The Call to Land Reform

By Matthew Field

Matthew is a matric student from Pretoria. He was selected as one of News24’s 100 Young Mandelas, and he represented South Africa at the World Individual Debating and Public Speaking Championships. He is a passionate South African with a deep love for his country.

I do not want to die. I do not want any of us to die. It is as simple as that.

I had the pleasure of listening to a high-school public speaking competition this past week. It was in the North West. I was truly impressed by their eloquence and confidence. I was also frightened. These children were angry. My fellow born-frees were angry.

I cannot blame them for this anger. I feel partly responsible. They are angry for one of the most understandable reasons in existence. They are angry, because their land was taken from them.

My great great grandfather came to South Africa as a diamond dealer and a land owner. Yes, one of those. My parents and grandparents received university education. They all had white-collar jobs. And I mean that literally. To have those jobs, you had to be white. They worked in IT, architecture, surgical nursing and public relations. Let’s just say Verwoerd cut us a good deal. Look at where I am now. I am private school educated, and I am on track to be a third-generation university student. Tell me white privilege is not real.

The point I am getting at is that we, being ‘white’ people, benefited greatly from a system. This was a system that was so repugnant, so repulsive, that I do not think you can call yourself human if you support it.

One of the many legacies of this system is my reason for writing this piece.

Today I am going to talk about Land Reform.

Don’t shoot me just yet!

I realize that this is a very contentious issue. Apart from a few exceptions, most South Africans will agree that the land was stolen and that it must be given back. So, if I try to convince these people of that, I would just be preaching to the choir.

Therefore, I am going to appeal to the minority of readers: those who are against land redistribution.

Earlier I said that there is one thing I care about:

I do not want to die.

On a bigger scale, I do not want us to die. And right now, by not supporting Land Reform, we are playing a game of Russian Roulette. Except in this game, all six chambers are filled, and we find ourselves trigger happy. South Africans, if we do not give back the land, that gun will go off.

You think gunpowder makes a big explosion! Just wait and see what it looks like for a country to explode.

Our country is angry. Not because of what any born-free did, but because of what our ancestors did. And they did evil things: the 1913 Land Act, Cecil Rhodes instigating the Boer War, abusing miners, the hut tax, the Frontier Wars, the British sucking a cassus belli out of their thumbs to make war on the Zulu, the Treason Trial, the murders of Biko, Timol and thousands of patriots.

The biggest of all was the first one I mentioned: The Land Act, and all subsequent legislation. There is an old struggle song that says it better than I ever could. It is called ‘Thina Sizwe.’

A partial translation for that song is is:

We the black nation

Are weeping for our land

And how quickly tears can turn to fire. We are in danger, South Africa.

We have two options. Either, we all come together to pursue land redistribution, or you will see millions of South Africans rising up to claim what is theirs.

I do not speak simply of transferring from minority ownership to majority ownership. The issue is more complicated than that. What is made of the huge swathes of land that are in government hands? How does this apply to urban areas? Who is entitled to land? What happens to those whose land has been expropriated?

These are questions that we must ask ourselves. If we do not, South Africa will likely become a failed state. However, we must also realize that we can only ask these questions now – before it is too late. South Africa is an angry place. She is running out of patience for asking questions. The most dangerous thing we can do is leave this process for later. It is too dangerous to wait. Our people have waited long enough. They will wait no longer. That is not meant to sound pretty. It is a downright warning. When a country is forced to wait, it becomes irritated. Irritation leads to anger. Anger leads to violence. Violence leads to destruction on both sides. We must ask those essential questions, now. We need to sort out what land redistribution means, now!

I am shocked when I still hear:

‘Oh no we’ll end up like Zimbabwe…’

Yes, we will, if we do not let Land Reform happen now! If we wait, if we let the pressure build, if we let the anger simmer, we will plunge our nation into civil war. You already have extremist doomsday preppers stocking up food for this occurrence. But it can be stopped. Land Redistribution is going to happen. That is out of anyone’s control. What our country can control is how this happens.

We can either give the land over peacefully, or we can plunge our country into the unending fire. We can choose action now that will save us, or we can take the tantalizing road of patience. This road of patience is paved with good intentions

‘Our economy can’t take it now,’ they say.

