The land question: why expropriation is inevitable

REFLECTING on his tenure as chief director for restitution in the Office of the Regional Land Claims Commission, Michael Worsnip says his experiences led him to be sure of the appropriateness and necessity of the need for a law which enabled land to be expropriated without compensation if necessary.

Worsnip detailed how people died exhausted, angry, poor - and without ever seeing their stolen land returned to them.

His reflections come as US President Donald Trump offered refugee status to Afrikaners over the country’s land reform laws and as South Africa is attempting to dispel reports sparked by Trump that his country would withdraw funding to South Africa because it was “confiscating land”.

“When I was Land Claims Head of the Restitution office in Cape Town, on many occasions, I needed to deal directly with white farmers who owned vast areas of land, which had been stolen from people during apartheid. I say ‘stolen’, but they couldn’t see it like that. They would heave their oversized bellies into their oversized SUVs and arrive in clouds of dust, to intimidate claimants in meetings I was holding with them.

“They would keep claimants in court for year after gruelling year, on the most frivolous of charges, forcing a situation where a rightful restitution could not be made. People died exhausted, angry, poor - and without ever seeing their stolen land returned to them. Year after year. A criminal lawyer (with the emphasis on the word criminal, you understand) kept the Protea Village claim in Kirstenbosch in court for year after year, because of the wealthy thieves who had built huge houses on the stolen land. The last thing they would want was the rightful claimants ‘revving their cars on a Saturday morning’. The last thing they would want was a school built on land, where now they were walking their dogs and jogging,” Worsnip posted to his social media.

He also recalled a meeting with landowners in Lutzville, “where the thieves had taken all the river land for themselves, and given the people they had ‘legally’ confiscated it from, land which was so arid, so bleak, so profoundly unusable, that all they could do was sit on it, watching the thieves make millions on the grapes they were growing, in a perfect environment”.

“I remember the date of this meeting… the 8th of December 2013. I walked into the group of scowling white farmers and sat down. I greeted them in Afrikaans and was met with a stony silence. So we surveyed each other for a while, in silence. Now, in these rural communities, it is customary to start and end meetings with a prayer. So, one of the younger farmers led the prayer. We stood there, with bowed heads listening to God being implored to bring sanity to the proceedings and to help those in power to understand that the land is the lifeblood of the Afrikaner. It got louder and louder and at the peak of the crescendo, Israel was invoked and God was reminded of his special care for them. And how, now, he had a duty of care for his new Israel, the Afrikaner people.

“We sat down. I could see that there was a shared, ambient religious glow, amongst the farmers now. God would be on their side.

“I felt a rage building up inside me. And eventually I couldn’t contain it. I asked everyone to stand up again. And I let them have it. I spoke to them of the incalculable damage which apartheid had inflicted on the country and the continent. I spoke to them in some detail about the land theft which had taken place throughout the country. It had been a systematic heist, on a grand scale, from which they had benefitted personally and directly, because of the colour of their skin. I told them that, as a white man, I made it a point, at every restitution land handover to a claimant community, to make a public apology to them. As a government official, but also as a white man.”

He added that often during his tenure, “after a handover of land, when I had spoken, people would come up to me and say that it was the first time in their life that they had heard a white person apologise to them, for what had happened”.

For Protea Village beneficiary, 72-year-old Huibrecht Lewin who was still in school when they were forcibly removed, justice still seemed out of reach, despite a successful land claim.

“I just remember the trucks came and they took our stuff to Steenberg. Last year plans were moving for us to move back to Kirstenbosch, but now it has been quiet.”

Last year after years of court cases which delayed the development of their returned land, a settlement agreement was signed between the parties. The Friends of the Liesbeek agreed to withdraw their opposition to the project in return for an expansion of the size of the public open space along the Liesbeek River’s green belt, which will form part of the completed development.

“I am feeling sad. I am hoping we get to go back in my lifetime. Now and then I take a drive there. I also go to the church sometimes, mostly holidays. We were all spread around when we were forcibly removed, others are in Lotus, Grassy park, Steenberg, so we just see each other when we go there, if there's a church service.

Land Reform and Rural Development Minister Mzwanele Nyhontso last month said land restitution will not be completed by 2030 as the government land audit of 2017 showed that Africans owned only 4% of the land.

He further confirmed that there were over 80 000 “old order” claims that were lodged before the 1998 cut-off deadline and 163 383 “new order” claims lodged between July 2014 and July 2016.

Cape Times