Jubilee as Restoration of Eco-Relationality: A Decolonial Theological Critique of ‘Land Expropriation without Compensation’ in South Africa

Introduction

In spite of the many years of democratic governance in South Africa since 1994, political freedom and economic freedom still have not delivered land justice for the impoverished black majority population. This is because of political and economic paralysis and fear of the fallout if it is not managed properly, as we saw in Zimbabwe (Hewitt, 2016). Statistics show that 79 percent of South African land is still owned by white people, who make up nine percent of the population, while some of the majority black people as well as other races such as Indians and Coloureds do not even own a share of the remaining 21 percent of the land (Commey, 2015).

From the outset, it is important to highlight that the land crisis in South Africa emerged within the wider impact of European colonisation and imperialism that uprooted many African people from their ancestral lands (Mudimbe, 1988; Nyamiti, 1984; Rodney, 2012). Any focus on land first necessitates a critique of human relationships within society. The imagined hierarchical order of governance in the construct of imperial societies has consistently consecrated the privileged space (religious, economic, social and political) between the rich and the poor, the land owner and the landless. In these societies, inequality became a divine attribute that legitimised the hierarchical privileges that distanced the powerful from the powerless (Harari, 2011). The judicial system was organised to legalise the enslavement of land by the powerful owners and alienate the powerless indigenous peoples from their relationship with the land. The significance of race and gender in regard to land and ownership in South Africa cannot be understated. Scholars argue that land issues are sources of racial violence, and at worst violence against women and children (Jacobs, 1998; Liphapha and Albertyn, 1997; Mathye, 1997). Jerry Pillay (2016) notes that during apartheid, black people could not own land in ‘white areas’, meaning that black women were the most affected by apartheid and land ownership in South Africa. Women, especially black women, have historically been marginalised in various aspects of life. With marginalisation, there has also been exploitation and violence, and land tenures are another aspect where women’s lives are met with violence.

One should take into account the role that institutional Christianity, especially Afrikaner Calvinism, has played. It was underpinned by racial segregation and is still being used in some quarters to sacralise the hierarchical order within society and legitimise racism and land enslavement (Kaunda, 2017; Pheko, 1984). This is captured well by Jomo Kenyatta, the first president of Kenya, who underlined: ‘when the missionaries arrived in Africa, the Africans had land and the missionaries had the Bible. They taught us how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land, we had the Bible’. ¹ Indeed, scholars contend that in many ways colonisation and land dispossession in Africa was possible because Christianity backed the process as inspired by God (Amponsah, 2013; Lephakga, 2015). Undeniably, the three ingredients of economics, racial stratification and Christianity were utilised by colonialists to work together as strategic allies to create the dominant process of acculturation that reduced black Africans and their land to servitude.

Land justice has returned to the political and economic agenda because of the political efforts of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party and its policies of prioritising land justice for the poor. The ruling African National Congress (ANC) has also seized the opportunity in the political climate and is expressing its commitment to ‘expropriating land without compensation’ to be redistributed to marginalised groups. In his State of the Nation address in 2015, then President Jacob Zuma stated that there would be ‘land expropriation without compensation’ (Sihlobo and Kapuya 2018). Wandile Sihlobo and Tinashe Kapuya (2018) reported that ‘the ANC argued that the proposed approach to land reform would be guided by sound legal and economic principles, and would contribute to the country’s overall job creation and investment objectives’. President Cyril Ramaphosa in his State of the Nation address in January 2018 argued that poverty still divides us along race and gender lines. It suffices to note that land issues affect more black South Africans than the white minority. In his Good Friday sermon at the Covenant Fellowship Church International in eSikhaleni in KwaZulu-Natal, President Ramaphosa argued further that, ‘The land will be returned to people within the confines of the law, while also calling on landowners to share the land’ (News24, 2018). The ANC believes that the church has a role to play in the search for an appropriate solution to the land question in South Africa. For instance, during the Reverend Henry Reed Ngcayiya memorial lecture in King William’s Town in the Eastern Cape, the ANC chairperson, Gwede Mantashe, said, ‘The church has a critical role to play in nation-building and helping the ANC find its way around strategic issues such as the land question’. Thus the ANC, while calling for expropriation of land without compensation, does not give a clear framework for implementing such a call, and how it will work out remains unclear. However, it is clear that the call is not for the liberation of land from human enslavement, but rather the transference of land from one slave master to the other.