‘Investors will leave,’ they say.

‘Food security, unemployment, corruption…’

But let us not forget that the road to hell, too, is paved with good intentions.

And hey, those arguments make sense. We need to worry about the economy and we need to worry about food security. And it is because of these concerns that we need land Reform now! We need a peaceful, controlled redistribution of land. We need farmers, workers and dispossessed peoples at the negotiating table. Like 1994, we need to peacefully discuss who gets the land.

And in terms of economy, you cannot have true growth when the means of production are centralized in the hands of a few. And I do not mean ‘white’ people. It is a group smaller than that. It is a few thousand farmers that basically own our country. That is not capitalism. That is feudalism. And worse, if we take the road of inaction, we will see what it is like for the economy to burn.

You will see what it is like to lose your food security, when South Africans take back what is rightfully theirs. You will see how bad disinvestment can be, when all of those channels are burnt in the fires of civil war. My fellow South Africans, this Civil War is coming. But like 1994, we can stop it. We can stop it by negotiating. We can stop it by giving back the land now.

Already, the issue is being hijacked by populists. They do not care about the people of South Africa! They are not giving us a plan. They have no plan. They just want votes! We need to fix this before they get the chance to. We need to save our country while we still can.

Reading this are the brightest minds in the country. No. The world.

Humanity cannot afford to lose you to the jaws of war.

We cannot afford to let this experiment die. We cannot, like fools, put out our small candle of freedom. We are a new, yet bright, beacon of democracy in a world that is increasingly turning its back on rule of the people, for the people. We are a nation which has overcome struggles that would have sank most others. We did this because of our unique South African spirit. We cannot let that spirit die. The world needs us. Humanity needs us. History is calling on you, dear South African.

Please, answer the call. Let us end this, before it ends us.

An open letter to the SA born-frees

Matthew Field is a Grade 12 pupil from St Alban’s College in Pretoria. He represented South Africa at the World Individual Debating and Public Speaking Championships, where he placed in the top 12 in the world for persuasive speech. His opinions are expressed in his own capacity.

Across the Earth, nations watch us with bated breath. For whilst we are mighty, we sleep. They pray we shall never wake! For all of the pomp and pleasantries they greet us with, they have never shown us what their true feeling is: fear.

They fear this giant that sleeps. They fear the day the Azanian machine awakes from her slumber. Her slumber of despair. Her slumber of hopelessness.

I tell you, this land is richer than all others. Her soil carries the fertility of Eden. Her gold runs into the very mantle of this planet.  Her seas crash against a continent filled with the greatest resource of all: the South African people. Never before in human history has such a pantheon of humanity been assembled.

I do not say this lightly. Since human feet first made their mark on our soil, we have done the impossible. The first South Africans tamed a land where the mountains scraped the sky, and the deserts crossed an endless plane. They fought for a place amongst the beasts, and built for themselves a home amongst the savage wilderness. The people of this land fought back Western invaders without end. South Africans do not surrender. When their land was stolen, they did not bite their tongues. South Africans do not surrender. They were forced down into the earth to dig out its riches as little more than slaves, but they refused to let the dream of freedom die. South Africans do not surrender. They fought other men’s’ in wars on continents over the seas, while their own people suffered. South Africans do not surrender. Our people suffered murder, humiliation, segregation, torture and tyranny. South Africans do not surrender.

We invent, we create and we change the world.

I dare say that we live in the greatest nation on Earth. I say this, because we have overcome the impossible.

Every generation has it’s own great struggle. Every generation of this land has added chapters to the master work that is South Africa – the masterwork that is the universal quest for freedom.

Sadly, we as collective authors of our destiny are suffering from writer’s block. Yes, we have many chapters in need of closing (income inequality, climate change, violence against women, crime, racism, etc.), but we are thus far unable to pick up the pen.

For reasons that presently escape me, we Born Frees are unable to pick up the pen, and continue the next chapter in the book of freedom. Yes, we have some daring authors finishing some pages, and #FeesMustFall is certainly a chapter in its own right. However, they are outnumbered by an alarming group seeking not to write new pages, but rather to tear them out.

We Born Frees are poisoned by politics. Be it along race, gender or whatever other divisionary line, we tear our nation apart. Line by line. Page by page.

