Examining the meanings of ‘restitution’ for beneficiaries of the Macleantown and Salem restitution cases in the Eastern Cape, South Africa

ABSTRACT

Through land restitution, a component of land reform, the state seeks to restore the dignity of black communities who lost their land during colonial and apartheid times. Land restitution seeks to return the land that was unfairly grabbed from black people or to offer alternative land or cash compensation. Much public discourse and research on South African land reform has been on the failure of land reform projects and on land acquisition debates. Little research has been published foregrounding the voices of beneficiaries. By capturing their lived experiences after land transfer, this paper examines whether these beneficiaries have been “restituted.” My study in the Macleantown and Salem restitution cases shows that access to land has restored the dignity of beneficiaries and produced nostalgia because of the return of ancestors’ land, although the livelihoods of beneficiaries have not improved and these projects have failed to function. I argue that these land compensated beneficiaries have not been properly ‘restituted,’ because the programme has failed to improve their livelihoods or to produce modern solutions for the restitution programme. Land restitution in these areas has largely not led to land justice because beneficiaries are living in poverty.

KEYWORDS:

• South Africa
• land restitution
• land reform
• dignity
• black communities

Acknowledgements

I am grateful for the comments made on an earlier version of this paper by the following people: Danica Kreusch, Letitia Smuts, Desire Chiwandire, Siwaphiwe Myataza, Felix Tombindo, Monty J. Roodt and Tafadzwa Maramura. An earlier version of this paper won the best PhD essay award at the South African Sociological Association (SASA) award in 2017.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This paper is based on my PhD read at Rhodes University in the Sociology department for which I received funding from the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Human Development based at University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, under grant award number D20160058. The support of DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Human Development at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in the Republic of South Africa towards this research is hereby acknowledged. Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at, are those of the author and are not to be attributed to the CoE in Human Development.