This article engages the question of land in South Africa based on the jubilee notion, underpinned by a decolonial theological perspective. Elsewhere we have argued that decolonial theology struggles for decolonisation, liberation and restoration of the African idea of land traditionally informed by eco-relationality (Kaunda and Kaunda, 2018: 176). Decolonial theology sees eco-relationality as a way of understanding, engaging in, acting in, perceiving and living in radical and decisive relationships; and a mutually interacting influence between humanity and all of creation – and God.

‘A Luta Continua’: Decolonial Theology of Land

The ancient Israelite notion of jubilee has had a powerful influence on the religious identity and imaginations of both Jews and Christians. Jubilee is the fruit of God’s compassion and is effected by the divine initiative as a gift to humanity. The concept of jubilee has gone through a series of reinterpretations throughout the history of ancient Israel and early Judaism, as a result of shifts in human understandings of God (West, 2006). However, jubilee was given by God in response to ‘the socio-economic context (Lev. 25; see also Deut. 15:1–3, 12–15, Jer. 34:8–16)’ as the embodiment of a divine vision for the restoration of eco-relationships (West, 2006: 406). West (2006: 406) argues that ‘jubilee was a legal, structural mechanism’ to ensure that there was no institutionalisation of poverty and class segregation. It was engineered to avert structural entrenchment of injustice and exploitation resulting in the complete breakdown of eco-relationality. Indeed, jubilee laws underpinned not only the restoration of land to the dispossessed (Leviticus 25:37-38), but also a period of rest for the land itself (Leviticus 25:4-6). This preserved land dignity and its intrinsic value beyond its instrumental value for human beings. Jubilee was given as vision of liberation for those whose circumstances forced them into slavery (Leviticus 25:39-55). In other words, jubilee laws have not only legal protection but liberation for all the marginalised (the land itself is categorised as such), and therefore they help to break the vicious cycle of debt and enslavement compounding systemic exploitation and intensifying patriarchal domination of both humanity and the land (West, 2006: 406).

Thus, the concept of jubilee is utilised by Christian scholars on the basis of its grounding ethical principles of justice and liberation. It is perceived as a way of knowing, interacting and acting informed by decisive commitment to God’s mission of eco-relationality, justice, equality and liberation of all creation (including human beings). This is in keeping with the central concern of African cultural heritage foregrounded in the quest for harmony and maintaining the equilibrium of forces between the natural and supernatural elements (human and nonhuman and so on) (Magesa, 1977). The land is sacred and perceived as a theatre of divine revelation and activity where information is transmitted through the created order. In this system of thought, human beings have obligations to maintain relational equilibrium with the land from which they were created. The land, therefore, forms the core of African identities (Idowu, 1969). Many African societies conceived of the land, like all God’s creation, as belonging solely to God, and thus inalienable (Yalae, 2008). For example, the Himba people of Namibia believe that the land is intertwined with God and entrenched with the social, political and spiritual dimensions of their lives (Kaunda and Hewitt, 2016). The land is so central to the Himba spirituality that to take it is equivalent to taking away their whole existence. This means no human can claim ownership of land, not even the traditional leaders, only God. This is in contrast to arguments that regard the land as God’s gift to humanity (Lensch, 2001). In many traditional African societies, the land belongs to God and human beings have the privilege of inhabiting it because they belong to the land and to God. In this worldview, the land does not belong to people; rather people belong to the land (Kaunda and Hewitt, 2016). For example, Zambian Bemba people believe that ‘a dead person returns to the land, a dead piece of land does not become human’. The community recognises the land as an important divine means for human interaction with God and wealth creation. God therefore created the land as the basis of the community from which all human beings and all creation have equal rights to benefit.

