Land in South Africa

The ANC has raised the spectre of land restitution without compensation. Zimbabwe, here we come, has been the general reaction. So when UCT's Summer School offered a course "The land question in South Africa", I felt I had to go.

The course was led by Prof Ntsebeza of UCT's African Studies department. It started with a description of the problems faced by rural folk, who have tenuous tenure of their land courtesy the local Chief. Many of the Chiefs are from families that were granted chiefly status by the apartheid regime, to administer Government policy in their "Bantustan". When democratic government arrived, they moved seamlessly to similar status in the tribal authority adminstering the land. Not surprisingly, there is a level of resentment among those so administered, particularly as the tribal authorities show some of the characteristics of apartheid apparatchiks.

In the Eastern Cape, the King appointed Headmen to villages. The hierarchy is King, each of whom has 20 or more Chiefs reporting to him; each Chief has about 10 Headmen; and each Headman looks after one or more communities. But some communities, years ago, had elected their Headmen, and felt very aggrieved at having outsiders thrust upon them.

A community under the KwaGcina Traditional Council was so miffed that it took the Council and King to court when they refused to allow an election. The community won. The National Government, King and Council appealed - and lost. A Headman was duly elected.

This precedent looks like changing the political structures in rural areas. No longer can the government of the day rely on voter fodder being herded towards them by compliant Headmen. Indeed, the change has already spread so far that an imposed Chief has been rejected.

One of the problems of the tribal structures is that they are are supposed to work closely with local government. There is even a Co-operative Governance Act defining the relationship between the two. However, it is the cause of a real turf war, with local government being frustrated in its efforts at every turn. The end result is inevitable - rural dwellers have no effective service delivery, no schools,no clinics or hospitals, no transport systems.

Government is doing what it can to resolve the impasse, which is really of their own making. Originally land was to be a local government responsibility, but under presure from the traditional leaders, the ANC gave way and allowed the tribal authorities to continue their administration. There are signs that they are working to rectify this. For instance, in KwaZulu Natal, Government is threatening to remove the Ingonyama Trust of some 28 000 square kilometers from the control of King Zwelethini.

I came away from the course with a very different view of land reform in South Africa. I no longer believe the Zimbabwe example has any relevance. Rather, I believe we are seeing a democratisation of South Africa which will give us a stronger future, with the associated disappearance of the tribalism which has proved so divisive to our people.

Good, pure food

When I was a graduate student, I was allowed into the chemistry staff Tea Room. In those days, my degree had only just changed from Applied and Industrial Chemistry to Chemical Engineering, and we still had strong ties to the Chemistry Department.

In the tea room, there was lots of scientific reading matter. There were bound copies of journals, some in German, and some going back into the 19th century. One which fascinated me was "The Analyst", dating back to 1878 and still published by the Royal Society for Chemistry today.

Much of the early work had to do with the adulteration of food. There were ways of measuring the amount of chalk added to milk, or pigfat added to butter, or glycerine to wine. It was pretty horrifying what the Victorians came up with to enrich the butcher or grocer without killing the customer. Sweeney Todd was no joke!

Fast forward to today. I do quite a lot of cooking for myself, and rather enjoy it. A recent recipe for sauerkraut from the Economist has proven a great success, even if I had to visit the local spice emporium to find fennel. But I soon found there was something funny about chicken. When I cooked it, it oozed a white, unappetising goo. Then my supermarket had a special on Brazilian chicken, and when I cooked that, it didn't ooze.

Curious, I did a bit of digging, and found that the local chicken had "brine" added to it. Now brine is a colloquial word for salt water, and salt water doesn't contain goo. A bit more digging, and I found I was buying not just chicken, but chicken fattened and moisturized with chicken blood plasma in brine. So that was why it oozed and shrank.

Then I observed the same phenomenon in bacon. The commercial stuff was limpid and ended up half the size when cooked - if you were lucky. The German butcher sold me the real thing at a small fortune per kg, but it was firm and didn't ooze and shrink when you cooked it.

Soon I was finding ooze everywhere. The kipper that barely fitted into the pan, but looked like a sardine once it was done. The gammon that looked big enough for ten hungry mouths, yet had to be sliced very thin to celebrate Christmas.

I'm cross, and so should you be. Why do we allow ourselves to be ripped off in this way? To be sold something that contains about 30% that isn't what it claims to be? I see the poultry producers are complaining about unfair competition from imports. If they would stop adulterating our food, perhaps we might be more sympathetic.