The question of land is a controversial one in the South African political space. Debates about whether the land should be expropriated to formerly dispossessed communities without compensation remains a thorn in the flesh of not only privileged land owners, but also the politicians whose continual rhetoric has seemingly outlived its time. Now issues such as legal redress, and the right to own land as a human right have once again put one of the best constitutions in the world to a litmus test. Because the President himself, H.E Cyril Ramaphosa, a Unionist and ANC Stalwart, was also one of the architects of the constitution, his approach to this historical question of land could yet define his future at the helm of one of the few Africa’s sound democracies.
In this post, Dr. Maureen Tong presents JL Dube and Nokutela Dube – critical historical agents on this land question. They set precedence to the call for land redistribution and in fact participated in the earlier land causes for land ownership. In her remarks at the annual John Langalibale Memorial lecture at UKZN (reprinted below), Dr Tong recaps the historical narrative that has formed the current discourse on Justice for Black people in South Africa. She centres her arguments within a memory framework incorporating events of historical importance. She focuses on John L. Dube and Nokutela M. Dube, essential agents of communal agency, to highlight the gaps within the social and economic systems of democratic South Africa.
JOHN LANGALIBALE MEMORIAL LECTURE
14 SEPTEMBER 2017
UKZN Edgewood Campus conference centre, Pinetown, South Africa
‘Violence on Land, Violence Through Women’s Bodies: Evoking John Langalibalele Dube’s Voice in Contemporary Debates’
By Dr. Maureen Tong[1]
Introduction
Memorializing those who have made a great contribution to our society is a worthy undertaking. It helps to ensure that future generations appreciate where we have come from as a society; develop a greater understanding of the challenges we have faced, so as to equip them to work towards a better future for our country.
The legacy of John Dube is incomplete without mentioning his wife Nokutela Mdima Dube, who was honoured with the Order of Baobab in Gold in Africa 2017, the year 2017 marks the centenary of her death on 25 January 1917. It was a function of the system of patriarchy that Nokutela Mdima Dube’s significant contribution to the liberation struggle in South Africa had until recently been airbrushed out of history. In reality, Nokutela Dube was an equal contributor, sometimes more to many of the achievements that have been recorded as the legacy of John Dube. It would therefore be remiss of me to honour Reverend Dr John Dube alone at this lecture without mentioning Nokutela Dube. The system of patriarchy also led to Nokutela Dube being buried in an unmarked grave, which was only recently identified and acknowledged. This history of John and Nokutela Dube is intertwined with the history of land dispossession in South Africa, an issue that is yet to be adequately addressed by the post-apartheid government.
JL Dube’s work and Legacy
The history of the African National Congress (ANC); the oldest liberation movement in Africa, whose predecessor, the South African Native National Congress (SAANC) was formed on 8 January 1912 with Reverend Dr John Langalibalele Dube at the helm as the Founding President. He was also associated with the formation of the Natal Native Congress in July 1900.
John Dube is also well known to have established the Zulu Industrial Improvement Company in 1910 which gave the African Christian community called or “amakholwa” the economic power to own land as ‘syndicates’ acquiring title deeds that protected them from dispossession of land by then colonists and later the apartheid government. While in America, John Dube greatly admired Booker T Washington’s ideas about industrial education and self-sufficiency as prerequisites for African- Americans liberation, this profoundly influenced John Dube to establish the Zulu Christian Industrial Institute in 1900, which was later, renamed the Ohlange Institute in 1903 and still operates today as the Ohlange High School. This school has produced the likes of the First black African recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, Chief Albert Luthuli; former Deputy President of South Africa and current Executive Director of UN Women, Dr Phumzile Mlambo- Ngcuka.
The Zulu Christian industrial institute by JL Dube was founded along very similar lines to the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute established by Booker T Washington in the United States on 4 July 1881 and later renamed Tuskegee Institute and currently the Tuskegee University. Both Dube and Washington were able to leverage the considerable wealth of their American friends and benefactors to fund their ambitious projects. Booker T Washington’s outlook on race and race relations also influenced John Dube’s approach to segregation, both being seen to take a soft approach of collaboration and appeasement rather than a radical opposition and confrontation against racism and segregation. Due to his perceived soft stance on segregation and racism, J L Dube never supported the Bambatha Rebellion of 1906 and thus he was later removed as President of the SAANC, being replaced by Pixley ka Seme as the president of the SAANC.
John Dube established the first African language newspaper, Ilanga lase Natal in 1903, using the editing and publishing skills he acquired while working with Reverend William Cullen Wilcox when the latter was a pastor in New York. Dube also lectured in the USA while on tour with Reverend Wilcox.
