The news that legislation to allow submission of land reform claims for another 5 years, was signed off by president Zuma, opened a number of opportunities for a nation in search of land and freedom.
I couldn’t help myself yesterday evening in having a moment of sweet laughter while thinking of a bloody fool who tackled me in a Front National meeting earlier this year, warning against FN’s plan to submit land claims. According to him, this could only lead to one of two things:
Either the president would refuse to sign the legislation into effect or he would change it so that no white claimant could benefit from it … as if the president can constitutionally bring about such changes to an approved piece of legislation! I wonder if he is prepared this morning to admit that he was wrong. Fortunately, as time goes by your learn which people offers a worthwhile opinion and who is to be ignored for their own lack of insight.
I mean to say: land claims and self determination in our view became so entangled that there are a number of interpretations and points of view on the matter, stating from each person’s conviction what is then perceived to be allowed and what not.
In the same manner you find those people blatantly telling a fib to fool people .. for whatever reason remains a mystery to me. I noticed, for example, last night on another forum the blatantly deceitful claim that the Afrikaner Accord of 1993 (which was discussed extensively on this forum over the weekend) allegedly “belongs” to only one political party and can legally be used by only that party.
What utter nonsense. If a law belongs to only one party, then Affirmative Action belongs to the ANC and I intend not to pay any further attention to it! It is somewhat upsetting when a person utters such bollocks, if it wasn’t so completely amusing at the same time!
Irrespective, there remains a number of interpretations around this question of land claims, often based in misunderstanding or a lack of knowledge. Most of these comes from the long habit of looking at things subjectively. Land claims is a matter of objectivity, that we need to emphasize.
Let us therefore look at one or two of these interpretations.
Someone writes to me: Let us claim the Western Cape, there were no black occupants of the land at the time our ancestors established their farms. It is not that easy, I’m afraid. There were other occupants, even before the European settlers and their descendants also have a claim, possibly an even stronger one. On top of that you cannot submit a claim for land already belonging to you.
I you own your farm, you cannot claim it. You have to submit evidence that the land you wish to claim were taken from you without consent. The keyword is “evidence”. In that also lies the answer to the question: How much land can we claim? You cannot claim a square centimetre which did not formerly belong to you and was taken from you. Land claims has as purpose restitution of property that was taken without consent, not to share out property based on supposed right of ownership.
Yet another person wants to know: Can I claim the farm my great grandfather established in the Waterberge 120 years ago? No. Your grandfather sold the farm to the government in the 1960’s who then used it for resettlement of an African tribe. The farm was not taken without consent, your grandfather was reimbursed for his loss. He sold it. You have no claim.
The single most frequent idea that pops up is: Now is the time to claim back the former Boer Republics. Granted, it would be a quick and easy solution, but it is not going to happen I’m afraid. In the first place we need to keep in mind that the two Boer Republics lost their independence by force at the Peace treaty of Vereeniging, 31 May 1902.
Civil government, in accordance with this treaty, were re-established to replace military government in 1904 and 1906 respectively. It was these civil governments, elected and recognised by the Commonwealth, which decided to take part in the National Convention of 1909 from which the formation of the Union of South Africa happened in 1910.
Through that action the argument of forced occupation or violent loss of independence becomes null and void. Apart from that, we also need to look at how the geographical area of the former Republics look today. We’ll find that the majority of the population does not, by definition, belong to the Afrikaner/Boer nation.
These people are however occupants of the land for generations and cannot possibly be removed by force. Even in the very, very highly unlikely event of a claim for the restitution of the two old Republics being successful, we need to accept that the international community will never again recognise white minority rule anywhere in Africa.
Restitution of the two old Republics will therefore not take us back to the status before 1899, but will in fact dump us back in the situation of 1992-1994. With that we lay the table for a repetition of history, on a much worse scale and in a much smaller area than before. It is senseless.
In determining what exactly we can claim according to this legislation, we therefore need to carefully determine what was our legal property and which we lost through an action out of our control and against our free will. For this we will need more than popular history.
We will need hard, concrete, substantiated evidence.
In fact, we will need to make a mind shift as well and realise that a restitution of a former establishment of power and rule is not likely to happen. Land claims are about geographical area, not about the form of state of rule . We will have to think innovatively, new and creative.
We will have to pick from the ruins of what we now have all the pieces of building material we can possibly find, carefully determine their suitability and use those to build a new house, not to try and rebuilt the old one.
Daniel Lötter
South Africa Today – South Africa News
