The thorny land question

In the previous iteration of this discussion, I proposed that we do not have the luxury of choice when it comes to the structural reorganisation of the South African socio-economy - radical economic transformation, if you will.  Not if we are serious about creating a spatially, socially and economically just society at piece with itself and the world.

Considering our socio-historical context and my general observation of history, it is my considered view that radical socio-economic change is a certainty. There are only two uncertainties: when it will happen and who will drive it.

Will it be demagogues, charlatans  and opportunists ,with the attendant cavernous vortex of chaos or will it be patriotic South Africans?

I further proposed that if such a society is to be realised, the instruments of creating it must be a reflection of the society we hope to create. That is, it has to be done thoughtfully, equitably, sincerely and with malice toward none. In this piece I seek to weigh in on possible ways of materialising this ideal.

It is neither possible nor desirable to delink this discussion with land restitution. With good reason as history has placed land at the centre of any discussion about restructuring our socio-economic edifice.

Land is usually a highly emotive topic anywhere in the world as it is one of the primary dimensions of our existence, economically, socially, psychologically and spiritually. In this regard, we are no exception.

Recently, certain politicians have raised some controversial questions around our colonial legacy. It has predictably stirred different sectors of societies in different ways. At the heart of it is – if our history in this country is viewed in purely negative terms, what does it say about our place in this society and our right to exist? Do we have a place in it? Do we belong?

These are important questions that must be understood and carefully considered by all. After all history has conferred upon our young democracy a multi-cultural status. At the best of times it makes social cohesion and organisation considerably tricky but the mature approach requires that we make peace with this  unchangeable reality and soberly deal with the problems it comes with. Not least the thorny land question.

This is because embodied human beings cannot exist outside space and time. Land is thus at the centre of what it means to be a human being.

Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that the identity of any people group usually derives from its forebears, their personal and collective histories as well as the land that bore witness to those histories.

The dimensions of space and time are not disconnected because those who own space, in other words land, are usually conferred power to own their time, along with the freedom and dignity that comes with.

This is besides the fact that land has the potential to earn rental, capital appreciation if not some kind of agricultural or mineral yield. This serves to further relieve land owners of the pressure to sell their time or labour in the market place at potentially unfavourable terms.

Time in this case corresponds to the hours sold for labour. Land ownership thus affords the freedom to choose how to invest time because those confined to the rental system do this under a form of duress due to the perpetual pressure to earn rental income to survive. This creates a mind-set that deprives them of the genuine choice over the direction of their lives.

Slaves are by definition those who have ownership of neither their space nor time. Those who do not own land, as I argue, also only partially own their time and are thus only partially free in this sense.

It is unsurprising that most wars have been fought over land. This brings to mind Hitler’s idea of lebensraum, which drove his acquisitive eastward march towards the vast, fertile fields of Eastern Europe and Russia.

In South Africa the dispossession of land from the natives was initially to assume illegal control of their space but culminated in the quest to control their time as well, thus completing their status of constructive enslavement.

The growth of the agricultural and mining sectors of the South African economy around the advent of the 20^th century became restricted by growing labour shortages. The unwilling natives were thus violently compelled to sell their labour in distant and inhospitable places, mostly separated from their families, through the dispossession of the last vestiges of their land.  

Short of total slavery, which had been abolished in the British Empire for at 66 years by 1900, this was the next best option. The union of South Africa in 1910 thus coincided with a series of laws that culminated in the land act of 1913 that completed the destruction of black South African way of life.

This had been an iterative process that had begun over 200 years prior. It was no coincidence that this period coincided with the formation of the ANC in 1912.

Subsequent to this, native South Africans came to cut a pitiful sight of contemptable vagrants and scavengers at the fringes of South African society, squabbling amongst themselves for the pitiable morsels of slave wages tossed to them by their effective slave masters.

The rest were left to scuffle among themselves over the sum of these wages in the confined dormitory spaces that continue to blight the fringes of South African cities, for their survival.  It is no surprise that these became fertile ground for the criminality that came to spill into the rest of society, haunting the entire country, scarcely sparing formerly white suburbia at the conclusion of apartheid.

This background is important because it is not possible to understand current South African socio-economic problems without it. In fact what I’ve just described is still largely an accurate description of much of the workings of the contemporary South African economy.

Save for the much maligned BEE and affirmative action, in the minds of many South Africans, there is no conclusive evidence to suggest there would have been significant changes to the historical status quo had these interventions not been legal requirements. 

This is because of deeply entrenched social attitudes of master/servant, superiority/inferiority, excellence/mediocrity, diligence/laziness, insider/outsider, shaped by the history of dispossession and the constructive slavery I’ve described. Mind-sets that stubbornly persist.

As a way of redressing these historical injustices, there have been growing proposals for expropriation of land without compensation. These have been predictably met with counter expressions of utter horror at the purported injustice.

Though some are honest enough to acknowledge that land was violently dispossessed at incalculable cost, even among those, there is a sense that the land was subsequently made productive in ways that has multiplied its value over the decades and centuries.

The interest of justice requires for the serious consideration of these concerns. After all it cannot be denied that significant value was contributed to the land over the centuries subsequent to its dispossession.

This valid factor should nevertheless be assessed in its proper context. The fact that the wealth of South Africa was built on the foundation of land, labour and skill.

The land was appropriated without compensation. The labour was at hired at grossly deflated rates due to the induced excess supply created by the constructive slavery previously discussed.

It is the skill injected by colonial architecture that gives expropriation without compensation a look of unfairness. But this should not be overstated. Current market prices do not reflect all the historical factors I've described. Not in the very least.

Certainly the colossal suffering caused by the destruction of the black South African life over the centuries is difficult to quantify in monetary terms.

A workable middle ground must therefore be found in the pursuit of sustainable land restitution. Models must be devised with clear timelines that must ideally include the acquisition of skills for the maintenance of current productivity levels at the very least.

It is important to bear in mind that the creation of a sustainable social order is the goal here rather than meting out historical justice for its own sake, even as it must be acknowledged that the absence of felt justice places our young democracy on very shaky ground. Which is why a zero-sum approach must be avoided at all costs.

South Africans need to wrestle hard about what constitutes a just settlement with a mind open to persuasion. Our future depends on it.