Religion
We have learned through research conducted by Prof Cherif Keita from Carleton College in Minnesota that Reverend William Cullen Wilcox and his wife Ida Bella Wilcox played a pivotal role in facilitating the travel and stay by John Dube to the United States of America in 1887. Dube worked as a cleaner at Oberlin College from 1886 – 1887 where Wilcox worked and later enrolled as a student there from 1888 to 1890.
Dube and other converted Christians formed part of the amakholwa who managed to side step the racial discriminatory practices of the time that did not allow Africans to own land. Reverend William Wilcox and his wife Ida Bella Wilcox used their influence to assist Dube and his followers to purchase two farms, Cornfields and Thembelihle and hold title deeds, which was rare in those days. The Cornfields and Thembelihle communities were able to use these title deeds to resist the forcible removals that were implemented by the colonialists as part of the Group Areas Act aimed at social reengineering on a grand scale which created ‘white South Africa’ and removed so-called ‘black spots’ which were areas where Africans had been able to own land.
Gender – Violence through Women’s Bodies
The role of researchers in research about the role of women in history is very critical. This is especially so because the system of patriarchy tends to minimize and often ignore the role of women in shaping society. When history is written, it often ignores the role of women or only refers to them as supporters of the male characters being written about. It is therefore important that those working in memory and legacy projects should dedicate time and energy to accurately record the role of women as leaders in their own rights or as shapers of significant milestones in history and human development. In patriarchal society, historians who are often men, tend to look at history through a sexist lens that makes women invisible in the story.
We are grateful for the dedicated research by Professor Cherif Keita that has led to the restoration of the memory of Mrs Nokutela Mdima Dube, the first wife of Dr John Dube. While John Dube was his initial subject of research, he later devoted time to researching about Nokutela Dube, culminating in the discovery of until then unmarked grave and the her post-humous award of the Order of Baobab in Gold in April 2017.
The system of patriarchy has led to the situation whereby Mrs Nokutela Mdima Dube had for more than a century been rendered invisible in the recording of history, which attributed to her husband alone the work that they jointly dedicated their lives to. The ANC, of which Dube was the founding President and which has non-sexism as one of its principles, has until recently not acknowledged his first wife, Nokutela Dube.
The year 2017 marks the centenary of her death on 25 January 1917 at the age of 44. When she died, she was buried in an unmarked grave in Brixton, Johannesburg that simply recorded CK9763, the letter CK denoting that she was a Christina Kaffir, as was the government practice at the time of her death. Her grave was only identified in 2011 and a tombstone erected in her honour in 2013 after the painstaking research work undertaken by Prof Cherif Keita. Part of the reason that Nokutela Dube remained unacknowledged for almost a century is because she did not have children and because she left her husband after he bore a child out of wedlock with a student at the Ohlange Institute. The requirement of women to bear children before they can be recognized as ‘complete women’ meant that John Dube was forgiven for having an extra-marital affairs and bearing a child from such a liaison. This was despite the fact that he was an ordained church minister who eschewed the practices of his ‘heathen’ fellow Africans who were non-converts to Christianity. The situation presented a clash between culture and religion, patriarchy led to the man, John Dube being excused for his behaviour and the woman being excommunicated for leaving her husband because of his conduct, which should have been regarded as unchristian and immoral in terms of the values in the Christian religion.
Recognising Nokutela Mdima Dube’s Identity and Contributions
Nokutela Mdima was born in 1873 to missionary parents; studied at Inanda Seminary and was working as a teacher when she met and married John Dube at Inanda church in 1894. She was therefore already a professional woman, a rare occurrence in those days, when she met her husband, John Dube. Nokutela Dube’s achievements were way ahead of the time: she was a singer; a seamstress; an educator; a published author; a founder and builder of institutions and international partnerships; as well as a fund raiser who travelled the world in the late 19th century when few among the privileged white men and women at the time could achieve such a feat. She and her husband travelled to the United States of America between 1896 and 1899 to raise funds to build the Ohlange Institute in 1900 and the newspaper Ilanga Lase Natal in 1903. She studied music and home economics in the United States of America. In 1911 she co-authored with her husband authored a Zulu Song Book titled Amagama Abantu, which is regarded as a landmark in the development of Zulu Choral music. Nokutela Dube popularized Nkosi Sikelel’iAfrica, composed by Enoch Sontonga, which is now the national anthem in South Africa, by training the choir at the Ohlange Institute, which sang the now famous poem/song by at the 8 January 1912 launch of the SAANC. It was later adopted by the ANC as the national anthem and subsequently adopted by other liberation movements in Africa. Her singing talent helped to raise funds for the Ohlange Institute, she sang in the United States as part of the joint fund raising drive with her husband. She was instrumental in shaping the curriculum at Ohlange Institute and was part of the faculty.
