'South Africa once excluded black people from land — the state now seeks peaceful reform'

William Beinart is Emeritus Professor at the African Studies Centre, Oxford University. Speaking to Srijana Mitra Das at Times Evoke , he discusses the issue of land — and its fruit — in South Africa :

As seen at the Donald Trump-Cyril Ramaphosa interaction recently, we are hearing allegations now about white farmers in South Africa being thrown off their lands and even killed — how historically accurate is this?

It’s an absurd inversion of history. South Africa’s history has been about the dispossession of black South Africans from their land, with the Apartheid system ensuring they could not get access to it until the 1990s and the political transformations that took place then. By that time, only a small proportion of land in rural areas was owned by Africans, with most whiteowned farms, which were largely commercial in nature, having workforces almost entirely composed of these people.

The new South African government, after the transition post-Apartheid and the move towards democracy, put land reform quite high on its agenda — it was entirely justified in doing so. The system had cemented racial exclusion for so long. They’ve gone slowly and I’d say they have done reasonably well. The large farm sector has not been destroyed — on the contrary, becoming one of the most rapidly-growing parts of the economy over the last two decades, it has done quite well. The state also instituted a ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ system of land reform — if the authorities target particular areas, government buys the land from white farmers there. White farmers being thrown off the land is just not the case.

When Maize is a maze... Apartheid plundered black South Africans — whites, who are 7% of the population, reportedly still own half the country’s land, with 30% redistribution aimed at by 2030

In addition, it is important to emphasise that South Africa has been a very violent place for many years, going back to the Apartheid era — this didn’t change much post-1994. Rates of murders and violent crimes remain high in urban and rural areas — however, proportionately, the numbers of white farmers attacked or killed is relatively small.

The people most susceptible to violent crimes are actually young men in cities. Yet, this narrative has been picked up by the global right-wing and the Trump Presidency for a range of reasons. They are unhappy with the position of the current South African government on many issues — and Elon Musk , who was born and raised until university in South Africa, is plugged into right-wing Afrikaner groups which have become very effective propagandists on a global scale. Musk apparently didn’t always take these views — but he’s chosen to champion them now, both in the United States and in relation to South Africa.



What are some of the main climatic changes South Africa confronts now?

Global warming is already having an effect there — even 25 years ago, people had predicted the western half of South Africa, along with much of Botswana and Namibia, would experience significant reductions in rainfall. That seems to be happening now. On the eastern side, particularly across the coastal zones, there is an increased intensity of stormy rainfall — there is already frequent flooding across these regions.


South Africa is reasonably fortunate in having had over a century of intensive dam-building — this enables a fair amount of water capture in many places but there is a crisis developing in urban water supply now. It’s not just reduced rainfall but a lack of investment driving this. The challenge of water is huge, with 60% of the country being semi-arid and arid. This is a difficult situation also for South Africa’s successful commercial agriculture — citrus fruit is a very large product, the single biggest agricultural export today, well beyond wine, wool and older goods. The sector offers a lot of employment and is also very valuable in terms of providing nutrition for poorer people. Growing citrus does need sustained irrigation though — dangers lie thus in this fairly rapid global climate change and there needs to be more effective and coordinated state engagement.

One area where the state has been quite successful in association with the private sector is conservation and the beginnings of biodiversity restoration — a significant part of South Africa is now seeing some return to greater biodiversity. This increase in wildlife is also valuiStock able for water retention and the rejuvenation of watersheds. Of course, there is the question of whether work like ecotourism can replace agrarian activity and generate similar revenues — it’s important to note this brings highly differentiated benefits, with ecotourism essentially for relatively well-heeled global travellers and its profits tending to reach those who own land already.

While he has Trump's ear: Elon Musk supports claims of white South Africans being hounded

Can you tell us about your research on South Africa’s prickly pear plant?

An aspect of environmental history which interests me deeply is political ecology — why are resources important, to whom do they become necessary, how do they get commodified and who wins and loses in this process? Prickly pear is a Mexican plant, found extensively over central America. It’s a cactus and suited well to semi-arid areas. It was brought to the Cape as it was to India, the Mediterranean, northeast Africa as well as other places around the world — I’ve heard you can discern traces of destroyed Palestinian villages by spotting the remnants of prickly pear there. This plant has multiple uses. Firstly, the Opuntia ficus-indica has juicy fruit and blossoms for about three months every year. It doesn’t need much water and reproduces by itself, birds spreading its seeds or its leaves dropping to the ground and sending out new roots. It expanded across the semiarid areas of South Africa and it was eaten by both white and black people — but it became particularly important to impoverished black people because they had no land. They were marginalised also by the commercialisation of agriculture and the expansion of private land holdings which was largely controlled by white people. The prickly pear was like a gathered plant — its fruit was eaten and its leaves used for fodder, fencing, etc. It became very important for the rural poor.

Fruits of change: South Africa’s prickly pear (L) & citrus (R)

Now, prickly pear also has spines and its fruit has spicules — if commerically valuable animals like sheep eat these, it can be quite damaging. So, a huge eradication program started in the 19th century, reaching maturity in the 20 th century — this managed to get rid of about 90% prickly pear. That story — of this food of poor black people vanishing, while the state and wealthy farmers exterminated it — has intrigued me.