”We, the landless people of South Africa, declare our needs for our government and the world to know. We are the people who have borne the brunt of apartheid, of forced removals from our fields and our homes, of poverty in rural areas, of oppression on the farms and of starvation, neglect and disease in the Bantustans.”
These are the opening lines of the charter of the Landless People’s Movement (LPM) that was drawn up in August 2001 to call the African National Congress government to account for its failure to deliver on its promises.
In 1994 the ANC promised to transfer 30% of the country’s productive land to black ownership within five years. But, to date, the LPM says, less than 2% has actually changed hands. More than 80% of South Africa is still owned by 60 000 white farmers.
The LPM started when the National Land Committee (NLC) began receiving complaints from people countrywide. They were saying the same thing: land reform was moving too slowly; the landless were still being mistreated and forcibly evicted from farms; letters to government ministers telling them about the plight of the landless were never acknowledged.
The NLC invited 40 of these people to a meeting in Johannesburg to discuss the problems of the landless.
During the two days of talks, six leaders were chosen — all of whom had experienced forced eviction — and the LPM was formed as an apolitical, grass-roots organisation to ensure the constitutional rights of the landless are upheld.
The LPM is demanding a land summit to speed up the land hand-over. It is asking the government to expropriate unused or under-used land, the land of abusive farmers and land where owners are either absent or in debt.
The LPM’s first march took place in August last year at the racism conference in Durban.
The group has declared 2003 the Year of the Landless. The elderly members of the LPM say they want to see land reform before they die.