Ironically, which she remained ‘invisible’ in South African history for more than a century, Nokutela Dube was acknowledged in the press in the United States. For example, in 1899 she appeared in an article of the New York Sun titled, “Ideas of a Zulu Woman: Customs of the Savage State which she prefers to Civilization,” in which a number of American reporters, who were curious to meet an educated Zulu woman who spoke English fluently, were surprised that she “has ideas about American civilization.” Cherif Keita quotes Nokutela Dube in the article as saying:
“I will tell you why we are here…. We do not want to teach [the Zulus] all your civilization, only enough to better their condition, not to make them unnatural or unhappy. The Zulus are not dull. They are intelligent, but they do not know how to do things for themselves. They think it is only white men who can make houses and cities. The women attend to the business and they do all the labor. They dig the ground and plant the crops, build the huts for storing them, and do all the heavy work.”
On 13 January 1899 a reporter from The LA Times, came to the following conclusion about Nokutela Dube:
“Nokutela is young with blazing black eyes, smooth brown skin and handsome regular features. She speaks English with a deliberation that is charming and in the softest voice in the world. Her manner is grace itself.”
Her tombstone, erected in 2013, is inscribed with these words: ‘her manner is grace itself.’ The violence visited upon Nokutela Dube – being excommunicated; being buried in an unmarked grave; and being forgotten until about 2011 – was because she was a women who did not follow the ‘script’ that women are expected to follow.
Rights of indigenous people self-determination, return of land and territory
Colonial expansion in Africa was achieved through conquest and settlement of the land of the indigenous people. The concept of terra nullius – meaning land belonging to no one – was used to conquer land of the indigenous population if it was not settled by a colonial power. In 1975, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) rejected the concept of terra nullius in the case of Western Sahara declaring it ‘a legal term of art.’ This concept is no longer part of our customary law, however its legacy remains.
The African liberation struggle, which John Nokutela Dube were part of founding in 1909 and 1912, was essentially a struggle against colonialism. It is a struggle the indigenous African people waged for the return of their land, territories and restoration of African identity and dignity.
The Organization of African Unity (OAU), founded in 1963 was established primarily to ensure the end of colonialism and to assist non self-governing African people and States to attain self-determination. The African Union replaced the OAU in 2001. While most of African states have now attained political independence, including Namibian independence from South Africa in 1990 and South African independence from white minority rule in 1994, both Namibia and South Africa are yet to implement significant land reform programmes. The land in both countries is still held largely by the white minority. True self – determination by the indigenous population in Namibia and South Africa means ownership of land and natural resources by the indigenous majority population. The self-sufficiency that Dube espoused has not yet been attained.
The implementation of the Natives Land Act 27 of 1913 resulted in the indigenous majority population in South Africa having access to only 13% of the land while the white minority had access to 87% of the land in 1994. For political reasons the date of 19 June 1913 was decided as the cut off point for recognition of restitution claims and included in section 25(7) of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa Act 108 of 1996 and the Restitution of Land Rights Act 22 of 1994.
The J L Dube Institute argues that since most of land had already been dispossessed by 1913, using this date, as a cut off point for recognizing land claims is unjust. The institute argues, through papers delivered by the Executive Director, Thandi Ngcobo and the historian, Prof Jabulani Maphalala, that the many wars of land dispossession in South Africa happened long before the passing of the Natives Land Act of 1913. These include the dispossession of the Khoikhoi and the San in the Cape colony and the confiscation of the land of the Xhosa people in the Eastern Cape over a 100 year period from 1778 – 1878.
The history of land dispossession in South Africa pre-dates 19 June 1913, the date on which the Natives Land Act 27 of 1913 was passed 104 years ago. The year 1652 is generally regarded as the appropriate point of reference regarding land dispossession in South Africa because that was when the Dutch merchants first landed at the Cape of Good Hope. Land dispossession in South Africa was very violent. Primarily African traditional leaders, including the Bambatha Rebellion of 1906, led several wars of land dispossession to push back colonial expansion in South Africa. Apart from the wars of land dispossession, colonial concepts like terra nullius and apartheid policies such as the Group Areas Act; Bantustan Consolidation; Urban Influx Control; etc., ensured that Africans were not only dispossessed of land but were rendered unskilled and impoverished to provide cheap and abundant labour on the farms and the mines which were and remain the mainstay of the economy.