In the many African cosmologies, the land can be alienated and can destroy its inhabitants. This happens when the land is abused through misuse or used in ways that have the potential to damage its divine integrity. The ancestors were regarded as divinely entrusted with custodianship of the morality that governs the human relationship with the land: if morality is abused, as Steve Nwosu (2004) has stated, it can bring ruin and misfortune to the entire community. Africanists like Magesa (1977: 77) observe: ‘Whenever there is a breach of order in the universe as established by God through the ancestors, humanity must see to it that harmony is restored. Failing this, humanity will suffer’. Kä Mana (2002) argues that apartheid broke the African imaginaire – the very foundation upon which societies were constructed. Ka Mana (cited in Dedji, 2001: 158) stresses that in ‘contemporary life in Africa, a natural wholeness has been broken, a natural unity fragmented, and natural relations impaired’. For these Africanists, the contemporary African struggles can only be understood and appreciated within the framework of a colonial breach in cosmological harmony.

The land, as Nelson Torres (2008: 99) has noted, has been subjected to unequal relations of power that have distorted and perverted the life-world of eco-communities in Africa. Through colonisation of the black people and the land, white violence was normalised through the promotion of conventional hegemonic patriarchal systems and policies (Vaai, 2018). For example, under the traditional systems in many Zambian ethnic groups, such as the matrilineal Bemba of the Northern Province, both men and women had equal access to and control over productive resources such as land (Keller et al., 1990). The equal access to the land was undermined during the colonial period, when men were encouraged to cultivate the land to raise taxes for the colonial administration (Kajoba, 2002; Kaunda, 2016; Keller et al., 1990). The introduction of colonial capitalism began to erode traditional notions of the land and made local communities more yielding to a mechanistic view of the land.

There is a need to remind ourselves that in the 19th century’s prevailing philosophies of social Darwinism, with their hierarchical concepts of human races and their characteristics (also called ‘the immutable hierarchy of races’), white Europeans were placed at the top and black Africans at the bottom of the pyramid. The land and other creation had no categorisation in this pyramid. Andrejs Kulnieks et al. (2013: 192) and others point out that the land and other elements of creation were conceptualised within ‘mechanized metaphors of domination’ that reduced them into lifeless machines subject to scientific observations, described in the title of Carolyn Merchant’s (1980) book as ‘the death of nature’. Colonialism designed a new social order in which the land was enslaved (Kaunda, 2016).

The rise of the apartheid system of thought not only reduced black South Africans to a subhuman category, but went further to subjugate and steal the dignity and intrinsic value of the land, thereby reducing it to a commodity and private property. These asymmetrical power relations, as Immanuel Wallerstein (1996: 54–55) shows, have historically excluded and deprived the land of opportunities to participate effectively in the eco-community. Apartheid corrupted the black South African indigenous notions of the land. This is even clearer in the way King Goodwill Zwelithini of Zulu has used traditional land in ways which exclude the people from benefiting from its bounty. He has used his traditional power to keep control of land under the Ingonyama Trust rather than allowing tenants their customary land rights (Nicolson, 2018). This shows how the capitalist view of reality is now entrenched in traditional institutions such as the monarchy who thrive on utilising the community ethos as a tool to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich. This problem is a legacy of colonialism, which is pervasive in most post-colonial African countries. Oscar Van Heerden (2018) describes King Zwelithini aptly: ‘A king who uses and abuses his subjects and who rakes in millions of rand every month due to leasing and other agreements with mining houses, industry and corporations’. Tshepo Lephakga (2013) describes this situation as ‘flight from the black self’, as it demonstrates the extent of the damage that apartheid has done to traditional institutions and the terrible impact on black people’s notions of land. This neo-traditional approach to land issues by King Zwelithini not only shows the extent to which apartheid altered black Africans’ understanding of and relational interaction with the land (Mveng, 1994), but also raises the question of whether institutions such as the monarchy have any value for promoting social justice for the benefit of all in 21st-century Africa.

Decolonial theology argues that the disruption in eco-relationality wrought by colonial-apartheid is a foundational factor in wrong interpretations of the land and land struggles in post-apartheid South Africa. Colonial-apartheid, with its underpinning principle of appropriation of land from black South Africans, was a radical disruption in cosmological harmony or eco-relationality. The consequences were not only the loss of human belonging to the specific land but also a radical disintegration in eco-relational and sacred notions of the land as belonging to God under the entrusted guardianship of the ancestors. The religio-cultural identity of black South Africans as human beings was denied them.

