A Tangled Past: Land Settlement, Removals and Restitution in Letaba District, 1900–2013

In this article I explore how ordinary people gained access and lost rights to land over the course of the twentieth century in Letaba (present-day Mopani) District, Limpopo Province. I provide a periodised account of this process, focusing on homesteads and individuals rather than on ‘communities’. I show that rights to land were less static, and personal histories of access to and loss of land less linear than is often imagined in popular narratives and official discourse. The 1913 Natives Land Act was one part of a process that made it increasingly difficult for ordinary people to access land independently, whether as owners or as tenants, and to be mobile and respond easily to new opportunities. I continue this narrative into the post-apartheid era, and consider how this particular historical context, as well as pervasive imaginings of the centrality of ‘community’ and ‘tribe’ in rural people's historic relationships with land, have influenced the way the post-apartheid land restitution programme has been implemented. I argue that people's capacity to choose where and how to access land continues to be constrained.