ENGAGING COMMUNITY PERSPECTIVES IN SOUTH AFRICA: EVALUATING PUBLIC PARTICIPATION IN THE EXPROPRIATION OF LAND WITHOUT COMPENSATION BILL
Authors: SIYASANGA Ngwabeni , ONGAMA Mtimka 
Published: June 2024

The post-1994 era in the South African public imagination was envisaged to herald widespread
and transformative efforts to reverse the gross injustices and human rights violations inflicted over many
decades of apartheid and colonialism. One of the key measures initiated by the democratic government to
drive this nation building project was the land reform programme. The ‘land question’, which is a popular
tagline in South Africa when reference is made to land reform, has come to define the general discourse of
socioeconomic disadvantage and change in the post-apartheid and post-colonial period – similarly to other
former settler colonies in the African continent and the broader Global South. For South Africa though, this
specific issue has been characterised by numerous challenges and failures largely at the level of the state,
wherein a significant lack of public engagement, public participation and democratic redistribution was not
being done according to ‘the will of the people’. On several occasions, the South African state has gone on
a ‘solo crusade’ to implement the land reform programme under complex conditions that are largely
unfavoured by ordinary people ‘on the ground’ – especially those who were the primary victims of land
dispossession under colonialism and apartheid. As a result, over the past few years, indigenous black
communities across the country especially in (semi)urban and township areas have voluntarily ‘occupied’
land at their own will and sometimes ‘illegally’, to take up settlement space and determine their lives on the
land of their birth. Beyond the public discourse of ‘land invasions’ and ‘failed land reform projects’, this
study was conducted to closely understand the extent to which public engagement and participation has been
integral in the systematic mechanism(s) to transform the patterns of land ownership and control in the
democratic South Africa. To do this, the site of KwaZakhele, Silvertown, in Port Elizabeth was selected to
conduct the study. Methodologically, qualitative semi-structured interviews were utilised to conduct the study
and the Marxist Concept of Citizenship was selected as a theoretical framework for the study by the
researcher. The study has found that, amongst the general legislative and political shortfalls of public
participation breakdown, there are other deep seated structural socioeconomic issues that are at the root of
the problem – such as economic inequalities and very low prospects of social mobility – which collectively
reproduce the persistent inadequacies of political instability and social unrest in the area. The study
recommends an astute combination of ‘bottom-up’ active citizenship and major socioeconomic
transformation in the area as a systematic and structural mechanism to empower the community of
Silvertown to be the champion of its own liberation struggle for the freedom of its people to own land and
democratically participate in their own governance, self-determination, and prosperity.