The post-apartheid material struggles are a reflection of the legacy of the loss of a sense of eco-relationality with the land. The colonial-apartheid of land denotes continuous domination and exploitation of land as a commodity and private property. Scholars demonstrate how the land colonisation and apartheid has survived the formal abolition of juridical colonisation and apartheid, which resulted in political decolonisation (Tafira and Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2017). The continuous struggle for the land remains a fundamental feature of the legacy of apartheid in South Africa. Many social movements have formed in South Africa seeking rights to land access. For example, The Landless People’s Movement, the Abahlali baseMjondolo (Shack Dwellers), the Rural Women’s Network, the Siyaphambili Emajuba Farm Dwellers’ Association and many others with land grievances are supporting the expropriation of land without compensation. As we shall see, the ‘expropriation of land without compensation’ itself relates to the colonial-apartheid moral paradigm of land grabbing informed by neoliberalism, capitalism, commodification, privatisation, alienation and individualisation of land as private property. It appears that black South Africans are reproducing this unjust moral imagination, which functioned as a key pillar of colonisation. The question is, how can decolonial theology help in recapturing the divine vision of jubilee for restoration of eco-relationality and liberation of land in South Africa?

‘Proclaiming the Lord’s Favour’: A Decolonial Theology of Jubilee for the Land

Justice has returned to the political and economic agenda of South Africa. However, as already argued, African identity is intimately connected with living in wholeness with the land, and when there is alienation because of injustice then full restoration in eco-relationality is demanded. At the core of apartheid in South Africa and many other African lands was wealth transfer from the powerless to the powerful, using military might and religious indoctrination and pacification. The process of restoring land requires justice and dignity to the land itself and the people who depended on it for their livelihood. Thus, land liberation is not dispossession and does not constitute a narrow political struggle, but rather reconceptualisation of the idea of the land.

The land was not only stolen but rather colonised and enslaved. This means it needs to be liberated and restored to its rightful owner – God – so that it can fulfil its spiritual and theological mandate to restore eco-social equilibrium in South Africa. Jubilee is a liberative framework, which is embraced in Mary’s Magnificat discourse of Luke 1:51-53 that presents the Missio-Dei as one who has:

… performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.

Mary’s Magnificat shows that land liberation is wrapped up within a very strong patriarchal paradigm, hence just interaction with the land needs a land emancipation paradigm. Mary perceives the coming of Jesus as granting peace (shalom) on earth, which implies the liberation of all creation. Mary’s Magnificat makes a useful starting point for the decolonial theology of land. It is a radical declaration of jubilee for the marginalised (including the land). It challenges unethical sources of growth in wealth and critiques structural greed which is at the foundation of social inequality and injustice. It calls for prophetic advocacy for democratic land justice. This means South Africa has to move from promoting an unjust paradigm of understanding the land towards re-enacting a jubilee dialogue for engaging with the land for the common good. Mary’s Magnificat announces jubilee as a signpost of how human beings can restore just eco-relationality and as a hermeneutical lens to analyse the contemporary context with its different racial, ethnic, religious and cultural dynamics. Some scholars have reduced jubilee to the mere restoration or restitution of material things to those who were dispossessed (Malebe, 1997). This leads to a very superficial interpretation of the notion. Jubilee in the context of Jesus’ mission (Luke 4:18-20) is about the God of reversals who makes the mission of liberation of the land and eco-relational restoration the foundation for a humane society.

