 Pastoral bliss is way in the past The focus now must be innovation So, I spent a coupla days this week in the city below Table Mountain, attending the annual Design Indaba. It was a mind-opening experience being among some of the world's creative and innovative minds, and observing how humanity is galloping ahead while we do the proverbial hand-job about the nationalisation of mines and other such nonsensical issues. Our disastrous education system, our warped view that we are compelled to repeat the mistakes of others and the unambitious streak in our leaders may combine to ensure that we lag behind our peers in countries of similar development levels. On my way back to Johannesburg - the lovely city that the Almighty created on the eighth day, after a really good rest - I happened upon a really interesting article in the Business Day newspaper. According to the report, the Land Claims Court had handed down a landmark judgment. The Baphiring community in North West had been forcibly removed from their fertile land by the apartheid government back in 1971 and relocated to a dry patch about 80km away. Since the mid-'90s, these people have been fighting to get their land back. They have scored several mini-victories along the way, raising hopes that they would one day live on the land on which their ancestors are buried. Until this week, that is. The Land Claims Court ruled that the tribe had been adequately compensated by the previous government and - more importantly - it did ''not have the ability" to maintain the food production levels on the farms under claim. The area includes eight farms that produce maize, sunflower seed and livestock. The community will now only be able to get back the tiny bit of land where their family graves are. During the case, the Department of Land Affairs, which opposed the claim, had argued that it would have had to spend R70-million to buy the farms and then another R210-million to move the people back onto the land and provide them with resources to farm. When the judgment was handed down, experts and interested parties immediately labelled it a landmark one because it was the first time the courts had taken into account the commercial viability of the farm land and the negative impact on food production that restoration would have had. "This creates a precedent because now the current use of the land and its production abilities will be taken into account when a decision is made about the viability of resettlement or not," Peet Grobbelaar, the lawyer for the farmers, told Beeld newspaper. The community was understandably devastated by the decision and plans to appeal the case and embark on some form of protest action. They have even warned of land invasions. "It's a harsh one. We are going to appeal and toyi-toyi ... this is not fair compensation. Government must find the money," Business Day quoted Baphiring leader Christian Mabalane as saying. Now, one feels for the Baphiring, whose emotions have yo-yoed as the case progressed. But we have to look at the bigger picture and use the judgment to change our attitude to land reform. As this column has argued previously, we are wasting valuable time and energy trying to restore people to their peasant ways. Ordinary South Africans either do not want land or just do not have the capacity to work it. They want to go to cities and work in modern economy. Not to patronise the Baphiring, but you can bet your bottom dollar that had they won the case, the land would have gone the way of many other farms which have been returned to their original owners in the past 15 years: desolation. This is not because black people cannot farm. It is because time has moved on from the time the apartheid government was carrying out its cruel forced-removal policies. Large-scale, highly mechanised commercial farming is now the way of the world. You cannot turn the clock back four decades. That is just the reality. Furthermore, the young people would, as has happened elsewhere, have simply upped and headed for the towns and cities. Yet we continue to nurse the notion that we can reverse the inevitable march to an urban future. We keep wanting to fight the logic of large-scale commercial farming. Much like polygamy, land restitution is a backward-looking nice-to-have (okay, not quite, but you get the drift). The money and energy that is spent on getting peasants back into subsistence (farming) would be better used to create a strong class of black commercial farmers who actually do farm for commercial rather than sentimental reasons. As a country, we cannot keep looking backward to a past of pastoral bliss. We should not be burdening the young people of the Baphiring tribe and others in a similar state with the dream of owning a patch of their ancestors' land and putting seeds in the soil. They should be freed and inspired to dream bigger than that. But the ideological fascination with the land question by the elders in our society is keeping them chained. If we succeed in throwing off those chains, we will be freed to focus on the things that will make us an innovative nation. -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . |
