‘The real history of the country’? Expropriation without Compensation and Competing Master Narratives about Land (Dis)Possession in South Africa

In 2018, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced his government’s intention to pursue land expropriation without compensation. In a country where wealth and poverty still run largely along apartheid-era racial lines, this policy is widely associated with transferring white-owned agricultural property to landless and impoverished blacks. As with preceding land reform policy, expropriation without compensation is informed by a ‘master narrative’ of 20th-century black dispossession through rural land loss, urban forced removals and impoverishment. This article highlights how the recent revitalisation of the land debate has stimulated the more assertive articulation of competing historical narratives of land (dis)possession. We scrutinise such alternative master narratives emanating from two groups claiming to represent marginalised minorities whose identity and experience differ from that of black South Africans: Khoisan activists who mobilise discourses of indigeneity and prior occupancy, and the Afrikaner interest group AfriForum, which deploys discourses of expertise, rationality and impartiality to legitimise their representations of the past. Despite vast differences in the nature of these movements as well as the historical narratives they advance, they have shown instances of mutual support and apparent co-operation. We trace these to key intersections in their historical narratives and the opportunities these offer in the context of the ANC’s flagging electoral support. Understanding how master narratives compete is not only necessary to appraise South Africa’s current political juncture – it equally reveals how citizens who feel excluded and marginalised turn to history to carve out space, legitimacy and support for their agendas in this fraught environment.