The legacy of the 1913 Native Land Act is still with us today
Note to Editors: This is an extract of a speech delivered by Helen Zille at a DA rally in Kimberley today, to mark the centenary of the 1913 Native Land Act.
Today we mark 100 years since the 1913 Native Land Act was passed in to law, that cruel piece of legislation which was the "original sin" of racial oppression and division in our country.
Today we also remember a hero of the long struggle against land dispossession in South Africa - Sol Plaatje - one of the earliest opponents of the Native Land Act. Earlier today I visited Sol Plaatje's gravestone and the Sol Plaatje museum, to pay our respects to a person who must surely be regarded as one of the most extraordinary South Africans ever to have lived.
As a young man he overcame the poverty of his birth by studying long into the night and over weekends. He learned seven languages, edited a newspaper, and was the first black South African to write a novel. As an activist, and the first General Secretary of the South African Native National Congress, Sol Plaatje risked the comfort of his government job by speaking out and organizing against land dispossession.
He travelled to London to protest the Land Act, and wrote (while on his way there) another book entitled Native Life in South Africa, to try and explain to an ignorant British public what was being done in the name of the imperial government in South Africa.
Plaatje's mission to London was unsuccessful - the imperial government did not exercise its veto - and the Land Act became law in 1913. It forbade black South Africans from owning or even renting land, except in small outlying reserves. It set aside 87% of South Africa's land exclusively for white ownership, forming the basis of the later "Bantustan" policy and contributing majorly to the tragic consequences of dispossession and endemic poverty that we have in South Africa today. The 1913 Native Land Act was the legislative precursor to apartheid and it formed the foundation for an attack on multiple rights and freedoms for black South Africans.
In 1914 Sol Plaatje questioned painfully why "in the grim struggle between right and wrong, the latter carries the day".
In those gloomy days, he could not see that the Land Act would also unite black South Africans around the common cause of resisting their own dispossession and would sow the seeds for the eventual triumph of freedom and constitutional democracy in South Africa.
Wherever injustice and oppression have reared their ugly heads, they have inspired resistance and protest to challenge it. Time and time again, history has shown that evil triggers a backlash from good. This is the story of such historical greats as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr and South Africa's global icon, Nelson Mandela. On Sunday we marked Youth Day and remembered the uprising of young people in 1976 as a backlash against the oppression they experienced.
The truly demeaning nature of the Land Act was made real in its brutal implementation: the uprooting of families, the shattering of communities and the destruction of livelihoods.
Describing the impact of Act 27 of 1913, Plaatje writes how he had seen his "countrymen and countrywomen driven from home, their homes broken up, with no hopes of redress, on the mandate of a Government to which they had loyally paid taxation without representation -- driven from their homes, because they do not want to become servants."
Hearing those haunting words, written 100 years ago, it is easy to see why the legacy of the 1913 Land Act is still with us today - most visibly in the still endemic poverty and joblessness in our country. That legacy shows why land restitution is so important, and why it must be broad based and remain productive to ensure our country's food security. Restitution will never remove or compensate for the pain suffered, but it is a major step towards the restoration of dignity.
Where the Democratic Alliance is in government, we have prioritised the finalisation of land claims which had been lingering unfinished under previous governments. We understand that "justice delayed is justice denied".
In the DA-governed Western Cape, we are very happy that all but one of the land claims has been finalised and the one outstanding claim is on a clear path to resolution.
As with our success in driving share equity schemes for land reform on farms, the DA is leading the way in South Africa in ensuring real redress, restoring the dignity of those who had it robbed by the tyranny of apartheid and laying the groundwork for reconciliation that breaks down the barriers from our past.
We believe it is absolutely critical that we fulfill our redress and reconciliation mandates as much as our delivery mandate.
Effective delivery on the part of government creates new opportunities which, if taken up by engaged citizens, enables each South African to own his or her future.
Redress however, enables us to honour the good in our past and to acknowledge the bad. Redressing the injustices of the 1913 Land Act means that the efforts of those who fought against apartheid, in various organisations and in different ways of protest and resistance, were not in vain.
We work each day to honour Sol Plaatje's legacy of standing up for justice for the disenfranchised and the dispossessed, by making land restitution a top priority of our government.
We join all South Africans today in remembering the 1913 Land Act and the awful consequences it had for our society, the scars of which we still see so clearly today. We celebrate too, that on the 30th of June 1991 it was erased from our statue books as one of the first pillars of apartheid to fall in the run up to the first democratic elections. And finally, we pledge ourselves to the eradication of its legacy, to breaking the cycle of dispossession and poverty, so that future generations can live in a country of equal opportunities and shared prosperity - an open, opportunity society for all.
Issued by the DA, June 18 2013
Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter
