2007 may well go down as an historic year for rural South Africa after Christian Aid partner, the Nkuzi Development Association, won a landmark court victory that acknowledges the right of black farm dwellers to land taken from them during the colonial and apartheid era.
The ruling will have huge ramifications for black South Africans who were either forced off their land or forced to work as laborers to remain living on it.
Unfulfilled promises
Almost 14 years since the end of white minority rule in South Africa little has changed in the unequal distribution of the land between white and black South Africans.
The statistics speak for themselves; some 80% of farmland is owned by whites, who form only 10% of the population.
The post-apartheid 1994 constitution and an ambitious land reform programme spoke bravely of protecting black farm dwellers from eviction from homes and lands on which they and their ancestors had lived for generations.
But the reality is different. Alarmingly high numbers of black South Africans are being forced from their homes as landowners seek to further their own interests. The figure, still rising, stands at over one million since democracy arrived in 1994.
Those suffering evictions and abuses are extremely poor, often illiterate and intimidated by the unequal power relations that often exist between tenants and landlords. Most do not understand their rights to land that was taken from their ancestors during the colonial and apartheid eras.
Evictions are damaging development efforts in South Africa by preventing people from freeing themselves from extreme poverty. Townships continue to swell with informal, overcrowded settlements of rural migrants.
Hope realised
For more than ten years, the Nkuzi Development Foundation (Nkuzi) has supported the ‘Popela community’; eleven families who share the same ethnic lineage and the surname Maake.
They joined together to argue that the land they now lived and worked on as was once rightfully owned by their forebearers. Joining forces strengthened their case against the current landowner - a large company.
Throughout the more than ten year relationship with the community, Nkuzi has helped avert several eviction attempts, said Nkuzi’s Director Lucas Mufamadi, on announcing the victory.
Nkuzi will now train the Popela community in how to make the most productive use of the land in order to restore their once vibrant community. But this is only a drop in the ocean of positive change the ruling will effect.
The ruling recognises that the Restitution of Land Rights Act can be read more widely to acknowledge that many of today’s legally landless are so directly because of South Africa’s painful history of racial discrimination, segregation and land dispossession.
Future cases will be influenced by the ruling giving so many other black farm dwellers the opportunity to own land and to finally be free from conditions of poverty, intimidation and dependency.
Nkuzi’s recent victory is an example of the possibilities for change when the constitution is actually put into effect. However, the legal process is complex and slow, and puts many off.
Christian Aid partners continue to raise awareness of rights and provide legal representation in the courts for South Africa’s most vulnerable and wronged.
In 2007/08 Christian Aid donated £35,000 to Nkuzi Development Association. We have supported them since 1998.
The Nkuzi Development Association is one of four Christian Aid partners working on land rights issues in South Africa.