Walter Brueggemann (1977: 65) observes, ‘Landed people are tempted to create a sabbathless society in which land is never rested, debts are never cancelled, slaves are never released, nothing is changed from the way it now is and has always been’. Therefore, ‘jubilee … stands as a critique not only of massive private accumulation of land and wealth and large-scale forms of collectivism or nationalization’ (Wright, 2006: 296–297), but also of human self-idolatry and a tendency to ignore the divine moral order for each other’s well-being. From the beginning, humanity has continuously resisted promoting each other’s well-being (‘Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?”’; Genesis 4:9). What does it mean to be one’s ‘brother’s keeper’ amidst the struggle for land rights and justice in South Africa? Cain’s question remains relevant in a contemporary society permeated with the unquenchable desire for self-fulfilment at the expense of others, especially the marginalised. Martin Luther King famously said ‘no one is free until we are all free’. There will never be true peace in South Africa without land justice. Until apartheid ideology that keeps the land in slavery is completely abandoned and both black and white reclaim their humanity to enable them to sit meaningfully at the table, enacting radical racial-relational reconciliation in order to promote balance in power, land reforms will not yield reform for the marginalised. The argument is that land struggle is part of a much bigger problem concretised over decades of racial segregation – eco-relational alienation. The contemporary failure to understand and seek for an adequate solution to the eco-relational problem at its fundamental level only leads to further alienation, as could be seen from the emotionally charged reactions to US President Donald Trump’s tweet on the expropriation of land with compensation. ² Jubilee as liberation has to do also with God reconciling the land to himself and calling human beings to participate in God’s mission of restoration of vital relationships at every level of social life (human to human, human to other creation human to God and God to all creation), so that God can ‘reconcile all things to himself’ (Colossians 1:20).

Jubilee announces a win-win situation in which the land which was taken away from the poor or the most vulnerable sector of society and commoditised for the empowerment of the privileged class within society was restored through rebuilding broken relationships between the rich and the poor. This is not redistributive justice in terms of merely returning the land to the poor. It is first and foremost the promotion of socio-relational justice. However, there can be no socio-relational justice without reconciliation and there can be no reconciliation without socio-relational justice (Riseman et al., 2010: 71). This means reconciliation and socio-relational justice are inherently and mutually reinforcing principles and foundations for transformation in eco-relationality, and only happen in the realm of seeking radical conceptual decolonisation and transformation in the balance of power. Jubilee is a model of decolonial dialogue focusing on reconciliation, re-conceptualising, reconstructing and rebuilding altered relationships between the former coloniser and former colonised with a vision that the marginalised have access to resources such as skills and finances to help them participate in God’s mission to make the land productive for the common good. With the traditional jubilee context this is important in order to minimise the possibility of the poor re-selling the land after jubilee. Interpreting jubilee within decolonial theology highlights that liberation of the land is not a matter of merely changing frames of thinking and approaches to issues of land. Rather a critical approach to decolonising the notions of land is needed in order to promote a relevant jubilee articulation of land. Decolonial theology perceives restoration of eco-relationality as the core of just human interaction with the land. This approach seeks to promote a shared vision of society more aligned with God’s intention for human interaction with the land.

As the ancient jubilee was declared on the Day of Atonement (Lev. 25:9), the concept always carries with it as foundational, relational restoration through reconciliation and justice. Socio-economic redemption and restoration are only meaningful to the extent that authentic relationships are restored as a part of God’s redemption and restoration of his people from injustice to one another and to God himself. The restoration in eco-relationality has always been at the core of jubilee imaginations, which in many ways bears an affinity to the African quest for the restoration of eco-social harmony.

The mission of Jesus is a response to the collapse of relationality foundations which has resulted in an abnormal situation in social relations. This abnormal situation, which remains a legacy of colonialism, manifests in gender inequality, racial segregation, economic injustices, political corruption and ecological destruction – all this is an ‘assemblage of relationality’ (Vaai, 2018: 1–2). Humanity has lost the relational foundations upon which ‘the fullness of life for all’ should be anchored. Every action of Jesus in the gospels was about the restoration of eco-relationality. There is no possibility of realising the fullness of life for all without the restoration of authentic relationships. Therefore, proclaiming jubilee in the light of Christ necessitates the integration of spiritual transformation with religious, social, economic and political transformation to enable South Africans to understand God’s ownership of the land and his grace for humanity to belong to the land as sojourners on earth.