A white child will refuse to see the lingering legacy of apartheid, and their inherent privilege. Instead, they cry reverse racism. A young man will refuse to see how the women of our country suffer. Instead, they long for the old world - the man’s world. The children of oppressors refuse to admit guilt. The children of the oppressed refuse to engage with the few that do. What is the result?

We are left with a book unfinished. We are left standing as that generation who took the torch, dropped it, and carried on.

Instead of young South Africans wanting to make their country into the great power it deserves to be, they take their skills and give them freely to those foreign lands that gave them nothing. Why should you want to serve any other country, when you could be a part of the greatest story of innovation, liberation and freedom that the world has ever seen?

I implore you, young South Africans, have faith in your country. Have faith in your countrymen. Forget the politics. Remember instead, the great journey that we all share. No other nation is abounding with such opportunity as ours.

South Africa is destined to be more than that country who became democratic in 1994. That was a great achievement, but it was not ours. We cannot take credit for our parents’ work. We cannot sit by and reap from what we have not sown.

South Africa is destined to be more. We are destined to be a great power amongst the cast of nations. We are meant to move out of the wings and into the spotlight. We destined to be a beacon for all humanity to gaze upon and say: that nation is great.

This can happen. This will happen. That is our story to write.

All we have to do is come together, and realize that you do not save a sinking ship by ignoring each other or jumping overboard.

Dear Born Frees:

Please, just pick up the pen!

Apartheid still exists, and it is disgusting.

by Matthew Field

On the 27^th of April 1994, a new day dawned in South Africa. Apartheid was dead, and democracy was born. This was a day which I did not get to see, and the promises of this day are still yet to be seen. In his inaugural address, Tata Madiba said the following:

“Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another and suffer the indignity of being the skunk of the world.”

In this statement, he boldly said that apartheid would never again return to our beautiful land. This was an optimistic notion, perhaps too optimistic. This grand testament to freedom is only true by technicality: apartheid cannot return, because it never left.

Despite our best efforts – the TRC, regular elections and some of the broadest affirmative action policies in the world – we have failed. We are still the skunks of the world. Apartheid lives on, and Hendrick Vervoerd is smiling at us from the trash heap of history. If we carry on this path, we should soon join him.

This is a scandalous notion, that our liberation project has failed, but as history often teaches us, facts are immune to scandal. They are immune to what we want them to be. They just are.

So what are the facts?

To understand why apartheid still exists, we must understand what it was. In the simplest terms, apartheid had two grand goals of universal racism: to keep ‘non-whites’ out of ‘white’ areas, and to exert absolute control over them when they were in the parts of South Africa that Europeans had claimed for themselves. Apartheid was about separation and subjugation; all the vulgar laws of the National Party served these goals. The tragedy of our times is that these laws still exist. Yes, they are abolished and now live in history books; no government authority enforces them. The paradox of the New South Africa is that, despite this, they are still enforced; not by government, but by us. While the apartheid regime is gone, the apartheid economy still exists, and it continues to oppress.

So, let us examine the laws of the past, and see how they just cannot seem to die.

It is best to begin with one of the most infamous examples of our skunkhood, the Natives Act of 1952 (i.e. the Pass Laws). Just as Jews were forced to wear gold Stars of David in Nazi Germany, so too did ‘black’ South Africans have to carry the ‘Dompas.’ Failure to present this pass upon police request would, at best, result in assault and arrest and, at worst, death. This law is gone, but its legacy remains. ‘Black’ South Africans are routinely harassed in upper-class, mostly ‘White’ suburbs. In these gated off fortresses, the private security companies rule, and fear is the law of the land. Allow me to give an example of where I live. Every day, our security company gets frantic calls from the ‘White’ residents of our estate, and they are all the same: a suspiscious ‘black’ man is walking in the street, so he must be a criminal. It would be easy to call this an exaggeration, but the sheer number of these incidents say otherwise. Recently, a gardener (a regular face in the estate) was reported for being a suspiscious person, and all he was doing was walking home! Moreover, this is also present at entrance gates to private housing developments. A person of colour will be made to get out of the car and use the ‘workman’s entrance,’ while the ‘white’ driver can carry on unimpeded. Yes, this harassment is a far cry from the racist assaults and murders committed under the Pass Laws, but it is racist nonetheless.