Violence on the Land, Violence On Our Bodies – Building an Indigenous Response to Environmental Violence, A partnership of Women’s Earth Alliance and Native Youth Sexual Health Network argues that indigenous communities have long recognized the connection between people and land. It notes that this is expressed through creation stories, ceremonies, and traditional kinship and governance systems. It says many women and young people continue to stand strong against the estrangement of the land/body connection despite colonization, forced removal, and continued land dispossession’s attempts to stifle or sever this altogether. It notes that violence on the environment is tantamount to violence on the bodies of indigenous women because what happens to the land and the environment around indigenous people, whether good or bad, also happens to their bodies and to their communities.
Ned Blackhawk’s book, Violence over the Land : Indians and Empires in the Early American West positions the living narrative of the American continent as not beginning with the arrival of three European ships in 1492, not with conquistadors or soldiers and missionaries but rather to far back to a time before recorded history. The book shows how European violence and the attempts by native/’Indian’ peoples to adjust to it shaped their histories and social organizations. Some African authors have argued that pre-colonial African society treated women in a more egalitarian manner compared to the post-colonial era. This implies that the relegation of women in post-colonial African society is partly a consequence of adjusting to colonialism. The jury is out on the probable veracity of this statement. What is clear however is that women rights in land remain one of the most important points of social, economic and political contestation in post-colonial Africa.
Communal Land Rights Act
The year 2016 marked 20 years since the enactment of the Land Reform (Labour Tenants Act) 3 of 1996, which together with the Extension of Security of Tenure Reform 62 of 1997, address the rights of individuals and communities living on farms. A number of communities were reduced to being labour tenants after their land was dispossessed. The Communal Land Rights Act of 2004 (CLARA) that was aimed at implementing land tenure reform was declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court on 10 May 2010. CLARA was fiercely rejected by gender and land rights organization because it provided traditional leaders with much powers rather than addressing the power imbalance over control of communally held land by traditional leaders. No new legislation has been enacted yet to give effect to section 25(8) of the Constitution, which requires that the State should pass laws to ensure security of tenure for communities living on communal land. The Agenda Feminist Media Launch and the Women and Land Dialogue of 9 September 2013 heard that with an absence of law to govern the matter, access to land in rural areas depends on unmediated local power relations. Sizani Ngubane of the Rural Women’s Network shared several stories at the Dialogue to show the vulnerability of women on traditional and communal land. Rural women are still expected to access rights on land through male relatives but most traditional leaders and structures accord single women little or no legal status.
The Traditional Courts Bill
The Traditional Courts Bill has also been very strongly opposed, including by the Commission on Gender Equality. It is estimated that about 17 million South Africans live on communal land that is under the authority of traditional leaders. Yet the role of traditional leaders in relation to managing and/or holding land on behalf of rural communities remains one of the unresolved issues of post- apartheid South Africa. The policy of willing buyer and willing seller has made the cost of buying land for land reform purposes exorbitantly expensive. The Constitutional Court has taken decisions that show that it is possible to expropriate land for land reform purposes at below market value. The matter of willing buyer and willing seller is not an issue of Constitutionalism but rather one of policy (and politics).
Conclusion
The history of land dispossession in South Africa was very violent. This violence was visited upon the indigenous population, its effects being more acutely felt by African women who suffered the extra burden of patriarchy and class discrimination. Much is currently being made about the need to appoint a woman President, 104 years after the establishment of the ANC whose founders include Nokutela Mdima Dube. It took Cherif Keita from Mali who is currently based in the United States to undertake research that ultimately restored the memory of Nokutela Dube and discovery of her until then unmarked grave. She has now been honoured in 2017, 100 years after her death. Women in South Africa continue to experience violence; the year 2017 marked some bad cases of such violence. Perhaps the time has come for us to revisit the legacy of John and Nokutela Dube to seek solutions to some of the problems we are currently faced with.
The Constitutional democracy that was heralded in 1994 has elevated the status of women, at least formally and in law. Several government policies and programmes are targeted at improving the status of women. Middle class women have largely benefitted from these developments. Poor rural women with whom Nokutela Dube was concerned have benefitted less from the new dispensation. Their ability to exercise rights in land continue to be circumvented by the traditional leadership system that does not respect the rights of women.
