The author argues that the focus on land and traditional leadership in the current debate about land reform is used to avoid the real issues of unequal racial land distribution, which is the essence of the apartheid regime’s discrimination policies. 

After years of supporting a market-led land reform programme and not heeding criticisms of this policy, the African National Congress (ANC) leadership has adopted a radical policy of land expropriation without compensation, which would make it legal and within the constitutional bounds for the state to expropriate land in the public interest without compensation. 

The debate on fulfilling the National Democratic Revolution continues in preparation for the 2019 elections in South Africa. 

On 11 May 2018, more than two hundred people occupied unused land in Germiston, on the East Rand in Gauteng, South Africa. We laid out our design for the occupation in the afternoon, built throughout the night and slept on the occupied land. Around 350 stands have been marked out via a democratic and carefully planned process. The new occupation has been named the Zikode Extension in honour of S’bu Zikode.

This is a rejoinder to The Land Is Ours: South Africa’s First Black Lawyers and the Birth of Constitutionalism by Tembeka Nqcukaitobi.  Contrary to the name of the book, “the land belongs to us” is not about land dispossession or land reform. It is about constitutionalism; the first generation of black lawyers; and how they used their “colonial education” experience to advance the struggle against discrimination and inequality in South Africa.

The author argues that arable land that is used for entertainment and other recreational activities in South Africa could be used for agriculture to feed millions of South Africans who cannot afford a decent meal. Trying to "safeguard" the interests of the middle class by keeping that land for leisure instead of using it for the general good will not protect the interests of the middle class either.

The property relations of a city in South Africa are a phenomenon that has its roots on the colonial interruption of our history and they, today, affect the political economy of higher education generally and the living experiences of students in particular. The fact that universities, old and new, are buildings with a physical address stationed in cities, they are, therefore, not immune from the overall economic challenges facing the nation and how these structurally impact the daily life of a people. 

In this piece, I argue that there is a historical continuity that should be put into perspectives that in times of difficulty, capitalist interests find ways to reconcile ideological differences to cohesively self-correct. Using this dialectical materialism approach, I conclude that the ANC-led government has been its own impediment on land redistribution through a combination of bureaucratic lethargy, corruption and dogmatic adherence to artificial constructs of the “market”.

Almost 24 years after the creation of “New South Africa,” there are loud and angry voices that the constitution of South Africa must be amended and there is a strong demand that there be expropriation of land without compensation. If the constitution is amended, the author demonstrates why it is important that another mistake is not made with regard to the country’s constitution on the fundamental issue such as land.