Forty acres and a mule

After the American Civil War, many freedmen believed they had a moral right to own the land they had long worked as slaves.  They widely expected to legally claim 40 acres (16 ha) of land (a quarter-quarter section) and a mule after the end of the war.

Some land redistribution occurred under military jurisdiction during the war and for a brief period thereafter. But, Federal and state policy during the Reconstruction era emphasized wage labour, not land ownership, for African Americans. Almost all land allocated during the war was restored to its antebellum owners.

Most blacks acquired land through private transactions, with ownership peaking at 15,000,000 acres (6,100,000 ha) in 1910.  Most of that land was in 4 states - Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina. This figure has since declined to 5,500,000 acres in 1980 and to 2,000,000 acres in 1997. Most of this land is not the area held by Black families in 1910; beyond the “Black Belt”, it is located in Texas, Oklahoma, and California. The total number of Black farmers has decreased from 925,708 in 1920 to 18,000 in 1997; the number of White farmers has also decreased, but much more slowly.

Black American land ownership has diminished more than that of any other ethnic group, while White land ownership has increased. Black families who inherit land across generations without obtaining an explicit title (often resulting in tenancy in common by multiple descendants) may have difficulty gaining government benefits and risk losing their land completely.  Outright fraud and lynchings have also been used to strip Black people of their land.  Government policies – especially in the USDA - have not been conducive on the whole to keeping African Americans on the land.

So the phrase "40 acres and a mule" has come to symbolize the broken promise that Reconstruction policies would offer economic justice for African Americans.  It even took a decade or so, after the American Civil War, for the freedmen to become citizens.

Economic Freedom in our time
 
So you cannot really be too surprised to hear the Economic Freedom Fighters saying they want their land back, “because it was stolen”.  An oft-cited story says that when the White man arrived in Africa, he had the Bible and the African had the land.  When they converted to Christianity, they closed their eyes to pray.  When they opened their eyes, they held the Bible in their hands, and the White man had the land.

Speaking of broken promises… that is the way many feel has happened in South Africa during the first 20 years of Democracy.  Some black people have begun to prosper - an elite, a middle class – but a majority of people have not noticed much improvement.

High unemployment rates are aggravating their sense of disappointment.  The post-war economy in the USA after its Civil War was generally robust and thus the emphasis there on wage labour, not land redistribution.  But that isn’t true of South Africa, where economic growth had been steady but slow.  The number of formal sector “jobs” has not kept pace with population growth.

The phrase “40 acres and a mule” is not known in South Africa.  But the aspirations of many people are shifting towards something similar – to access to land, tools, inputs… and thus to farm credit.  There is a slow awakening that economic growth is not creating enough “jobs” in the formal sector of the economy.  And the jobs there are, are already filled with older people who have better education and more experience.  People – above all youth entering the work force - need to look at self-employment.  In the context of affirmative action, another group also has no choice (not even emigration) but self-employment; these are the “pale males”.

I once heard the then-CEO of our Services SETA (Ivor Blumenthal) describe the difference in work place ethos between China and South Africa.  He said that in China, if a road is needed to connect two towns, they announce this on the radio indicating the day that work will start.  On that day, 10,000 people rock up, each one bringing a shovel or wheelbarrow.  Three months later, there is a road.  Whereas if government announces in South Africa that two towns will be connected by a new road, the first thing people ask is: “Who has the bulldozer?”

In an interview with Dali Tambo, I noted Robert Mugabe commenting on the difference between Zimbabweans, who are largely rural and used to labour-intensive approaches, and South Africans, who think at higher levels of technology.  But it is slowly dawning on more and more that working the land will be better than sitting idle in a township, unemployed.

Pay back the money
 
That explains, further, all the commotion in Parliament this week.  David beat Goliath once again, the state president hastening into retreat, while the EFF refused to budge and so the Speaker asked everyone else to leave.  In terms of visualization, this was historic.  No longer is it white men like Tony Leon or white women like Helen Zille demanding answers from the black elite who have done so well for themselves.  It is black youth, dressed in red overalls to identify with the miners, domestic workers, and gas jockeys who are demanding “Pay back the money”.

This day was a game-changer for Democracy.  In fact, since this happened, the intrepid Public Protector Thuli Madonsela has also written to the state president, stating that the report he presented to Parliament was not a suitable response to her response.  His tactic of deferring it to the new Minster of Police (who he has appointed since receiving her report) is illegal, she says.

There is growing momentum to reduce impunity and increase accountability.  This is largely because the majority of black people have realized that they could be condemned perpetually to landless underemployment if the black elite are not held accountable.  Zuma’s response to Parliament on the PP’s report was blended with his response to all the Inkandla reports, rendering it meaningless and that is why the EFF delegation raised suck a ruckus.  They have done South Africa proud.

Green Livelihoods
 
Woven between the lines in the above commentary is a pitch (in case you missed it) for C4L’s youth empowerment initiative.  We still believe it is innovative and exemplary.  It emphasizes self-employment, in community services that can be money-spinners.

The problem is funding this training and enabling.  C4L belongs to the Services SETA, the largest of all 26 of these sectoral windows of funding for skills development.  The S SETA gets over R1 billion annually in revenue. In its 2010 year, it got the lion’s share of training funds (10% of the learnerships and 50% of the bursaries).  So in the next 2011 year, C4L competed in 2 tenders – and won 2 awards totalling R1.5 million.  In the following year, we presented and gained approval for a much bigger, province-wide initiative.  Only to find that the S SETA was placed under administration in its 2011 year, and remains under it until now!  This resulted in severe spending cuts (like 80% less than in previous years).  This explains the delays in C4L being paid for approved programming.  Meanwhile, the R1 billion per year has still been coming into the S SETA.  So C4L is hanging on, expecting the dam to burst (so to speak) and resources to rain down on it.  In due course.

Why was it placed under administration?  Well, for all the reasons that the EFF and the PP are now raising – tender manipulation, malpractice, lack of accountability, favoritism, etc.  In a word, “corruption”.  It affects us all, and ironically, C4L has had to downsize and lean on its baseline of income from individuals, families and churches, to keep its options open.

Because we believe that C4L has diagnosed the problem correctly, and can still make a difference.