The amakholwa communities, who have their genesis in the period of the missionaries of the John and Nokutela Dube era continue to operate outside of the traditional leadership system. A number of them still have access to land acquired during the time of Christian missionaries who helped them to form ‘syndicates’ through which they could buy land. The amakholwa communities continue to resist being brought within the purview of the Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework Act 41 of 2003 that established the Commission on Traditional Leadership Disputes and Claims. That the task of the Commission is to restore the dignity of traditional leaders and their communities by investigating and ensuring that the institution of traditional leadership is restored to where it belongs – implying the end of the amakholwa system of leadership and the de-establishment of the amakholwa communities and bringing them under traditional leadership.
Given the fierce resistance to the Traditional Courts Bill and CLARA, it is not surprising that the amakholwa communities and leadership would prefer to opt out of the systems of traditional leadership on communal land. It would be interesting to know what John Dube would have thought about CLARA and the Traditional Courts Bill, given his notion about religion and tradition and the ability of the Zulu Industrial Improvement Company, which helped Africans to buy land when the colonial administration sought to limit that ability. It is not surprising that the Thembelihle and Cornfields communities would resist any attempt to incorporate them under CLARA or the Ingonyama Trust Land Act.
The Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework Act 41 of 2003 does not deal with the matters related to the Khoi-San community because the Khoi-San system of community leadership is not similar to the institution of traditional leadership as regulated by the Act. The Khoi-San community does not as, yet have a mechanism through which to participate in formal government structures. The Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional AFFAIRS (COGTA) says the National Khoisan Council (NKC) is a platform through which the Khoisan community raises issues affecting them as a group of communities, including the statutory recognition of the Khoikhoi and San people.
The Traditional and Khoisan Leadership Bill, 2015 was tabled in Parliament in 2015. The long title to the Bill states that among its objectives, the Bill aims to ‘provide for the establishment and operation of the Commission on Traditional Leadership Disputes and Claims, and the Advisory Committee on Khoi-San Matters; to provide for a code of conduct for members of the National House, provincial houses, local houses and all traditional and Khoi-San councils…’ The Bill therefore aims to recognize Khoi-San communities, leaders and councils – among other things it proposes an Advisory Committee on Khoi-San matters.
One of the flaws identified in the Bill is that it describes ‘traditional communities’ as those living within a specific geographic area under a chief. The requirement to live under a specific geographic area has been criticized for reinforcing the homeland boundaries under the new name of traditional communities. Another criticism of the Bill is that the Khoikhoi and San communities would be excluded because they are not organized under a system of chiefs. The Bill requires the traditional community to have a history of living as a distinct community. Here too, Khoikhoi and San communities would have difficulty because they were classified as ‘coloured’ during apartheid – the apartheid system did not recognise Khoi-San identity.
The Communal Properties Association Act 28 of 1996 enables communities to form juristic persons, called Communal Properties Associations (CPAs) in order to hold or manage property, often being land under land reform program. This is at odds with the view that traditional leaders hold or manage land on behalf communities living on land under the jurisdiction the traditional leaders. The implementation of the Communal Properties Association Act 28 of 1996 has not been without difficulties. The review of CPAs presents opportunities for traditional leaders to make proposals on how the future land holding entities could be structured to allow for a collaborative instead of perceived adversarial relationship with traditional leaders.
The Constitutional Court case of Bakgatla-Ba-Kgafela Communal Property Association v Bakgatla-Ba-Kgafela Tribal Authority and other (Pilane v Pilane) CCT 231/14 affirmed the right of traditional communities to form and register permanent CPAs as land holding juristic persons, even in the face of opposition of traditional leaders under whose jurisdiction the land falls. The case concerned the interpretation of section 5(4) of the CPA Act 28 of 1996 regarding the rights of the community to form and register a permanent CPA. John Dube’s Zulu Industrial Improvement Company was a land holding company, circumventing the power of traditional leaders to hold or manage the land on their behalf.
The post-1994 government had set itself a target of delivery 30% of commercial agricultural land by 2014 and settling all land claims by 2015. Both targets have not been met, less than 10% of land has been delivered as of 31 March 2017, many complicated rural land claims remain unresolved. The issue of land allocation remains a contested one as debates on land expropriation without compensation are currently rocking the Parliament.
The work of Cherif Keita has highlighted the need for researchers and archivists to be more probing to ensure that the contribution of women to significant historical events and milestones does not remain ‘invisible.’
[1] She is the CEO, Coach Companion South Africa. She also served as a Member of the J L Dube Institute High Level Research Panel on Land; Served as first COO at the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform; Served as Chief of Staff in the then Ministry for Agriculture and Land Affairs.
Featured Image: Dr Maureen Tong (third left) seen with Mr Zenzele Dube, grandson of John Dube (fourth left) and staff from the College of Humanities. Credit: UKZN