We also need to discuss the Group Areas Act of 1950. This act made it illegal for people of different races to live in the same area. The most common, and tragic, examples of the enforcement of this law would be the brutal evictions of District Six and Sophiatown. In 2018, no government agent will force the races to live separately; economic and societal racism do the job instead. Why else could it be that Alexandria, a poor ‘black’ area, can be located right next to Sandton, the richest white area in the country. The same can be said for every other neighborhood in South Africa. ‘Blacks’ are economically forced into the townships, while ‘whites’ live in their own developed world. In the same city, you can find shanty towns and slums, right next to castles of privilege, and boomed off fortresses for the rich. This, while wrong, is not unusual. The same can be seen in America, Brazil, India and across the world. What makes South Africa’s economic inequality particularly pungent is its marriage with race. It is an undeniable fact of South African life: the darker your skin, the more likely you are to live in a slum. That is the legacy of Apartheid. That is the legacy of the Group Areas Act.    

Part of the reason why disadvantaged peoples cannot escape our racist division of living space is because of another apartheid law: the Bantu Education Act (1953). This act was quite possibly the most appauling out of all of them. It denied ‘blacks’ basic education. It forced people of colour into poverty by denying them the right to work in higher paying fields, as they were forbidden from acquiring the education required to do so. This was made worse by the Bantu Building Worker’s Act (1951). These acts suppressed entire generations’ economic capabilities. That is why our economy is in the toilet! We denied millions of economically viable citizens the right to contribute to the economy and the country. The saddest part of this act is that, like many others, it still exists. Poor ‘blacks,’ disenfranchised by the Bantu Education Act, cannot afford to send their children to school, encouraging the cycle of poverty. ‘White’ children, and a select few of other races, get to go to private schools or ex-Model-C institutions, while the rest of South Africa has to be content with the quagmire that is the state of our public schools. The proof is in the numbers: in 2017, the IEB matric pass rate was 98,76%, while the government pass rate was 75,1% (the actual pass rate is closer to 39% if the pundits are to be believed.) This is our greatest failure - an entire generation of Born Frees robbed of their futures.

So there you have it, apartheid is dead, but it is still breathing. It is a re-animated zombie that just will not die. Despite our best efforts, we have failed. So what can be done about it?

Please bear in mind that I am just 17, so don’t start a riot based off my two cents.

With that out of the way, here is what I think.

While it may look like the dream for a free South Africa is lost, that is not true. It is instead we who are lost. We have forgotten what freedom means. It was easy for us to rally against apartheid because of how obviously evil it was. The New South Africa is different. There is no Boogey Man for us to target. We have no Hendrik Vervoerd and we have no PW Botha. Instead we have a hazy political mess without a face. What we need to do is recognize this fact and remind ourselves that the revolution is not over; it has just begun.

The next part of the solution applies specifically to ‘White’ South Africans. We need to realize something: it is okay to be ashamed, and we should be! Our parents’ and grandparents’ generations created the most racist political system in the world, and most of them did nothing to stop it! Yet, most ‘white’ South Africans became incredibly defensive and contort when their role in apartheid is brought up. Yes, sons should not be punished for the sins of the fathers, but that does not excuse us from fixing the problems that our parents and grandparents created. We still profit off apartheid’s legacy. We cannot wash our hands like Pilate, when blood is still on our hands. The argument of “Its been over twenty years now; they must just get over it!” does not apply. Twenty years of freedom cannot undo 300 years of oppression and a complete robbery of economic mobility. Look at Germany; you will never see a German waving the Swastika, yet you will see South Africans proudly flying the old flag. We must recognize the impact we have had on our beautiful country. Moreover, we need to do something about it. How can you live in your East Pretoria mansion, while your gardener lives in a shack? We cannot do nothing.

Dear white people, we are not evil, but we have done evil things. The greatest good we can do is own up, apologize, and use our economic might to build up South Africa for everyone.

And to the rest of South Africa, please never become idle. Never forget the ideals which previous generation bled and died for: the ideals of freedom and peaceful economic change. If their sacrifice is forgotten, so too will the notion of a free South Africa.