The whole business of land ownership and “restitution” is an interesting one legally and historically because almost all land everywhere once belonged to somebody else and was “stolen” by colonisers or conquerors.
The Vikings swiped huge chunks of land, the Romans established a vast empire by the simple means of beating up whoever lived there and moving in. The Spaniards swiped most of South America from the Aztecs and Incas.
The Moors conquered Spain. In 1626 a group of Dutch settlers landed on an island on a North American river, found it inhabited by a tribe of peaceful local folk, handed them a bag of shiny trinkets and claimed to have bought the island and named it New Amsterdam.
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The English didn’t like this because they wanted it, so they sent a fleet of warships under the command of the Duke of York, captured New Amsterdam, kicked out the Dutch governor Peter Stuyvesant (a cranky old bugger with a wooden leg and a nasty temper) and renamed the island New York. (The Dutch settlers weren’t actually unhappy about this because Peter Stuyvesant punished them for playing tennis on Sunday when they should have been in church, but that’s another story.)
History takes curious twists and turns, and who knows, one day that island might become New Moscow, New Beijing or even New Pretoria. The British, we all know, had dreams of conquering the globe.
Those dreams have faded quite rapidly. Here in the south of Africa we tend to forget there were black conquerors even before there were white ones. Looked at historically, nobody ever owns land forever. No matter how many documents you have claiming that piece of the planet is yours, one day it will belong to someone else.
The title deeds to any property merely give the holder the right to look after that property until it is handed over to the next owner. Whether that piece of paper describes a shack in Bonteheuwel, a mansion in Constantia or a cattle ranch in the Free State, all it does is convey the right to look after it until it is handed over to the next owner.
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History can only judge us by whether we handed over our little patch of planet in a better or worse condition that the one we found it in.
All the passionate puffing of politicians will not change that one iota. It is up to each of us to determine whether we hand over our beautiful country to a generation of peaceful, happy people, or leave it to rust and decay and become a windswept, crumbling lair of cockroaches, rats and baboons.
Last Laugh
A priest and a rabbi found themselves sharing the same train compartment and got chatting about their respective religions.
“Tell me Father,” said the rabbi, “confidentially, did you ever have relations with a woman?”
“Actually, yes,” admitted the priest, “but that was many years ago. Tell me Rabbi, have you ever tasted pork?”
“Actually yes,” said the rabbi, “but that was many years ago.”
They travelled in silence for a while, then the rabbi said: “Better than pork hey?”
* Biggs writes a daily column, "Tavern of the Seas" for the Cape Argus newspaper.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Newspapers.