Opinion

Free communal land in SA à la French Revolution

23 July 2017 - 00:07 By Jan-Jan Joubert

Much is being said about the issues of radical economic transformation and land. Why should one not, as part of the radical transformation of land ownership, give title ownership to South Africans who live on communal land under traditional leadership?
That would immediately redistribute about 15% of arable land to people who truly are the poorest of the poor.
It would empower these people in four ways: they would be able to borrow against the security which ownership brings; they would be masters of their own destiny in that they — rather than an unelected traditional leader — would be deciding what they plant, breed or even sell; it would ensure security of tenure; and, finally, because of the legacy and continued reality of the migrant labour system, many of those empowered would be women.
An example of just such a step of radical economic transformation through land redistribution can be found in the French Revolution. Before 1789, roughly a third of the land belonged to the aristocracy, a third belonged to the church and a third belonged to the oppressed rural working class.
A great contributor to the stabilisation of the revolutionary order occurred when the church's land was redistributed among the rural peasantry.
The same can be achieved here by granting title to those farming the land anyway. It is a relatively easy win; low-hanging fruit, if you want.
It is very important to state upfront that the redistribution of communal land through the granting of title does not negate the need for reform of commercial land ownership patterns. It is not a cop-out...

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