Durban - Unless the ongoing issue of land ownership is resolved, South Africa will battle to tackle poverty, inequality, and unemployment, President Jacob Zuma said on Friday.
Speaking at the send-off for 19 students going to study in Nigeria, Zuma said the problems of poverty, inequality, and unemployment were directly linked to the issue of land.
“It is important for us to know that the poverty we have, the extent of it, the inequality, the unemployment, these three are the children of the land hunger. And if we have not resolved that issue we will continue for many years to come to have generation after generation [in poverty]. The cycle of poverty as they call it.”
Zuma said he did not believe black South Africans were dispossessed of their land only since 1913.
“The first secretary general of the ANC made a statement after the enactment of the law, the Land Act of 1913, that the black people went to sleep with their land and the following day when they woke up they were pariahs in their own country, worse than slaves.”
Zuma said he believed blacks had lost most of their land before the promulgation of the 1913 Land Act during the time of the Union of South Africa.
“[The year of] 1913 was consolidating or legalising. It was not taking the land. Very little land was taken after 1913. Poverty, inequality, and unemployment is not god-made. It is man-made.”
The 19 students are sponsored by the Jacob G Zuma Foundation to study at the American University of Nigeria.
During the send-off, Zuma also handed a cheque of R500,000 from his foundation to the SA National Defence Force Education Fund.
“South Africans can’t believe that a man who never went to school is a president and he must be attacked 24/7 by those who have perhaps very less appreciation of what is happening,” he said.
His failure to undergo formal schooling when he was young had been key to him forming his education trust. “The issue of education is a critical issue for our country. With us there was a very deliberate programme to exclude the majority [from education].” Since the end of apartheid, government had attempted to ensure such exclusion from education did not happen.
Zuma accused the media of never criticising whites who did not have the required qualifications.
“We are so unfair to ourselves, particularly with the blacks. There is no media that attacks even a single white person. There was one who was given a position, not a long time ago with just matric as an acting CEO. It was not a big deal. You can imagine if it was someone else.”
Mango Airlines CEO Nico Bezuidenhout was appointed acting chief executive of the national carrier SA Airways (SAA) for six months at the end of 2014. The board of SAA is chaired by Dudu Myeni, who is also executive chairperson of the Jacob G Zuma Foundation.
African News Agency