Roger Roman: I embarked on a fast to prevent the local council, acting on behalf of white landowners in the surrounding area, from forcing me to evict the 100 or so people living on my farm. The alternative was to fight the council through the courts. I had no reason to believe that the magistrates, sheriffs, lawyers and police involved in that process would deliver an outcome that did not involve the forced removal of these people. They hadn’t done so for the last century anywhere else in South Africa. To fast publicly requires a very clear and personal conviction. Mine was a simple refusal to participate in any way in an act of such utter inhumanity. It was both my right and my responsibility to act according to my own principles. Land rights are human rights. The right to land is possibly the most fundamental of all human rights. Where it is violated, there will never be peace, and that’s as true in the land of my birth, South Africa, as it is in the rest of Africa, the Americas and Asia, where colonialists deprived the indigenous people of their land.
POV: Tell us about your organization, Land for Peace. What is its mission? What is the organization working on now? And how can people help with your work?
Roman: I first came across the principle of land for peace in the context of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. At its core, the concept recognizes that there will never be peace in the region without a settlement of land rights. It acknowledges that people deprived of their land without their prior and informed consent will never rest until they feel justice has been achieved. What is true in Palestine is equally true in South Africa. Over the past 10 years, Land For Peace has offered paralegal advice and allied services to other people facing evictions and forced removals in surrounding areas. Our mission is to facilitate partnerships between landless people, landowners and government to achieve sustainable land rights and benefits. My dream is to establish an online platform to facilitate connection and interactions between the stakeholders in land reform and land rights in South Africa. Unless we develop a radically different alternative to our current land reform program we will inevitably follow a similar path to our neighbor Zimbabwe. The mission of Land For Peace is to contribute to creating that alternative through an online land forum and resource. We welcome any skills, experience and resources people can contribute to building this electronic facility.
POV: In the film, one of the white land owners in your community called you an “agitator”? What is your relationship with the white community now? Have any of the white community members changed their minds about land redistribution?
Roman: I’ll take that as a compliment! It’s about the most polite thing they’ve ever called me. The vast majority of white landowners see land reform as the greatest threat to their interests. My conviction is that the lack of land reform is the greatest threat to the interests of all — including the white landowners. It’s not the change that is the threat; it’s the failure to change that is. The failure to change radically the inherited colonial land regimes in states across Africa, South America and Asia has consistently resulted in ongoing civil unrest, violence and economic decline. It is clear that more and more landowners are realizing that land reform is essential to the future of this country. What are lacking are a clear and compelling alternative and a mechanism to implement it.
POV: In the film, you point out that white South Africans have to realize that there is a price to be paid for a peaceful South Africa, and they have to pay part of that price. How can white South Africans be persuaded to reconcile themselves with the history of apartheid in their country? How can people be persuaded to go against their own personal interests for the greater good?
Roman: I don’t know if it is possible to persuade people to reconcile themselves with their past. I think it is an intensely personal and introspective process that most of us would like to avoid. Perhaps it is not a necessary process either. In terms of reconciliation perhaps it is more helpful to focus on our mutually beneficial goals — a peaceful present and future that replaces the injustices of the past. I believe it is in the interests of white South Africans as much as any other group that we build an alternative to the past. That is for the common good and is in absolutely no way against their own personal interests.
POV: It’s clear from the film that land redistribution in South Africa is fraught with difficulties. What are your hopes for the process going forward? And do you have any suggestions for how the process should be handled?
Roman: It is very obvious that land reform and land rights are rapidly climbing up the political and national agenda in South Africa. This is in part because the failures of our current efforts are becoming more visible, costly and strategic. It is also in line with global trends that recognize that radical changes in human land use and management practices are central to meeting our collective climate change, food security and economic crises. That gives me hope that we are getting closer in this country to a radical overhaul of our land reform program. The success of radical land reform programs internationally depends on one factor more than all others, and that is the relationships and interactions between the stakeholders. I believe that we can achieve a uniquely South African alternative to the current neoliberal program together. Apart we are doomed to failure. That is the reason Land For Peace is advocating a network of local land forums with an enabling infrastructure.
Q&A
POV: Promised Land portrays your efforts to give your land back to black South Africans in your community. You even go on a hunger strike, at one point, to protest the eviction of black "squatters." Why do you feel so strongly about land issues in South Africa?
POV: Tell us about your organization, Land for Peace. What is its mission? What is the organization working on now? And how can people help with your work?
Roman: I first came across the principle of land for peace in the context of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. At its core, the concept recognizes that there will never be peace in the region without a settlement of land rights. It acknowledges that people deprived of their land without their prior and informed consent will never rest until they feel justice has been achieved. What is true in Palestine is equally true in South Africa. Over the past 10 years, Land For Peace has offered paralegal advice and allied services to other people facing evictions and forced removals in surrounding areas. Our mission is to facilitate partnerships between landless people, landowners and government to achieve sustainable land rights and benefits. My dream is to establish an online platform to facilitate connection and interactions between the stakeholders in land reform and land rights in South Africa. Unless we develop a radically different alternative to our current land reform program we will inevitably follow a similar path to our neighbor Zimbabwe. The mission of Land For Peace is to contribute to creating that alternative through an online land forum and resource. We welcome any skills, experience and resources people can contribute to building this electronic facility.
POV: In the film, one of the white land owners in your community called you an "agitator"? What is your relationship with the white community now? Have any of the white community members changed their minds about land redistribution?
Roman: I'll take that as a compliment! It's about the most polite thing they've ever called me. The vast majority of white landowners see land reform as the greatest threat to their interests. My conviction is that the lack of land reform is the greatest threat to the interests of all -- including the white landowners. It's not the change that is the threat; it's the failure to change that is. The failure to change radically the inherited colonial land regimes in states across Africa, South America and Asia has consistently resulted in ongoing civil unrest, violence and economic decline. It is clear that more and more landowners are realizing that land reform is essential to the future of this country. What are lacking are a clear and compelling alternative and a mechanism to implement it.
