South
Africa, my land?
By
Maakomele Manaka
‘South Africa belongs to all those who live in it’, except
for her own. The majority of South Africans don’t own anything, from property
to our education and to what we eat. Rustenburg is a goldmine for foreign
investors because of the platinum and yet her children will grow up blinded by
the double big Mac and the quarter pounder with cheese, and own nothing.
A very good friend of mine runs a restaurant in town, and
from the looks of it he is doing well, though every time we are together, he
gives me an insight as to who is really running the property game in
Johannesburg and its not the government. He doesn’t own the piece of land on
which his restaurant resides and he doesn’t even own the building, the only
thing he owns, is the name of his restaurant.
Almost every city in the world has those side-walk-coffee
shop-discussions, and I recently found myself in the middle of those long
conversations that turned into a debate at some coffee shop in Melville, the
topic was land, and it seemed as though the majority of the table were siding
with Malema’s nationalization story. I couldn’t help but think if that’s
exactly what this country needs, nationalization of the mines.
How do we nationalize the mines when so many black people
have an inferiority complex towards each other, next thing we’ll be having
privatized armies and children carrying guns half their size induced with drugs
and following orders to capture Rustenburg. The question lies not only in
nationalization but rather, how many people are willing to share their wealth,
our President himself built a huge mansion in his native soil, Zululand, and
yet the majority of the surrounding neighborhoods in that area, don’t even have
roads and proper water pumps, could our president share his wealth with those
people? Cut a piece of his home and distribute it out to some of his neighbors?
Ownership is a ghost that haunts many of us, because we
don’t even own our roads, some agency does, and it dictates how we should move
and how much we need for us to move.
As an artist, ownership is everything, I own the rights to
both my books, and with the little money we made from art, we have our own
place that we can call home, though many people still have not grasped the
concept of ownership, because Mandla Mthembu had so much Trasnet money, that he
invested it into foreign countries, yet he didn’t even buy a piece of land that
he can call his own, now the man is dead broke and about to hit rock bottom.
The Nigerian writer Ben Okri says, “A people are only as
healthy as the stories they tell themselves”
Until we own ourselves completely, from foreign imperialism
then our country and economy can begin to be healthy, and deal with issues of
salaries, because every year, the price of living in South Africa increases and
yet our salaries remain the same, and that has been detrimental to our health
for some time.
So, South Africa belongs to all those who can afford to own
her.
