Empty promises to rural people

The land restitution bill is not the game-changer that President Zuma promised, write Nomboniso Gasa and Nolundi Luwaya. Sunday Independent

The Land Restitution Bill approved by the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) on Thursday may raise a cheer from traditional leaders, but it is not the game-changer that President Jacob Zuma promised in his State of the Nation address last year.

Zuma and his Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform, Gugile Nkwinti, punted the bill as a second chance for the Khoi, San and Africans who were dispossessed before the notorious 1913 Natives Land Act redesigned the South African landscape.

Revenge of the Commons: The Crisis in the South African Mining Industry

By Keith Breckenridge, History Workshop

Most accounts of the Marikana massacre, and the resulting turmoil in the South African mining industry, stress the ongoing importance of structural poverty, and the gross inequalities of life in South Africa after the end of Apartheid. If the writers on this subject (and many other events of contemporary South African politics) are correct, little has changed. But they are not right, at least not straightforwardly. The violent protests on the mines have been prompted by very dramatic changes in the distribution of power on the mines, changes that have brought about conditions of civil war within the mines’ unionised work force. And what that internecine conflict shows is that the long-term structures of political economy that supported the mines, and the distinctive features created by Apartheid South Africa, present an unexpected threat to the union movement, mining capital and the state.

The Discarded People by Cosmas Desmond (1971)

The Discarded People
by Cosmas Desmond 

Apartheid era South Africa was also one of the great
innovators in the ultimate form of marginalisation –
discarding. It discovered that it could discard “surplus” people. One of the classic books that exposed the horror of apartheid practice was Cosmas Desmond’s The Discarded People that described how several million Africans were removed from their homes in land that had been declared “white” They were categorised as ‘superfluous and ‘unproductive’. They were not needed in white cities, towns and farming areas. Declared aliens in the land of their birth
they were dumped in remote rural slums, areas for which the government took no responsibility.

Bare Life in the Bantustans (of the Eastern Cape): Re-membering the. Centennial South African Nation-State

by Ashley Westaway, 2008

This thesis argues that 1994 did not mark a point of absolute discontinuity in the history of South Africa. More specifically, it asserts that 1994 did not signal the end of segregationism; instead of democracy leading to national integration, the Bantustans are still governed and managed differently from the rest of the country. Consequently, it is no surprise that they remain mired in pervasive, debilitating poverty fifteen years after 1994. In insisting that contemporary South Africa is old (rather than new), the thesis seeks to make a contribution to political struggles that aim to bring to an end the segregationist past-in-the-present.

Respect our rights

by Pumla Gqola, City Press, 6 May 2012

The Traditional Courts Bill is meant to replace the Black Administration Act of 1927 with a law that is constitutional.

Instead, if passed, it will in effect strip between 17 million and 21 million people living in rural South Africa of many of the rights we enjoy in the rest of the country.

The crime which went away

by David Hemson, The Mail & Guardian

Early in 1968 the apartheid government decreed that African people in and around the community at Maria Ratschitz mission near Ladysmith were to be forcibly removed and dumped on barren exposed land called at Limehill. This was not the first or the last of the forced removals characteristic of the apartheid regime's determination to deny towns and cities to the African people and instead to constitute black political entities, "homelands", on the remaining land occupied by Africans.

Locusts on the Horizon

by Richard Pithouse, SACSIS

Taking over a mode of rule is not the same thing as transforming it. Barack Obama is not George Bush but that fact makes little difference to the bankers looking for a public subsidy or a wedding party in Pakistan at the moment when a drone rushes out of the sky.

Rural poverty in the Eastern Cape Province: Legacy of apartheid or consequence of contemporary segregationism?

Ashley Westaway, Development South Africa, 2012

Poverty in South Africa in general has not declined since 1994, and it is particularly severe in the former Bantustans. This paper discusses two important issues related to rural poverty in the Eastern Cape Province. It questions the applicability of the notion of legacy to explain recent trends in rural poverty and constructs an argument that explains these trends in relation to post-1994 segregationism. It argues that the notion of legacy is not useful in explaining why rural poverty remains entrenched, long after 1994. Rural poverty today cannot be explained as something left behind after the end of apartheid, because its causes and drivers are the same now in 2012 as they were in 1970. The continuity between the pre- and post-1994 periods is best described by exploring and understanding post-1994 policy decisions and power configurations as an expression of contemporary segregationism.

Millions will lose their ‘citizenship’

by Nomboniso Gasa, Independent Online

'We need no mourners in our stride; No remorse, no tears. Only this: Resolve. That the locust shall never again visit our farmsteads.' The above excerpt from a poem by Odia Ofeimun at the end of the Biafra War in Nigeria comes to mind as I grapple with the contestation on constitutionalism, constitutional democracy, majoritarianism and legislative changes under consideration in South Africa.

Democracy Compromised: Chiefs and the politics of land in South Africa

by Lungisile Ntsebeza

Democracy Compromised

Democracy Compromised puts the spotlight on traditional authorities and addresses two main issues: first, how despite their role in the apartheid state, traditional authorities not only survived, but have won unprecedented powers of rural governance in South Africa’s democracy, and second, how they derive their authority. In this original and compelling study, Lungisile Ntsebeza carefully details the fascinating history of the chieftaincy in the Xhalanga area of the Eastern Cape.

He shows how traditional authorities have been dependent on the support of the state since the advent of colonialism and how deeply traditional structures have been contested. Light is shed on the unexpected renaissance of these authorities under ANC rule and the role of traditional leaders in the process of land allocation is clearly explained. Written by one of the leading scholars on the South African land reform programme and democratisation in rural South Africa, this book will be of particular interest to academics, researchers, students, activists and policy makers.

Govan Mbeki: The Peasants’ Revolt

South Africa: The Peasant's Revolt

Penguin Library, 1964 & by International Defence and Aid Fund, 1984.

Preface by Ruth First

Chapter 8. Chiefs in the Saddle

Chapter 9. Resistance and Rebellion

Mahmood Mamdani: Citizen and Subject; Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism

Democracy and the Colonial Heritage in Africa: Revisiting Mamdani's Citizen and Subject

by Bill Freund, Left History

Mahmood Mamdani's Citizen and Subject has become one of the most talked about contributions to African studies in recent years. The review article which follows represents a commentary on Mamdani. It amplifies substantially a short review which has been published previously in the African Sociological Review. That review ventured to make a number of critical comments on the book which dispute some of its emphases while elaborating on its themes. This article will attempt to develop these points somewhat further. The idea, however, is not to take away from the value and significance of Mamdani's book which represents an important and original contribution.