This argument is clearly stated in Psalm 24:1, ‘The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world and all who live in it …’. According to this unequivocal statement, the earth and every creature in it belong only to God. Human beings only participate in the mission of God’s care for creation. That means that providential care is an attribute of God, who as Trinity is by his very nature a caring God. Hence, Jesus’ mission on earth was nothing but the actualisation of divine care presented in Isaiah 61:1-2 in the setting of a jubilee proclamation. Jesus is an embodiment of jubilee, and demands a structuring of all present socio-relational structures on the basis of the principles of the Kingdom of God (Fuellenbach, 1995). Jesus’ preoccupation with radical transformation of relationships through repentance and reconciliation, within the jubilee tradition, was intended to include the restoration and renewal of eco-relationships. Therefore, the divine mandate of care (stewardship) for creation in Genesis 2:15 is a participation of humanity in God’s mission of care for the world. The care for creation emerges organically from the intrinsic character of the Triune God. It is important to underline that God did not only create all things, but also actively sustains all things (Hebrews 1:1–2:8). Therefore, all human care, in this perspective, can only be understood as privileged participation in and extension of the triune God’s care. The Psalmist’s view of reality bears a striking affinity to the traditional understanding of divine ownership of the land. Therefore, the contemporary South African struggle over the land is a struggle over meaning that takes place in the language alienated from God’s understanding of the land.

South Africans are in urgent need of the restoration of eco-relationality in which according to Isaiah 11:6, ‘The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them’. This scripture demonstrates that restoration of relationships and living in solidarity is a way to close the breach in the web of life and restore equilibrium. It is about sharing resources, skills and humanity, and promoting the mutual common good in inhabiting and interacting with God’s land. The question is, how can South Africa emphasise eco-relationality in the process of dealing with land issues?

It will take politicians to stop land politicisation and engage the land as a living being with intrinsic value and dignity derived from its Creator. This requires us to overcome the anthropocentric understanding of land which will only reverse the previous transfer of the land from white masters to black masters. The notion of expropriation of land without compensation is a re-enactment and reproduction of apartheid which reduced the value of the land to its utility for humans. Such an approach was normalised during apartheid and is reinforced by post-apartheid politicians. This conception justifies human domination of land. However, jubilee calls for reconciliation embedded in justice, gender equality, racial equality, class equality, authentic repentance and seeking liberation of land from human enslavement so that all inhabitants of South Africa can benefit from the bounty God has endowed it with. Then the mantra ‘South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white’ will become true.

Conclusion

The legacy of apartheid with its inequalities informed by individualistic desires for personal gain remains deeply entrenched in the narrative of land adopted in South Africa. Contemporary neoliberal economic narratives appear to underlie every political discourse on land, including land expropriation without compensation. With no doubt about its many benefits, it negatively shapes the human understanding of land and constructs of relationships with one another in relation to land issues. What has often been ignored or not paid much attention to is that for black Africans, the land belongs to God under the custodianship of their ancestors. However, since ancestral traditions are not normative to all South Africans, religious institutions, which remain the most trusted public institutions in South Africa, could potentially fill the ancestral vacuum in the contemporary land struggle (Louw and Koegelenberg, 2003). It is the breach in cosmological order that has led to people being landless in the land, of which God entrusted custodianship and stewardship responsibility to their ancestors (Deuteronomy 32:8). We believe that contemporary religious situations have the potential to facilitate new forms of life-giving custodianship. This means there is a need to liberate the land, as it is still under apartheid. To liberate the land means to embrace African notions of the land, which have an affinity with the biblical traditions. The land has life and value inherited from its Creator, and no human being can own the land. This is why in Jewish cultures the land was given time to recuperate after a period because the year of jubilee was the year of restoration in eco-relationality.

Therefore, the jubilee discourse in Mary’s Magnificat seems to imply that those who are participants in the mission of God should be alongside the marginalised in their quest for reclaiming their relationship with the land. This is a radical departure from an enduring argument that has called for ‘reclamation’ (Modise and Mtshiselwa, 2013; West, 2000a) or ‘redistribution/restitution’ (Gibson, 2009, 2010; Malebe, 1997) of the land in South Africa to reclaiming eco-relationality based on human reconciliation with one another, the land/all God’s creation and God. This also implies that educating the people about who owns the land and how they should interact with the land is imperative in the process of reclaiming eco-relationality so that the nation does not sacrifice its social and economic mission. Therefore, it makes sense to articulate jubilee within the context of eco-relationality as the divine prescription of justice for a people with the inherent propensity for greed, covetousness and materialism.