Monday, Might 19, 2025 | 2 a.m.
In 1913, the Union of South Africa — a white minority authorities fashioned by the British and the Dutch simply three years prior — handed the Natives Land Act. It outlined a “native” as anybody who’s a “member of an aboriginal race or tribe of Africa,” and any company entity managed by natives.
Probably the most impactful provision of the act was its prohibition in opposition to natives proudly owning or leasing land in giant swaths of South Africa. It established “reserves” the place natives may purchase and promote land. The reserves represented simply 7% of South Africa’s land. Solely whites (i.e. non-natives) may purchase and promote the opposite 93% of South Africa’s land. This resulted in tens of millions of South Africans being stripped of their very own land.
Quick ahead practically 40 years and South Africa was within the midst of apartheid, the title by which the South African authorities described its social coverage of racial segregation. The federal government established residential and enterprise sections for every race, and prevented different races from dwelling, working companies, or proudly owning land in them. Extra Land Acts had been handed. Legal guidelines had been handed which required nonwhites to hold paperwork authorizing their presence in restricted areas.
After strain from each South Africans and governments world wide, apartheid met its finish in South Africa within the early ’90s. In 1991, the South African authorities adopted the Abolition of Racially Primarily based Land Measures Act, which repealed the land acts. Ostensibly, South Africans may now purchase and promote land wherever within the nation.
A brand new structure that enfranchised South Africans was adopted in 1993. The nation’s first inclusive democratic election occurred in 1994, after which Nelson Mandela was the nation’s first Black president. Mandela’s occasion, the African Nationwide Congress (ANC), was rightly targeted on righting the wrongs of the previous. It pledged to redistribute 30% of all arable land throughout its first 5 years in authorities.
The ANC’s promise has not been saved. A 2017 land possession audit discovered that white South Africans possessed 72% the nation’s arable land, whereas Black South Africans possessed solely 4%. These figures have since been disputed, with some claiming that 24% of all arable land has been redistributed or land rights restored. In any occasion, Black South African land possession is nowhere close to their portion of the inhabitants. A 2022 census revealed that white South Africans had been simply 7.3% of the inhabitants, whereas Black South Africans had been 81.4%.
The ANC-led South African authorities acknowledged the continued disparity and handed a brand new legislation to additional its land reform efforts. In January 2025, it enacted a brand new Expropriations Act, which establishes how the federal government can take non-public land for public use. Whereas the previous Expropriations Act required the federal government to pay homeowners for land it took, the brand new act permits the federal government to take land with out compensation the place it’s “simply and equitable and within the public curiosity to take action.” Examples embody if the proprietor isn’t utilizing it, as a substitute simply ready for property values to rise to promote for a revenue; if the land is deserted; or if authorities spending on the land exceeds its market worth.
You may guess which South Africans had been essentially the most upset by this new laws: those who owned many of the nation’s arable land. The Freedom Entrance Plus, a political occasion that defends the rights of the white minority, described the legislation as a “risk to non-public property possession.” On its web site, the occasion wishes to “cease racial discrimination the place the rich black elite is enriched additional on the expense of poor South Africans.” They vow to file a authorized problem to the brand new act.
America, like South Africa, has a historical past of discriminating in opposition to Black folks. For our nation’s first 87 years, Black folks weren’t even thought of folks. They had been seen as property.
The discrimination didn’t stop after the abolition of slavery. It adjusted. Advanced. And persevered in methods seemingly admired by the South African authorities earlier than the tip of apartheid.
Authorities-sanctioned discrimination persevered in each space of life. Voting. Training. Housing. Land possession. Employment. Medical remedy. Monetary providers. Public transit. Swimming swimming pools. Bogs. Water fountains.
After strain from African People and (some) strain from governments world wide, government-sanctioned discrimination led to America within the Sixties. Legal guidelines had been handed to ban discrimination in public lodging, voting and housing. New insurance policies — described as affirmative motion — had been applied with the purpose of righting the wrongs of the previous. Range, fairness and inclusion (DEI) applications and initiatives with this similar purpose had been on the rise in 2020 in each the private and non-private sectors.
You may guess which People had been essentially the most upset with the aforementioned laws, insurance policies and applications. Those that benefited from the nonexistence of those mechanisms. White People, on the urging of the Republican Get together, had been inspired to view something geared toward righting the historic unsuitable perpetrated in opposition to Black People as “reverse discrimination.” They filed authorized challenges in opposition to affirmative motion and different applications specified for the advantage of African People. They lastly have a U.S. Supreme Court docket that agrees with them.
It is sensible how the Trump administration, the administration which declared something DEI-related to be reverse discrimination, responded to South Africa’s new Expropriations Act. It responded with a Feb. 7 government order declaring that the US “shall promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, together with racially discriminatory property confiscation.” As President Donald Trump defined, the US has “basically prolonged citizenship” to Afrikaners.
You see, we in America imagine that the one technique to proper the unsuitable of longstanding racial discrimination is to, properly, simply say we’re going to cease. We don’t have to truly do something to restore the particular racial hurt. If we did, properly, that may be racial discrimination.
Afrikaners imagine the identical factor. So, after all, we’d welcome them into our nation with open arms. They’re us. Beneficiaries of racial discrimination with the gall to explain any makes an attempt at restoring what their forebearers took as racial discrimination.
Suppose the South African authorities used the Expropriations Act to redistribute 93% of the nation’s land to Black South Africans. Suppose the youngsters and descendants of the Black South Africans who acquired land on account of this governmental taking go on to construct great wealth within the following a long time. Afrikaners, now with restricted land possession, turn into the nation’s financial underclass.
100 years from now, a brand new coalition authorities in South Africa is fashioned. It decides that the takings below the 2025 Expropriations Act had been unsuitable. It repeals the legislation and its leaders promise to move no additional land redistribution legal guidelines sooner or later.
Are the descendants of the Afrikaners whose land was taken owed something?
Eric Foster is a lawyer in non-public apply and columnist for The Plain Vendor and cleveland.com.
