Abstract
Ownership is an important identity marker. It provides people with a sense of autonomy, rootedness and opportunity. This essay examines the oral submissions of civil organisations to the Joint Constitutional Review Committee (04–07 September 2018) about the issue of land expropriation without compensation. The discussion pays specific attention to the philosophical understandings of land and identity that emerged during the hearings. Three dominant trajectories came into play, namely land as commodity, land as social space and land as spiritual inheritance. Some submissions espoused more than one view, which indicates that the boundaries between the identified paradigms are permeable. However, even those presentations tended to prioritise one approach above the others. Besides identifying the main approaches to land and identity, this essay also provides an immanent critique of their moral assumptions. In contrast to a transcendental approach, an immanent critique asks questions from ‘within’ and evaluates paradigms in terms of their plausibility, universal applicability, ethical consistency and moral integrity.
Highlights
Land reform, redistribution and restitution are arguably the most polarising topics in contemporary South African politics
Concerned that the African National Congress (ANC) may hijack the central theme of their political manifesto, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) sponsored a motion in Parliament that proposed a radical change to Section 25, essentially making the state the custodian of all land
Parliament decided to refer the matter to the Joint Constitutional Review Committee to recommend whether the Constitution should be amended to allow for expropriation without compensation, and if so, how this should be done
Summary
Redistribution and restitution are arguably the most polarising topics in contemporary South African politics. Intense lobbying followed and the ANC eventually supported the EFF motion in Parliament, provided that some caveats be added to the proposed amendment of Section 25 These entail that land redistribution should be implemented in a manner that does not endanger agricultural production or food security (Merten 2018:6–7). The well-attended and often emotionally charged land deliberations in each province were eventually followed up with a hearing in Parliament from 04–07 September 2018 where selected civil society organisations made oral submissions to the Constitutional Review Committee. During these hearings, some deeply embedded philosophical tensions with respect to land and its link with identity came to the fore. Ownership is an important identity marker that provides them with a sense of autonomy and rootedness, an opportunity for personal self-realisation, access to the broader economy, bargaining power and social space
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