Chris de Wet

Land reform in South Africa: A vehicle for justice and reconciliation, or a source of further inequality and conflict?

One of the primary stated aims of the South African governments land reform programme is to contribute towards reconciliation by addressing the injustices and inequalities of past land allocation. It is however not clear that the land reform initiative will be able to pursue its goals of distributive justice and reconciliation without in the process contributing to the very problems of inequality, competition and conflict that it seeks to overcome. The article outlines some of the ways in which this potentially contradictory process is likely to unfold, both in terms of the official approach outlined in the Green Paper on Land Policy, as well as in terms of likely developments on the ground. A related paradox is considered: that in order to overcome the land dispossession and disruption caused by forced resettlement, there will need to be further resettlement, as black people move onto formally white-owned land. While in theory voluntary, and involving land gain, rather than loss, such resettlement is nevertheless likely to involve significant difficulties of its own. For land reform to stand any realistic chance of succeeding and of helping effect justice and reconciliation, we need to be as clear and honest as we know how as to what the real costs and unintended consequences are likely to be.

Resettlement and land reform in South Africa

Since 1913, at least seven million South Africans, mainly Africans, have been uprooted or actively resettled for predominantly political purposes. This article provides a brief overview of the extent and the consequences of several different kinds of resettlement. It then argues that land reform in a post‐apartheid South Africa will require further resettlement, and considers a number of possible settlement patterns, as well as some of the problems likely to arise.

Reconsidering displacement in Southern Africa

In the light of developments in the southern African region over the last number of years, the paper argues for a reconsideration, and an extension, of the way in which the concept of ‘displacement’ has conventionally been understood. It considers a range of different kinds of population movement, arguing that they are essentially interrelated, and that the more conventional distinction between voluntary and involuntary migration is becoming increasingly tenuous. In this regard, the paper shows how, in a number of different kinds of situations, people become ‘disemplaced’, ie for a range of socio-economic reasons, the ability of the area where people live, or with which they associate, to support or to sustain them progressively erodes under them. They are thus no longer able to remain socially or economically emplaced, and increasingly become unsettled, uprooted, ‘disemplaced’, having to keep moving around in order to survive. Such disemplacement gives rise to a situation where many people become permane...In the light of developments in the southern African region over the last number of years, the paper argues for a reconsideration, and an extension, of the way in which the concept of ‘displacement’ has conventionally been understood. It considers a range of different kinds of population movement, arguing that they are essentially interrelated, and that the more conventional distinction between voluntary and involuntary migration is becoming increasingly tenuous. In this regard, the paper shows how, in a number of different kinds of situations, people become ‘disemplaced’, ie for a range of socio-economic reasons, the ability of the area where people live, or with which they associate, to support or to sustain them progressively erodes under them. They are thus no longer able to remain socially or economically emplaced, and increasingly become unsettled, uprooted, ‘disemplaced’, having to keep moving around in order to survive. Such disemplacement gives rise to a situation where many people become permanently uprooted and thus, displaced—without having been forcibly moved in the first place. This two-stage process of disemplacement giving rise to displacement—which did not start out as displacement—has implications both for how we conceptualise much of the displacement occurring in southern Africa, as well as for how we approach and deal with it in the policy arena.

Continuity and Change Over Sixty Years at Household Level in a Rural South African Village

The magisterial district of Keiskammahoek is situated in what was the former bantustan/homeland ofCiskei and has subsequently become part of the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Any researcher working in the rural settlements of Keiskammahoek is unusually fortunate in terms of the level of data at her/his disposal. Detailed magisterial and departmental records were kept from the founding of the Keiskammahoek District in the 1850s. From 1948 to 1950, a major socio-economic survey, the Keiskammahoek Rural Survey (KRS) was conducted in six rural villages. This involved anthropological research, detailed socio-economic and income/ expenditure type surveys, and a number of genealogies of families. The KRS was intellectually spearheaded by Monica Wilson, one of South Africas premier anthropologists, whose centenary we celebrate in 2008 and on whose work 1 build in this paper.