The Land and its People: The South African ‘Land Question’ and the Post-Apartheid Political Order

Why is it that South Africa’s ‘land question’ is so stubbornly resistant to resolution? This think piece re-examines 30 years of debate, concentrating on the disjuncture between the discourses of policy deliberation and those of contentious politics in debates about land in South Africa. It argues that the South African land debate as it unfolds in the public realm is best understood as a displaced discourse indirectly addressing the terms of political belonging and the nature of the post-apartheid political order. Far from being a distraction, this is a challenge that urgently needs to be confronted in its own terms. Drawing on the work of Ivor Chipkin, the paper argues that confronting the crisis of the post-apartheid political order requires a rethinking of the terms in which national identity is conceived. The paper explores the possibilities and challenges facing a politics of belonging centred on the Constitutional invocation of a political community ‘for all who live in it’ and what this might imply for a more constructive and productive engagement with land struggles in urban and rural South Africa.