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Bleak treatment: Botswana’s first people not only experience negative stereotyping, humiliation and discrimination, but their customary land rights are not acknowledged or protected. Photo: Kimmer Conner
ALBERT BARUME

San people still ‘invisible, voiceless in their homeland’

The indigenous people in Botswana want recognition and be allowed to be self-reliant to restore their dignity

  • Oarabile Mosikare
4 min read
Rural people are dispossessed and displaced by companies that collect awards for ESG credentials, corporate social investment and sector excellence. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)
AGRICULTURE

Award-winning exploitation: South Africa’s sustainability façade unmasked

Rural people are dispossessed and displaced by companies that collect awards for ESG credentials, corporate social investment and sector excellence

  • Brian Adams
4 min read
New social contract due: Mining’s harms are mainly to the environment – water, air, and soil, for example – but these have consequences for mining affected communities’ health and their land. Photo: Delwyn Verasamy
AIR

Mining’s revival must also deal with its legacy

Little has been invested in mining and exploration, and that includes in social compacts

  • Ross Harvey
7 min read
South Africa may have attained political emancipation but economically the chains largely remain. (File photo)
APARTHEID

Economic apartheid: South Africa’s transition a warning for a two-state agreement for Palestine

South Africa may have attained political emancipation but economically the chains largely remain

  • Sõzarn Barday
6 min read
Hope: The Freedom Charter was adopted on 26 June 1955 at Kliptown in Soweto. Its contents were drawn from submission from people all over South Africa.
EDUCATION

Struggle for the Freedom Charter goes on

Signed 70 years ago, today’s Constitution was built on it, but not everything has been realised

  • Ronnie Kasrils
8 min read
Africa is sitting on the raw materials to power the world’s green revolution — cobalt, lithium, graphite, rare earths.
BENEFICIATION

Lithium rush a crossroads for Zim’s future

Zimbabwe’s government can use the critical minerals surge to empower communities and foster inclusive development

  • Sikhululekile Mashingaidze
  • Stephen Buchanan-Clarke
7 min read
Zimbabwe’s monetary system is marked by a farcical series of failed experiments. Photo: Getty Images
EMMERSON MNANGAGWA

Zimbabwe: Why does the state persist when its outputs are poverty, violence and humiliation

After 45 years of independence, issues such as the disintegration of the country’s monetary system are illustrative of the crisis.

  • Leroy Maisiri
6 min read
The struggle to reclaim or protect land is fundamentally a struggle to restore human dignity. Photo: Lucky Nxumalo/City Press/Gallo Images/Getty Images
ADIVASI

Land and dignity: A global reflection anchored in Palestine

Land is more than a physical resource — it is the foundation of identity, freedom and dignity in places as far-flung as North America, Australia and New Zealand to Gaza, India…

  • Ali Ridha Khan
8 min read
South Africa is the only African country in China’s top 30 agricultural suppliers, ranked 28 in 2023.
BUILDINGS

How the Expropriation Act can revitalise South Africa’s economy

This legislation could help unlock the potential of underused assets and abandoned properties, including mines, inner-city buildings and land

  • Yonela Faba
3 min read
The land question is an issue of race but it is also about class and what the land is used for. Photo: Rogan Ward
ABAHLALI BASEMJONDOLO

The land question is about social relations as well as race

Organisations such as South Africa’s Abahlali baseMjondolo, Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement and the Diggers in England’s 17th century have faced violent repression from the…

  • Imraan Buccus
7 min read
The Constitution makes provision for the restitution of land to those who were dispossessed during apartheid rule. The Expropriation Act is not a land reform law
DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WORKS AND INFRASTRUCTURE

Deal with South Africa on the basis of facts, not rumour

The country stands firm on the principle that diplomacy is the most viable route for settling differences in a complicated geopolitical world, including the conflict in the…

  • Fidel Hadebe
8 min read
(Graphic: John McCann/M&G)
EXPROPRIATION ACT

Expropriation law: Not new or dangerous

The 2025 law differs from the old Act in that it includes fixing skewed land patterns, and introduces compensation based on ‘justice and equity’ and not ‘willing buyer, willing…

  • Tembeka Ngcukaitobi
7 min read
Women have fewer rights to access land for homesteads and businesses in rural South Africa than men. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)
COMMISSION FOR GENDER EQUALITY

Women have fewer rights over land ownership than men in rural South Africa, study finds

The report by the Commission for Gender Equality says while the country’s Constitution and laws aim to fight discrimination based on sex and race, cultural norms make this…

  • Aarti Bhana
6 min read
The collective’s Mafolofolo, 2022, which appeared on the documenta fifteen exhibition in Germany in June. Photo: Frank Sperling
COLLECTIVE

Songs to the mountain: documenta comes to joburg

MADEYOULOOK brings a part of documenta to Joburg. lumbung.jozi will include screenings and garden talks around questions of land

  • Bárbara Rousseaux
8 min read
Women have fewer rights to access land for homesteads and businesses in rural South Africa than men. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)
BANTUSTAN

Democratise land rights in communal areas to unlock the rural economy

The former homelands and bantustans could offer opportunities to pursue activities that would curb poverty and unemployment

  • Bulelwa Mabasa
8 min read
The Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act requires only that evictees be provided with alternative accommodation. (Flickr)
CONSTITUTION

Evictions: Law doesn’t protect unlawful occupiers’ economic interests

The Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act requires only that evictees be provided with alternative accommodation

  • Sithelo Magagula
9 min read
In line: People came from as far as Lenasia, Midrand and Tembisa when they heard that there was land available. Photos: Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)
EFF

People rush to stake their claim as EFF leads land grab in Gauteng

Party’s post about ‘free land’ sees hundreds of houses built on a vacant private property

  • Kimberley Schoeman
  • Delwyn Verasamy
3 min read
Supporters of the newly reelected Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa celebrate in Mbare, Harare, on August 3, 2018. – Mnangagwa, a former ally of Robert Mugabe, narrowly won the country’s landmark election, results showed early on August 3, in an outcome set to fuel fraud allegations as security forces patrolled the streets to prevent protests. Mnangagwa won 50.8 percent of the vote, ahead of Nelson Chamisa of the opposition MDC party on 44.3 percent, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) said. (Photo by MARCO LONGARI / AFP)
CITIZENS COALITION FOR CHANGE

What needs to be done to get Zimbabwe back on its feet

A concerned Zimbabwean proposes a charter that is based on a simple ideology of the redistribution of unjust money, wealth and power

  • Mike Chipere
6 min read
DISPOSSESSION

Land Conference delegates: Customary law should limit traditional leaders’ powers

Community activists also urged the government to pass an amended land bill to give them rights to secure their land.

  • Mandisa Makgakga
5 min read
Women are the backbone of food production and environmental sustainability. They make up 60% of the global agricultural labour force and are responsible for half of the world’s food production. (Delwyn Verasamy)
CONSTITUTION

Redistribution of land remains a man’s world in South Africa

Legislation and political will are needed to set land targets that consider the needs of women

  • Cecile van Schalkwyk
  • Monty Fynn
8 min read