By Hassan Isilow
South Africa will accelerate land reform in a bid to redress the past injustices of the racial segregation system, known as apartheid, by providing emerging farmers with the resources and support they need to be productive and sustainable, the country’s president said on Thursday.
During apartheid, people of color were dispossessed of land and forcibly removed from it.
Addressing a huge crowd attending the Sharpeville massacre of 1960, marked as Human Rights Day in South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa said his government has returned nearly 4 million hectares (9.9 million acres) of land to people who had been dispossessed of it.
On 21 March 1960, apartheid police shot dead 69 anti-apartheid protesters at the Sharpeville police station, in an incident that became a catalyst in the fight against apartheid.
Land is a highly contentious subject in South Africa, a country where much of the farmland and other wealth is still owned by minority whites 30 years after the end of apartheid.
In his speech, Ramaphosa said South Africans today have much to celebrate since the end of the apartheid.
“We still recall how every Black South African – African, colored and Indian – was denied the basic human rights to which they were entitled,” Ramaphosa said.
He said South Africans have much to celebrate under his ruling African National Congress (ANC) party-led government, which he added has lifted millions of South Africans out of dire poverty.
“Eight out of every 10 households have proper housing. Nine out of every 10 homes have electricity and access to clean drinking water,” he said.
Some government critics, have however, claimed that life under the apartheid regime was much better than it is today, but Ramaphosa said generations of Black South Africans were denied the right to life and dignity, the right to equal treatment, and the right to vote or live where they wanted among other restrictions.
“We gather here in Sharpeville on this day so that we may pay tribute to those who fought for the rights that we today hold so dear, so that we may remember the severe hardships they endured and the great sacrifices that they made,” he said.
Ramaphosa also lashed out at those who blame his government for the ongoing rotational power black outs caused by the current maintenance of power plants, saying under apartheid a lot of people were denied electricity.