Race and the land question
Lessons from South Africa, the USA, and Cuba
Control of land is important for nations and empires, because it is the material foundation of agricultural production and the natural resources necessary for manufacturing and industrial production. The taking of land through force and violence by groups/nations/empires with more advanced forces of arms is, in general, what has driven human economic development since the agricultural revolution eight to ten thousand years ago. I have coined the phrase “the dialectic of domination and development” to refer to this phenomenon. (See “The dialectic of domination and development: The role of conquest in human history,” May 21, 2021).
But then comes the question of justice. The conquered peoples have a natural tendency to resist, in one form or another. In the modern era of European colonial domination of the world (from 1492 to 1914), the colonized peoples have learned through anti-colonial struggle that their own effective control of their land is the key to their economic development. For this reason, the countries in development in the Global South have repeatedly claimed control of land and other natural resources to be the most important human right.
However, public discourse has not entirely kept pace with the political conceptions emerging from the Global South. In spite of the South’s understanding of the centrality of the land question with respect to the issue of human rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948, does not address the land question. This seminal document puts forth important principles and concepts with respect to civil, political, economic, and social rights, which shape the work of international organizations with respect to human rights. But it does not address the importance of control of land in enabling the colonized to exercise their right to development, necessary for the protection of socioeconomic, political, and civil rights.
So, the nations of the Global South have developed their own international organizations. They established the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961, which worked toward the formulation of a declaration on a New International Economic Order, approved by the UN General Assembly in 1974. This fundamental proclamation in the name of the neocolonized peoples of the earth addressed the land question in two ways. First, it affirmed the right of nations to control their natural resources. Secondly, it recognized the right of nations to nationalize land, with or without compensation.
Article Four, Section e, of the Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order declares that the new international economic order should be founded on, among other principles, the principle of the:
Full permanent sovereignty of every State over its natural resources and all economic activities. In order to safeguard these resources, each State is entitled to exercise effective control over them and their exploitation with means suitable to its own situation, including the right to nationalization or transfer of ownership to its nationals, this right being an expression of the full permanent sovereignty of the State. No State may be subjected to economic, political or any other type of coercion to prevent the free and full exercise of this inalienable right.
In addition, the Declaration affirms the right of the restitution of lands taken by European colonial domination. Article Four, Section f, proclaims “the right of all States, territories and peoples under foreign occupation, alien and colonial domination or apartheid to restitution and full compensation for the exploitation [and] depletion of, and damages to, the natural resources and all other resources of those States, territories and peoples.”
Reinforcing these rights, Article Four, Section h, declares “the right of the developing countries and the peoples of territories under colonial and racial domination and foreign occupation to achieve their liberation and to regain effective control over their natural resources and economic activities.”
Therefore, during the transition from colonialism to neocolonialism, it was the collective view of the peoples of the Global South that their nations possessed the right of restitution of land that had been taken from them during the colonial process. They saw the right of restitution as central to the exercise of their right to gain control of their land, their natural resources, and their national economies.
In my view, the anti-colonial resistance of the Global South can and ought to be understood from the perspective of Marx’s historical materialism, from which one sees an unfolding Hegelian dialectic in the material world, an unfolding historical and worldwide evolution from colonialism to anti-colonial resistance, and then to synthesis, in the form of the construction of a more just post-colonial world. As envisioned and proposed by the Global South, the synthesis must be built on a foundation of cooperation and joint construction by colonizer and colonized, including not only the retaking of land and natural resources by the colonized, but also the appropriation of the scientific and technical knowledge that has accumulated thanks to the colonial process. Such appropriation, the Global South understands, is most effectively attained through mutually beneficial cooperation. From this perspective, post-colonial agrarian reform, land restitution, and land redistribution are seen as central to post-colonial societal construction
In practical terms, mutually beneficial cooperation involves full and just compensation to the landowners; they should not be punished for the social sins of their foreparents. Win-Win cooperation is the only possible road forward, because, in the first place, the landowners and their scientific and economic partners possess the knowledge and technology—accumulated through decades and centuries of colonial domination—that are necessary for the continued economic development of the nation. And in the second place, because if landholders do not have a stake in the new order, they will use their resources to mount organized resistance to change.
Win-win cooperation, therefore, is central to the stage of synthesis in the unfolding Hegelian dialectic in the material world, as the nation moves from colonialism, then to anti-colonial resistance, and finally to post-colonial cooperative construction, using the knowledge and technology made possible by the colonial process itself.
In the best-case scenario, in the transition to a new post-colonial economic order, not only are landholders compensated, but also incentives are established, motivating compensated landholders to invest in technological, industrial, and agricultural sectors that are central to the nation’s plan for further economic development.
In my last commentary, I discussed the failure of the African National Congress to develop a comprehensive land reform program that would unite all sectors in the construction of a democratic post-apartheid South Africa. The problem was compounded by the resistance of white farmers to agrarian reform, and by the failure of the South African government to prioritize the economic and social development of new generations of black urban residents whose families had been displaced from the land. I noted that the limited gains of agrarian reform in post-Apartheid South Africa have given rise to polarization and political instability, characterized by black dissatisfaction and political radicalism, which in turn provokes economic and physical insecurity among white farmers. (See “Land, race, and South Africa: The blocking of the economic emancipation of the people,” May 30, 2025).
Today I continue to reflect on the centrality of the land question with respect to the construction of democracy, drawing upon the cases of the United States and Cuba. In both cases, land reform was less than what one would hope. In the case of the USA, the necessary land reform and restitution was doomed to failure, inasmuch as it was driven by a competition for power between competing regional elites. And in the case of Cuba, the full possibilities of land reform following the triumph of the Revolution were blocked by the myopic intransigence of the hegemonic power in decadence.