When in 1913 white men drove black men from the land of their fathers, from land they had considered their own, land in which they had buried their dead, where was the arbiter to cry foul and unjust? Every where was quiet as those black men went into the winter of bitterness and hunger. Those who died of hunger perished on the roads. Those who were strong among them made new beginnings. They found men weaker than them supplanted them in turn, taking over their land. And so history rolls on.
But we are talking of those who record. Those who remind others not just what happened. We want to know why it happened in case it is something that should never happen again. They narrate and those who listened heard the tales of their ancestors. There are those who would take both oral and written and from both compose powerful documents that cannot be contradicted.
Like a lawyers’ brief, it is well-laid out. It is divided into three parts: part 1 is titled Land “How the land was lost.” This, for me, is unsatisfactory as an explanation of how the land was lost. Looks like the mythologizing of the lost of land. What happened in 1913 when black people were driven from their land? This is really a poor basis to lay the claim of equality with white men and argue for the human rights of black intellectuals.
In spite of claiming the ownership of the land, the lawyers failed to make a case for themselves with the discussion of the putting together of the state of South Africa. They were not united. They were seen as members of different tribes, different ethnicities. All they got from the constitutionalism evolving were ‘crumbs of justice.’There is still no solution to the land issue other than that it belongs to the natives.
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Source: GuardianNigeria - 🏆 1. / 94 Read more »