Landgrab sets firmament afire

By M.S. Prabhakara

CAPE TOWN, JULY 5. The ``land invasion'' launched by thousands of dispossessed and landless persons in the Kempton Park area, on prime urban land close to the Johannesburg International Airport, with the support and encouragement of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), brings to the fore the fraught issue of landlessness and homelessness in South Africa.

The situation also has the potential for getting out of hand and indeed spreading to other parts of the country.

The PAC has indeed promised to launch similar initiatives. Already, about 300 squatters have been arrested.

Over the past few days, local PAC officials have been `selling' sites on this land, owned by the Gauteng provincial government, state owned parastatals and part private citizens, to landless and homeless persons some of whom had been `illegally' squatting on the land (who also happen to be PAC supporters), at a mere rand 25 per site.

Tens of thousands of people have `bought' the sites over the past few days. Some of them have already built makeshift homes there.

The PAC leaders, however, maintain that the money has been collected to challenge a possible appeal to the courts by the owners seeking eviction of the squatters.

The Government's urgent application for a court interdict against the squatters, which would enable it to evict them, was postponed this morning for a hearing tomorrow, to enable the representatives of the squatters to present their arguments.

The initiative by the PAC has been denounced by the Ministers for Agriculture and Land Affairs, Ms. Thoko Didiza, the Minister for Housing,

Ms. Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele and the Minister for Safety and Security, Mr. Steve Tshwete, as well as by the major political parties, including the African National Congress and the Democratic Alliance.

In a strongly-worded statement, the ANC has condemned the PAC for ``exploiting the plight of homeless people of Ekurhuleni by selling them land they do not own''.

Describing the PAC leaders as ``opportunists who never hesitate to fish in troubled waters to score cheap political points'', the ANC statement accused them of `theft' (for `selling' land that did not belong to them) and of `sedition' (for creating an ``unnecessary confrontation between the misled community and the Government, which owns the land'').

Such indignation is understandable, given the bad odour that the `land invasions' in neighbouring Zimbabwe has acquired.

Indeed, underlying the very strong criticism of the President, Mr. Thabo Mbeki, for not being sufficiently outspoken in his criticism of the ``land invasions'' there and the near- unanimous projection in the South African media of the Zimbabwean President, Mr. Robert Mugabe, as `mad Bob' is the all too obvious fear that the developments in Zimbabwe are only the precursor of similar, even more devastating, developments in this country, affecting the much larger and far more powerful white farming community.

Further, such `anarchy' threatening political stability and harmonious race relations is seen as a disincentive to potential foreign investment, only which, in the government's perspective, will ensure growth and employment.

The PAC leaders however are unrepentant. The party which has only three members in Parliament is ever in need of populist issues to heighten its profile.

It knows that it has touched an extremely sensitive and emotive issue which affects the overwhelming majority of African people.

According to the PAC, the theft and dispossession of land belonging to Africans began on April 6, 1652, the date assigned to the very first arrival of European settlers in this part of Africa.

Its 1999 election manifesto seeks an amendment to the Constitution enshrining ``the right of individuals or groups to seek restitution of their land which they lost either through colonial conquest, fraud or discriminatory laws from 1652 to the present day''.

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Section  : International
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