South African Government Returns Land Seized From Blacks During Apartheid Era

Jet, Dec 11, 2000

Fatima Benting was forced by the South African government to leave her Cape Town home nearly 35 years ago to make way for Whites. But recently she and more than 1,000 families gathered on a dusty mountainside field to reclaim land that was rightfully theirs.

"I feel very, very happy.... I never thought I'd live to see it," Benting, 86, said. "I want to die in District Six. I'm just waiting for this dream."

Between 1966 and 1980, authorities forcibly removed Benting and about 66,000 others from District Six --slated to become a Whites-only area.

President Thabo Mbeki said the forced removals were emblematic of the racist regime's efforts to strip people of their humanity. He noted that land restitution is "the most important signal that we have broken with our terrible past."

After the residents were moved to the Cape Flats, an area miles from Cape Town which quickly became--and remains--a hotbed of crime, bulldozers leveled thousands of homes and buildings in District Six. But plans for the all-White area never materialized, and the district became a scar on the city's reputation.

Government officials acknowledge that returning the land is only a first step toward addressing past wrongs.

Yet some residents say land restitution, which comes six years after apartheid ended in 1994, took too long and came too late.

Yusuf Miller plans to apply for the $2,200 compensation the government has offered those who don't want to move back.

Nonetheless, restoring the land to its former owners has been hailed as an important step toward healing.

"We are renewing ourselves as a district, as a people and as a nation," Mbeki said, "giving back to all our people their common heritage without the distinction of race, color and gender that racism, colonialism and apartheid imposed on all of us."