Word: lande
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Even so, a revolution is quietly under way in this vast land. Here and there, in inventive and encouraging ways, individuals and groups of South Africans, white and black, are profoundly altering the way things were...
Beside a dusty, rural road in the eastern Transvaal, six families of black farmers gathered two weeks ago under a thorn tree to celebrate their return to their ancestral lands. A hand-lettered cardboard sign hanging on a frayed tent nearby read Ra Boile Gae in Pedi, a language spoken in the north of the country, and Home Sweet Home in English. Pedis are the largest of the northern Sotho groups, and these jubilant returnees were members of a community that had lived and farmed there in Doornkop for more than 70 years. They tilled the fertile soil and earned...
...transformations Mandela's government of national unity has tried so far, the return of blacks to the land, and of land to the blacks, is potentially the most volatile. Between 1960 and 1990 the government forced 3.5 million people from their homes, in most cases clearing the way for whites to move...
...grossly unbalanced partitioning of the country is being reversed. Last month Mandela signed the Restitution of Land Rights Bill, which invites displaced blacks to file for the return of their former holdings. It also establishes a Land Claims Court to sort out the disputes that will inevitably arise. The bill, predicted Minister of Land Affairs Derek Hanekom, will help heal some of the country's wounds. More than that, he says, "it answers the cry for justice." Mandela and his ministers have tentatively set a goal of redistributing up to 30% of the nation's agricultural land over the next...
Though many of the uprooted are firmly resettled in new homes around the country, the government estimates that 1 million South Africans could be involved in the planned redistribution, including blacks who would like to own land but have never been able to do so. If a program of such magnitude is to succeed, the government will have to find ways to advance the rights of the disinherited blacks without touching off the latent anger of die-hard whites. Officials say they hope to avoid giving the impression that they are doing to the whites what whites did to blacks...