Subject: Institutionalised brutality.
The issue of Cyril Ramaposa's message to the citizens of South Africa that "land can be appropriated without compensation" hits against all kinds of legal precedent, not least the term of contract law which defines the repayment of the Bond (mortgage). Nedbank not known for its political sensitivity has said that the bond repayments must be met as per the contract, irrespective of the fact that the land and its contents have been appropriated and given to others. It's just the sort of mess politicians get into when they play the racist card, in this case, black against white. The argument of reattributing land to people who held the land in the sense of far off tribal occupation and made landless by colonial power and white repressive government is undoubtedly accurate. I'm sure it could be made the case in virtually every country over time.
The distribution of land in this country by the King to the ancestral Lords as repayment for loaning men from a Baronial district to fight the Kings cause was common (no matter that the men who lost their lives in the battle received nothing) and that vast swathes of countryside and city are now owned by a few families.
Compensation never came into it since we had been taught to "know our place" but we are easily incited to feel the injustice if, in another land the agents of a colonial power working often for that power are seen, through the modern lens of a myopic correctness feel that an injury has been done.
How little thought is given to the tribal representatives of this country the bulk who I see standing in the queue at MacDonald's with little or no education and subsequently no hope for the future. Who's life map is planned by their Post Code, just as the boy in Mitchells Plain is earmarked for gangs and drugs.
Our willingness to be coopted into some sort short term sympathetic frenzy is legion whilst all around us lies an equally disdainful, if less acute way of institutionalised brutality.
The issue of Cyril Ramaposa's message to the citizens of South Africa that "land can be appropriated without compensation" hits against all kinds of legal precedent, not least the term of contract law which defines the repayment of the Bond (mortgage). Nedbank not known for its political sensitivity has said that the bond repayments must be met as per the contract, irrespective of the fact that the land and its contents have been appropriated and given to others. It's just the sort of mess politicians get into when they play the racist card, in this case, black against white. The argument of reattributing land to people who held the land in the sense of far off tribal occupation and made landless by colonial power and white repressive government is undoubtedly accurate. I'm sure it could be made the case in virtually every country over time.
The distribution of land in this country by the King to the ancestral Lords as repayment for loaning men from a Baronial district to fight the Kings cause was common (no matter that the men who lost their lives in the battle received nothing) and that vast swathes of countryside and city are now owned by a few families.
Compensation never came into it since we had been taught to "know our place" but we are easily incited to feel the injustice if, in another land the agents of a colonial power working often for that power are seen, through the modern lens of a myopic correctness feel that an injury has been done.
How little thought is given to the tribal representatives of this country the bulk who I see standing in the queue at MacDonald's with little or no education and subsequently no hope for the future. Who's life map is planned by their Post Code, just as the boy in Mitchells Plain is earmarked for gangs and drugs.
Our willingness to be coopted into some sort short term sympathetic frenzy is legion whilst all around us lies an equally disdainful, if less acute way of institutionalised brutality.
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