Preface

This comparative history of two former British colonies – Canada and the Republic of South Africa – focuses on the response of indigenous peoples to their experience of European colonization and domination.¹ While the methods and political objectives of dispossession differed in many important ways, the alienation of land had devastating consequences for the aboriginal peoples of both countries. Today, by reclaiming rights to the land and an equitable share in the wealth-producing resources they contain, the first peoples of Canada and South Africa are taking important steps to confront the legacies of poverty that characterize many of their communities.

On a visit to South Africa in October 2001, I took a journey that led me to the heart of the land rights issue. A community in the Richtersveld, 600 kilometres north of Cape Town, was reclaiming traditional land belonging to the state-owned diamond company, Alexkor Ltd. The case, which was similar to many aboriginal land claims in Canada, was unusual in South Africa. The Richtersveld land claim was based on both racial discrimination and aboriginal rights – the first such case in South Africa’s history. Henk Smith, the community’s lawyer, encouraged me to visit the area and meet some of the people.

As we drove north from Port Nolloth along the tarred coastal road to Alexander Bay (where the Alexkor headquarters are located), the diamond company’s presence was everywhere. Two rows of tall, barbed wire fences had been erected along the road, sealing off the mining operation from intruders. Beyond the tailings dumps we could see hydraulic excavators, bulldozers and dump trucks at work extracting the diamondbearing ore from the beach terraces. On the road inland from Alexander Bay, where the Gariep (formerly Orange) River flows into the sea, the ubiquitous Alexkor fences lined the road on both sides. Along the river valley, irrigation plants produced lush fields of crops and green pastureland; across the road, in stark contrast, penned ostriches grazed on the sparse vegetation. When the tarred road became an unpaved track, I knew we had left Alexkor property behind. At the remote, dirt-poor settlement of Sanddrif (one of the five villages involved in the land claim) a meeting of community leaders was already in progress. The Richtersveld community’s struggle to regain control over their traditional lands had been long and costly. Earlier that year, their case had been rejected by the Land Claims Court in Cape Town and now their hopes rested with the Appeal Court. If this also failed, their final resort would be to appeal to the Constitutional Court. Alexkor seemed to hold all the cards, but the community was not about to give up. They had no other choice.

My visit to the village of Sanddrif helped to crystallize the themes of this book and provided fresh insights into the motivation and strategies of indigenous peoples to regain control over their land and their lives. The plight of the Richtersveld community – and their determination to restore hope and dignity to their villages – epitomizes the experience of local inhabitants worldwide whose lands and resources have been taken over by European settlers (and now by large corporations) for their own use and profits. While hunger for land and human dignity is one of the most destructive and enduring consequences of European colonization, it has also become the catalyst for cultural renewal and political change.

The research for this project has progressed through several phases of my life. In the 1960s, as an undergraduate student at the University of South Africa (UNISA) I learned about South Africa’s history from the perspective of its white population. In the 1980s, having emigrated to Canada, I became involved in the work of International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa (Canada). Part of my role in this organization was to research and help to disseminate information about the violation of human rights under the apartheid regime.² In the 1990s, my interest in aboriginal justice expanded to Canada’s treatment of its indigenous peoples. The parallels and differences between South Africa and Canada with respect to aboriginal rights became the topic of my M.A. thesis at the University of Ottawa in 1993: Is This Apartheid? Aboriginal Reserves and Self-Government in Canada, 1960–1982. The final phase of my research for this book came in the late 1990s when I returned to South Africa to work as an archivist at the Mayibuye Centre for History and Culture in South Africa at the University of the Western Cape near Cape Town.

Most of the primary sources on early European settlement were found in the National Archives of Canada (now Library and Archives Canada), the Cape Archives and State Library in Cape Town, the South African National Archives in Pretoria and the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne. The chapters on land claims and the legacies of injustice in Canada are based on documentation in the Law and Medical Libraries at the University of Ottawa and in the reading room of the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada in Ottawa. Publications produced by the Department of Land Affairs and the Land Claims Commission, the Surplus People Project, the Legal Resource Centre and the Program for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape provided essential background on land claims in South Africa.

A variety of secondary sources relating to Canada and South Africa as well as Australia and New Zealand were consulted, some recently published, others dating from the nineteenth century. Books, conference papers and journal articles on aboriginal rights, and the complex legal and constitutional constraints on aboriginal justice, were of vital assistance in the preparation of this manuscript. Of particular relevance to this study were publications that have come out of South Africa in recent years, including critiques of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission by African theologians and academics.

This analysis of land rights in Canada and South Africa is divided into three parts: Dispossession, Reclaiming the Land and Dealing with Legacies. A brief discussion of land rights in Australia and New Zealand is provided in the Appendix.

Part One covers a broad sweep of history from the arrival of Europeans on the shores of North America and southern Africa in the sixteenth century to the present. This four-hundred-year overview is provided on three levels: human, legal and political. Chapter One traces the human interaction between aboriginal and non-aboriginal peoples from first contact to early European settlement. These are the defining stories of wars, epidemics, enslavement, exploitation and, above all, territorial dispossession whose legacies are being challenged by present generations of first Canadians and South Africans. Chapters Two and Three present an analysis of the legal and political foundations of aboriginal-state relations in Canada and South Africa and the struggle of the indigenous peoples for sovereignty and constitutional rights. Central to the discussion are contrasting histories of treaties, reserves, civil rights and policies of segregation and assimilation.

Part Two examines the ways in which indigenous communities are reclaiming control over their ancestral lands and the wealth-producing resources they contain. In Chapters Four and Five, a selection of case histories illustrates the extent to which litigation and negotiated settlements have restored dignity and a measure of prosperity to indigenous communities. Chapter Six focuses on issues of self-government and land tenure as they relate to Canada’s First Nations and to South Africa’s former bantustans.

The broader issues relating to land justice and the legacies of colonialism and apartheid in Canada and South Africa are discussed in Part Three. Chapter Seven is about the poverty and loss of human dignity associated with land loss and why land rights are critical in restoring hope and healing to landless communities. The final chapter draws comparisons between South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) process and Canada’s Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP), both of which took place during the 1990s. As instruments of restitution, neither commission can claim any notable success: meaningful reconciliation requires changes in state policies that address the ongoing hunger for land and dignity in aboriginal communities.

The choice of terms for the peoples of Canada and South Africa requires some explanation. The indigenous peoples of both countries are referred to generically as “first peoples” or “aboriginal peoples.” Although “Indian” – the name erroneously given to the local people of the Americas – is controversial (and easily confused with South Africans of Indian origin), it is used here to refer to members of registered bands who are governed under Canada’s Indian Act. These groups are also referred to as First Nations, a term that has come into use since the 1970s. The adjective “native,” favoured by North American Indians, is used sparingly in this comparative study because of its highly negative connotations in South Africa. “African” is used as both a noun and an adjective, and refers to South Africa’s indigenous Bantu-speaking inhabitants. The term “black” is also used in reference to Africans but appears most often as a collective term for Africans, Euro-Africans (classified as “Coloureds” by white governments) and South Africans of Indian descent, who shared a common experience of oppression under white supremacist governments.

Canadians and South Africans of European descent are generally referred to as “white” or “non-aboriginal.” The term “Afrikaner” refers to white South Africans whose home language is Afrikaans. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, these descendants of Dutch, German and French immigrants were referred to as “Boers” (Dutch for farmer) or as “Trekboers” (frontier farmers) or “Voortrekkers” (meaning pioneers or those who travel ahead).