A Common Hunger: Land Rights in Canada and South Africa (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: A Common Hunger: Land Rights in Canada and South Africa Janet E. Chute A Common Hunger: Land Rights in Canada and South Africa. By Joan G. Fairweather. (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2006). Africa: Missing Voices Series, No. 3. In this well-researched work Joan Fairweather compares legacies of dispossession in South Africa and Canada by focusing on longings felt by indigenous peoples for lands and critical resources, as well as to human dignity. In 1994 South Africa’s indigenous majority defeated apartheid and, in the nick of time, pulled their country back from the brink of civil war. Canadian aboriginal leaders represent a miniscule minority whose political agenda focuses on making Canada’s system more responsive to its needs than on bringing the government down. Despite these differences, however, both are participating in a modern struggle that addresses commonalities of indigenous interest in land and resources on the world stage. The book is divided into three sections. The first focuses on dispossession. Except for the hunting and gathering San, South Africa’s original inhabitants were pastoralists and farmers. Territorial competition between the Dutch and Khoikhoi arose in the mid seventeenth century. Since the Khoikhoi could locate fertile tracts, Voortrekkers, many of them slaveholders, stalked the Khoikhoi like bloodhounds. They then justified their dispossession of Khoikhoi lands by referring to African territory as terra nullius (without an owner) unless occupied by whites. Similar intruders drove San into the Drakensburg Mountains, where San artists painted melancholy depictions of agents of their oppression on cave walls. Many North American indigenous groups traded with the incomers, and dispossession occurred gradually. While panis, or aboriginal slaves, were part of colonial French society, indigenous people on the whole were not viewed as sources of menial labour. The vast landscape precluded subjection of its original inhabitants, whose knowledge of local geography and resources outdistanced anything colonial incomers could muster. Groups retained considerable autonomy until after the Seven Years War. In 1763 the British Crown issued a Royal Proclamation stating that transactions must include consultation with aboriginal representatives and provide compensation for relinquishment of territory. Such pacts led to alienation of aboriginal land, but also involved aboriginal negotiators and provided for creation of reserves. Treaty making in North America spanned three centuries. Fairweather discusses Canada’s numbered treaties, although on page 46 she states that William B. Robinson entered “into the first… of [the] numbered treaties”, which is incorrect. Robinson negotiated the Robinson Treaties in1850. Treaty Number One was signed west of Lake Superior in 1871. Another failing is her insistence that holding reserves automatically includes rights to reserve resources. For years resource revenues went into band funds administered by Ottawa. They were used for mining surveys and opening colonization roads, of little benefit to aboriginal communities. And though self government depends on monies from resource rights, most band governments lack mechanisms for administering resource revenues. South Africa experienced a short-lived treaty making era. When the Dutch encountered the Xhosa and Zulu, a few treaties were signed with tribal leaders. Warfare nevertheless continued for years with Bantu-speaking interior tribes, eventually bludgeoned into submission by European military might. High indigenous casualty rates led to depopulation of fertile tracts in Transvaal and Orange Free States which were snapped up by settlers. By 1848 Cape Colony’s administrators swept away the standing agreements and used intimidation to maintain sway over the interior. South Africa’s industrialization gave rise to a demand for cheap labour. The Schedule of Native Areas, as set out by the Native Land Act of 1905, led to apartheid’s Bantustans. Although it placated Dutch and British interests in the years leading up to union in 1910, it drew lines upon the ground that rarely coincided with traditional group boundaries, set out reserves too small for the size of populations, and allotted lands too marginal for traditional pursuits. Chiefs became government puppets, while reserves developed into isolated enclaves of indigenous migrant workers. Segregated “homelands” became dumping grounds for surplus black labour. Communities near towns – derogatorily dubbed “black spots” – were uprooted after 1913 and moved to the reserves. When apartheid absorbed ideas on race from the German Nazi regime, social segmentation and oppression became...