June 19, 2025, marked the 112th anniversary of South Africa’s Native Land Act of 1913, widely considered the cornerstone of apartheid. Activists, land justice campaigners, and peasants came together in a continental webinar organized by Pan African Today to revisit the enduring land question in Africa. Titled “Land as a Source of Life: Socialist Struggles & Solutions”, the conversation featured Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) President S’bu Zikode and MVIWATA Executive Director Stephen Ruvuga, and explored grassroots struggles and the implications of state policy on land access in South Africa and Tanzania.
Land and the legacy of apartheid
Framing the discussion was the theme that land is not a commodity but the foundation of food, identity, and dignity. The 1913 Land Act, which prohibited Black South Africans from owning land in most of the country, not only dispossessed millions but institutionalized racial segregation and economic exclusion. In 2025, more than a century later, this legacy remains largely intact.
S’bu Zikode, president of Abahlali baseMjondolo, was forthright in his critique of South Africa’s newly passed Expropriation Bill, which purports to allow land expropriation without compensation. “A lot of people will be misguided by this fancy expropriation act as if it is in the best interest of the working class and the poor,” Zikode stated. “We know from experience that the very same act will be used against the poor.”
According to Zikode, the law is being celebrated by elites while the actual material conditions of the poor remain unchanged. “This Act will replicate what the 1913 Act did: create a few Black elites and leave the rest of South Africa’s people landless,” he warned.
He noted that while the law gestures towards justice, in practice it is deeply exclusionary. “The government has no plan to help us access land, especially urban land. Thus, the landless have no choice but to continue occupying unused and vacant land.” For Abahlali baseMjondolo, land occupations are not criminal acts but acts of popular justice – redistributing land to the marginalized when the state refuses to.
Zikode reiterated that land is a matter of dignity and revolutionary democracy. “The land belongs to all. It should not be controlled by a capitalist elite, militarized municipal forces, or corrupt politicians. We believe land is a gift from God to be shared in peace and harmony.”
Tanzania’s path: from Ujamaa to neoliberalism
Stephen Ruvuga of Tanzania (MVIWATA) drew parallels with Tanzania’s land history, tracing it from pre-colonial communal systems to colonial dispossession under German and British rule. The colonial legal framework, particularly the 1923 Land Ordinance, institutionalized the state as the custodian of land and opened the door for capitalist exploitation.
Post-independence Tanzania initially pursued a radically different course. Under the Arusha Declaration and President Julius Nyerere’s Ujamaa socialism, land was nationalized and reallocated for communal development. “It was the first time land became common, used by the people for food production and social harmony,” Ruvuga noted. Village councils were empowered to govern land use in a way that ensured widespread access.
However, the neoliberal turn in the 1980s and 1990s – forced by the IMF and World Bank structural adjustment programs – ushered in a new era of individualization and land commodification. “We moved from a system built on access and equality to one that serves markets and corporations,” Ruvuga said.
Recent years have seen international agribusiness firms and foreign governments acquire large tracts of Tanzanian land under the guise of investment and food security. “These programs, often claiming to solve hunger, have in fact displaced smallholder farmers, exported food production, and left many landless for the first time in our country’s history,” Ruvuga notes.
The decline of the Arusha Declaration’s ideals has coincided with increasing inequality and environmental degradation. “Neoliberalism has destroyed the very fabric that Tanzania was built on,” Ruvuga said. “Our justice systems, village governance, and cultural land ethics are under siege.”
A continental crisis rooted in capitalism
Across the continent, land remains a primary site of conflict between people and profit. Whether it’s urban evictions in South Africa or rural displacements in Tanzania, communities face mounting pressures from states aligned with capital.
Both speakers were clear, the fight for land is not just about legal reforms or policy reviews – it is about political power and class struggle. “When the landless become organized and recognize their own strength, the elite become afraid,” said Zikode. “They respond with violence, repression, and co-optation.”
Ruvuga echoed this sentiment, reiterating the need to resist externally imposed frameworks that turn land into a commodity. “Land must remain a source of life, not of speculation. The social value must come before commercial value.”
Toward socialist alternatives
The discussion made it evident that the land question cannot be resolved within the logic of neoliberal capitalism. Both Abahlali baseMjondolo and MVIWATA are advancing grassroots, democratic, and socialist alternatives rooted in the agency of the people.
As Zikode puts it, “We will continue to occupy land so long as the government has no clear plan to redistribute it. We will fight for land, and we will not compromise.”
