For the first time in a long, long time we have reason to thank president Zuma. His statements on Tuesday during the debate on his annual address to the House of Traditional Leaders, opened a can of worms again…but also emphasizes Front National’s arguments and policies towards land ownership.
The debate started when the different Khoi leaders stood up with their questions. They said they were the original inhabitants of the country, yet had been sidelined in the state’s restoration drive, which offers redress for land dispossession that happened from 1913 onwards.
Chief Hennie van Wyk of the Xoraxoukhoe House said the Khoi people and its leaders did not seek to be assimilated into the recognised structures of traditional chiefs, and had been waiting for Zuma to make good on a promise to grant them separate, official recognition in law for years. “Here we are still struggling. Our struggle is not to be assimilated into traditional leadership. We are an entity on our own.”
Join the club Chief van Wyk. The Afrikaner/Boer people does not want to be part of the ANC and DA’s New South Africa structures either. We have also been promised self-determination – in the constitution 21 years ago. We share a very common feeling there.
An unscheduled speaker who identified herself as a direct descendent of Maria de la Quellerie, wife of Jan van Riebeeck, said the Khoi in 1998 submitted the biggest land claim received by the government and were still waiting for it to be settled.
Big mistake, Sister Khoisan – the moment you mention the Van Riebeeck family, Zuma goes cuckoo! (I wonder how this “direct descendant” thing works – Marie de la Quellerie married Van Riebeeck in Culemborg, came to the Cape with him and left after ten years. She died in Batavia. Her children were Jan’s children as well – or was there something we do not know?)
Chief Jonathan Muller said many Khoi and San did not wish to become farmers but should, like all others from whom land had been taken, be allowed to receive financial compensation instead.
“We are not necessarily looking for land but there is a way of looking at competition. Not everyone of us is a farmer but there is a way of resolving this issue.”
And once again the same challenge. The land issue is not always (in fact extremely seldom) about obtaining land to create a future and existence and wellbeing– it is about getting hold of a lot of money all at once which can sustain the entire family sitting leisurely at home. No need to work, we have the money from the land claim! And when the money has run out – government must take care of the clan again. The story of South Africa where begging and social support has become a profession.
In June last year, Rural Development and Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti announced that government was mulling a policy that would address the exclusion of the Khoi and the San from the Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Act.
The law allows South Africans to claim back land from which they were forcibly removed due to the 1913 Natives Land Act and later apartheid laws, and created a new claims period running up to 2019.
He acknowledged that the situation of the Khoi and San was complex because they were dispossessed much earlier than 1913.
Now if the Minister acknowledged that a claim prior to 1913 has legitimacy, there is no reason why the land to which the Afrikaner/Boer nation has a historical ownership (and evidence of it) cannot be restored on the same principle. I am referring in particular to the land claims Front National is submitting for the former Stellaland Republic, Republic of Ohrigstad, Kliprivier Republic, Nieuwe Republiek, Vrije Republiek van Nieu Holland in Zuid-Oost Africa (Natalia), and various sections of land in the Western Cape and Free State. We have the deed and poll – we just need to know when we can take over, Minister?
In his annual address to traditional leaders last week, Zuma encouraged them to file restoration claims on behalf of communities and to take away land from recipients who were not conscientiously farming it. This rather reminds one of Robert Mugabe-rhetoric. “Take land away…”
The land restitution and land reform issue will in the end be the single cause of the downfall of the New South Africa – because there is a very important thing which we simply can’t resolve. The “missing” part of history. We all recognise the Khoi and San as the first people. The question is: Where are they now? Apart from the scattered Bushmen tribes of Namibia and Botswana and the Kalahari, the people of Rehoboth and the Griqua – there is nothing left of these original people. In fact, the current self-proclaimed Khoisan leaders are in fact “Coloured people” – descendants of European settlers, Asian and African slaves and a few Khoi people. Let us not debate that now.
The true question is this: We all recognise the Khoisan as the first people – that is a given fact. If president Zuma claims that the white people “stole” the land: Did we steal it from the Khoisan? If so, then it must be returned to the Khoisan, not to the black man. And if it is supposed to be returned to the black man, as president Zuma and Julius Malema and hundreds of other black politicians claim: Please explain to me at what point and under which circumstances did the black man obtain the land from the Khoisan? Was that not a period of history so gruesome and oppressive and murderous that apartheid pales in comparison.
Let us divide this land amongst all of us and let us all govern ourselves in our own state of freedom and let no nation ever be ruled by another. Or is that too much to ask from a white man, while being recognised as legitimate coming from a Khoisan chief? Oi-joi-joi president Zuma – the double standards, the double standards…
By Daniel Lötter – Department Information
Front Nasionaal Suid Afrika
South Africa Today – South Africa News
