Land is a Political Question
S’bu Zikode
[…] Land and housing are the most urgent problems in our cities and there is a serious difficulty in resolving the issue of land and housing in our country. Land comes before housing and this difficulty comes when we all continue to pretend that the issue of land is not political. […]
The question remains very complicated when our country is administered by politicians who talk about the struggle and about being for the people while also pretending that the matter of land is not political. […]
Those who are in power today have the power to distribute our land fairly and freely to those who do not have land. Why have they betrayed us today? The answer is simple. If they do so they will be giving away the very power that makes them powerful.
Taking the land back will never be easy.
Taking the land back will require us to become and to remain the strong poor. A year ago we learnt a hard lesson. We learnt that South Africa is not a real democracy. The middle classes and even the working classes are free to debate and to discuss the future of the country. But we, as the poor, have been evicted from democracy. We were attacked and driven from our homes with the support of the police and the politicians looked. Cosatu was silent and the Human Rights Commission was silent. We have learnt that there are many people who do not think that democracy is for the poor. […]
We need to make this democracy real for the poor. Therefore we need allies amongst those groups who are allowed to think and to speak for themselves in South Africa. They need to use their freedom and safety to stand with us and to defend us as we struggle for our own freedom. Our organisations and movements need to forge a living solidarity with progressive faith based organization, trade unions, professionals in all specialised fields, individuals and active citizens in general. We need to form a powerful national alliance for urban reform that will always be willing to defend the right of the poor to think, speak and organise for themselves. […]
Some of us have already joined this journey to a new urban order not only by sitting in cool offices but by sweating in communities where we are busy organizing, conscientising and being conscientised as we organise and are organised by popular self education, meetings, camps and protests. Some of us have already lost our homes in the land of our birth as our punishment for struggling to access the well-located lands.[…] This is the price which those who are serious about the prize of A New Urban Order must be prepared to pay.
One cannot begin any meaningful discussion of the urban crisis while the poor continue to be excluded from the conversations that are meant to build the very new urban order that is for all. […]We decided long ago not to accept the situation where some people talk about the poor and even for the poor without ever speaking to the poor. […]
There is no doubt that the work of the intellectuals, town planners, engineers, architects and other professionals is critical. We do need their skills. But for as long as they remain on their own their knowledge is very fragile. We need to plan our cities together. I remain convinced that if all the work of the urban experts is done in isolation from the poor, those who are meant to benefit from it, then it will not solve the problem. The first problem is that despite all their education the experts are often really ignorant of the real needs of the people. The second problem is that expert ideas, even good ideas that fit with the needs of the people, have no power on their own. An idea can only move into the world and start to reshape the world when it has a living force behind it. An idea that is worked out between the organised poor and the urban experts will have a living force behind it when the organised poor accept it as their own. […]
In his State of the Nation Address Msholozi himself committed his government to acquire more than 6,000 ha of well-located land for the poor. This promise came as a response to the struggles of the poor in the cities and towns across the country. Obviously if the state fails to acquire and redistribute this land there is nothing that will stop the people from identifying and occupying such well-located land on their own. We will give this our full support as a movement. If the alliances that we want to make with the churches, trade unions, the intellectuals and the urban experts will support us in this then we’ll know that they are really on our side. For as long as human beings are living and dying in the mud and the fires any politics of patience is just another name for oppression.
[…] Land should not only be seen to be well located because it is identified by the state. The poor have a right to identify land that is well located for them. […] Our cities require a strong leadership from the poor with a real consciousness as to how the issue of land remains a fragile question. Organisation, mobilization, active citizen participation and a clear political consciousness will enable a popular democratic rebellion that can put the will of the people against the will of the few to build our new cities. The transfer of land to the poor and even to the working class requires radical action. […]
Our new urban order can only be realised when the land that has already been occupied by the poor is transferred to them with the full assurance of land tenure. If more land is not made available for those who don’t already live in well located occupations then the poor can find the new land themselves. The state has a duty to invest in our communities and to support our occupations through building infrastructure and maintaining it, far before considering building subsidized housing projects. Land tenure must come first, then the provision of services and infrastructure and then housing projects.
[…]
Our struggle and every real struggle is to put the human being at the centre of our society, starting with the most dispossessed who are the homeless. Washing away political discourse and narrowing the fragile political question of land into a complicated technical question will not help any of us at all. The organizing of the poor that takes place in our disgruntled spaces is very important for any change. And in those discussions by the poor who are marginalized because they do not count in our society lie some of the significant answers that most of us fail to recognize. […]