MALELANE (South Africa): Hectares upon hectares of luxuriant orchards cover the land from which Bernard Shabangu’s ancestors were once brutally evicted by South Africa’s apartheid government.
Thousands of families lived on these green hills near the Kruger National Park, 400 kilometres (250 miles) east of Johannesburg, until the early 1900s when colonial and subsequent apartheid regimes eroded the rights of black South Africans to own land.
“Our ancestors suffered brutal treatment at the hands of those that were taking the land,” Shabangu said. Some were tortured and killed by police, others were thrown into the crocodile-infested river, he said.
“But out of these ashes of dispossession and devastation, something positive must rise. And that’s the future we’re planting here,” he said, pointing to stretches of papaya, banana, lychee and citrus trees managed in a joint venture between black and white farmers.
The 48-year-old lawyer is from one of 1,850 black families from the Matsamo community who claimed the land in 1998, four years after the fall of apartheid.
When the government restituted the first plots in 2010, the community decided to consult with the former owners.
“We felt that chasing away the whites who used to run this farm would be counterproductive because we wouldn’t get to access the skills… and the capital that we need in order to farm,” Shabangu explained.
The Matsamo Communal Property Association (CPA) now owns more than 14,000 hectares (34,600 acres) which they manage in cooperation with white farmers in a rare model of successful land reform.
In a new, state-of-the-art warehouse, dozens of workers in green uniforms pack fruit spat out by triaging machines for shipment to supermarkets across the world.
South Africa’s biggest lychee producer, the farm employs 5,000 locals and has sent several of the community’s children to university.
Deputy President Paul Mashatile in 2023 described it as “an example of what should be done”.
“One party’s got the skills, which they’re transferring, and the other party’s got the land,” said James Chance, a former farmer who is now managing director of Tomahawk, one of the CPA’s joint ventures.
“Put those hands together and suddenly land comes alive again, employment comes to the fore and everyone’s a winner.”
The thorny issue of land reform was thrust into the limelight in February when US President Donald Trump falsely accused Pretoria of expropriating white-owned farms and offered to take in the farmers as refugees.
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