Landmarked

Landmarked opens with the author’s eye-witness account of the forced removal of a so-called ‘black spot’ in Kwapitela, Natal in 1981. This marks the beginning of both Cherryl Walker’s own journey in the strange world of South African land reform and of this remarkable book, with its rich mix of personal testimonies from victims of such removals, evocative photographs, and the author’s insights from her unusually varied vantage points of activist, academic, NGO researcher and, critically, within government as Chief Land Claims Commissioner for KwaZulu-Natal (1995–2000). She has exploited this with notable success. Interested outsiders have often reflected on why South Africa’s complex land reform programme failed to meet the high expectations of the early 1990s. Landmarked provides by far and away the most insightful explanation for this. It is a profound, subtle and nuanced study – and because of that might well irritate those, on both left and right, who prefer to remain in their blinkered comfort zones.

Archaeology · Geography · Government (linguistics) · Land reform · Political science · Restitution · Sociology · Witness · Gender Studies · History · Land Rights and Reforms · Law · Legal Issues in South Africa · South African History and Culture