POV: In the film, you point out that white South Africans have to realize that there is a price to be paid for a peaceful South Africa, and they have to pay part of that price. How can white South Africans be persuaded to reconcile themselves with the history of apartheid in their country? How can people be persuaded to go against their own personal interests for the greater good?
Roman: I don't know if it is possible to persuade people to reconcile themselves with their past. I think it is an intensely personal and introspective process that most of us would like to avoid. Perhaps it is not a necessary process either. In terms of reconciliation perhaps it is more helpful to focus on our mutually beneficial goals -- a peaceful present and future that replaces the injustices of the past. I believe it is in the interests of white South Africans as much as any other group that we build an alternative to the past. That is for the common good and is in absolutely no way against their own personal interests.
POV: It's clear from the film that land redistribution in South Africa is fraught with difficulties. What are your hopes for the process going forward? And do you have any suggestions for how the process should be handled?
Roman: It is very obvious that land reform and land rights are rapidly climbing up the political and national agenda in South Africa. This is in part because the failures of our current efforts are becoming more visible, costly and strategic. It is also in line with global trends that recognize that radical changes in human land use and management practices are central to meeting our collective climate change, food security and economic crises. That gives me hope that we are getting closer in this country to a radical overhaul of our land reform program. The success of radical land reform programs internationally depends on one factor more than all others, and that is the relationships and interactions between the stakeholders. I believe that we can achieve a uniquely South African alternative to the current neoliberal program together. Apart we are doomed to failure. That is the reason Land For Peace is advocating a network of local land forums with an enabling infrastructure.
Roger Roman says: I was born in Johannesburg , South Africa in March 1953. That was the same month that the white Apartheid government decided that black South Africans would not be taught math and science at school in order to keep them as the laborers in the white man's society. As a white man, I was born into privilege - both social and economic. I developed a career as a strategic planning and change consultant working in the U.S., Europe and South Africa. In particular, I focused on trying to assist local corporations make the radical shift needed to succeed in a non- racial country after centuries of racial protection and exploitation.
Two years after the first South African democratic elections in 1994, I bought a farm in Hartbeespoort. Shortly thereafter, the white Local Council tried to force me to evict people living on my farm as part of their program of ethnic cleansing of the area. Since then, I have been involved full time in land rights work and activism in my own country and in Africa in general.
A Tribute to Ntate Obed Moja
Ntate Obed Moja was one of the members of the Mekgareng community that the white landowners considered "squatters" on their land. Moja had been living on the land in question since his birth in 1901. He passed away in 2007. Roger Roman, also featured in the film and the founder of Land for Peace, wrote this tribute to him.
Living and Dying With Dignity.
On Thursday evening, Ntate Obed Moja stayed at the fire later than usual. When one of his family members asked if he was going to bed he said, "The time for me to die has come. I will sit here for a while." At about half past nine he stood up and asked for assistance walking to his favorite spot on the seat outside the front door. "I will sit and rest here, for the last time" he said. With his old walking stick in front of him and with the pale light of the moon directly above him, he sat and rested against the wall of his house. Before him was another house, built in honor of his 100th birthday by the Homeless People's Federation, and to the left was the small room where he was born on February 1, 1901. All around him were members of five generations of his family. After about 10 minutes, Moja slowly stood up, turned around and entered his house, and then he lay down on his bed for the last time. He folded his arms across his chest and closed his eyes, and five minutes later he passed away peacefully. A life lived with dignity ended just the way it should -- peacefully and with dignity, and with the deceased in his own bed.
Moja was not only the father of the Po Land community, but also the longest surviving and oldest resident of the Hartbeespoort Dam area. Apart from a short break during the 1940s, when Moja lived in Johannesburg, he spent every day of his life in Broederstroom. Born on the farm then owned by Voortrekker leader Bart Pretorious, Moja once had his own herd of cows, but in later years permission for that herd was withdrawn by the landowner, and Moja ended up with only a small patch of vegetables. Around him grew not only his own family, but also a small community of people who, like Moja himself, became refugees due to the encroachment of white landowners.
At the dawn of the new South Africa in 1994, the community hoped that its tenure and right to stay would be secured. That did not come to pass. In 1998, when Moja was 97 years old, most of the white landowners in the valley got together, called him and the rest of the community onwettige plakkers, or illegal squatters, and demanded that the local council evict them. Landowners informed the council that if it failed to do so, the landowners would resort to violence. The council, the dregs at the bottom of the apartheid barrel, was, of course, only too happy to evict, as eviction fit into its ethnic cleansing plan for the dam area.
In the fight by community members to remain in their homes, the old man's leadership and strength became central to the community. The council tried to force me (as the landowner at the time) to conduct the eviction on its behalf. The night I got the council's letter, I imagined myself standing in front of Moja, looking into his bright, lively eyes, and telling him he had to leave, to go. And then I tried to work out an answer to the question he was sure to ask: "Why?" I failed utterly to find anything remotely like an acceptable answer, and at that point knew I had no choice but to fight for his right to stay where he was.
The community and I made a promise to Moja then that he would spend the rest of his life in his own home, free of harassment and the threat of eviction. I am proud that we succeeded in fulfilling that promise, and that the old man was able to die as he had lived -- with dignity. His life and even his death are a victory over those who have waged a relentless campaign against the Po Land community and who still seek the eviction of the community. Perhaps those people should ask themselves Moja's question -- "Why?" -- and then they should find an answer compatible with the Christianity they so piously and hypocritically proclaim.
Rest In peace, Ntate. You have earned it.
Roger Roman, August 2007.