Martin Legassick & Harold Wolpe foreground their story by the following quote from D. I. Jones (1921):
This, then, is the function of the native territories, to serve as cheap breeding grounds for black labour – the repositories of the reserve army of native labour - sucking it in or letting it out according to the demands of industry. By means of these territories, Capital is relieved of the obligation of paying wages to cover the cost to the labourer of reproducing his kind.
Given recent events at Marikana and De Doorns, would we, comfortably, look our ancestors of wars of dispossession and 20th Century leaders of our liberation movements in the eye and say: Yes we have, indeed, reserved the legacy?
I thank you!
