Land Justice Quotes

If the land to be redistributed is divided amongst the majority population, each parcel would be too small to make any difference in any recipient’s life. For efficient agriculture there must be large land holdings. The colonial, stolen land history is valid for most former colonies, however, in Southern Africa, the situation was more complicated. When the whites landed at Capetown in the South, they moved North “stealing” land as they went. However, in Central Africa, Shaka and his Zulus were also a colonial power, and they moved South “stealing” land from the indigenous Blacks as they went. Eventually, the two Colonial Powers—the whites and the Black Zulus—clashed and the Zulu Wars ensued. So all of the land in Zimbabwe and South Aftica was stolen from the Blacks—except about half was stolen by Blacks. After the Zulu Wars, the victorious whites ended up “stealing” land from the Black Zulus that had been stolen by them from other Blacks. Also although the English were the official colonial power, the Dutch “Afrikaners” were a powerful subculture which was dominant on many parts of South Africa and especially at the frontier and they did most of the land stealing. The ethnic English were the businessmen and the city dwellers who actually ruled that Blacks were citizens with rights and slowedmdown some of the land stealing. There is no more complicated ethnic history in the world.

In Burundi, family land is divided among the male children of a family. The average Burundian woman has 6.3 children at that time, nearly triple the international fertility rate. With this population growth rate, the plots of land for each person inevitably get smaller and smaller over time. At 10,745 square miles, Burundi is slightly smaller than the U.S. state of Maryland, but it holds nearly twice as many people: about 10 million. The small plots of land are inefficient to farm and provide subsistence. So the nation was in a crises as there was little industrialization and land was essential for existence for most Burundians. See {35807} and {35808}.

Rack-Renting was the term for a Landlord charging the Tenant farmer an exorbitant rent per year for the right to farm and live on the land. Often the rent for a single year would be an amount equal to the fair market value of the purchase of the entire property, but the Landlords would never sell. The tenant farmers rarely had any alternative as that land had their home such as it was and provided their meager living which generally was only slightly more than the Rack Rent. The Irish National Land League was created to reform the land use and allocation system of Ireland.