South Africans' anger over land set to explode
AFP
"Africa is for black people. Period. We need our land back and we're going to take it by force," said a woman amongst an angry crowd trying to occupy a field on the north-eastern edge of Johannesburg in South Africa.
She is wearing a red beret indicating her support for the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), a small, radical party which advocates the nationalisation of all land in South Africa.
In a country grappling with so many different challenges, land reform has recently emerged as a dominant and potentially explosive issue - the focus of furious political contestation and increasingly inflammatory rhetoric.
The field was empty, overgrown, unused, and far too much of a temptation.
"This is my boundary," said 50-year-old Christina Mashaba, striding through the long grass and pointing to a stick she had pushed into the ground, some 15 yards (13m) away.
"It's going to be my home… if the government will let me have the ground," she said, looking up, across the sunlit valley.
A little further down the gentle slope, an electrician called Ishmael Motswali was examining an area already littered with homemade flags and markers.
"I came to check if I can get a piece of land, and to see if it is legal," he said.
"I'm renting a place at the moment. In my beautiful country, after 20 years of democracy, you can understand the frustration. I just want a piece of land where I can put my family."
A few hundred metres further up the hill, at the entrance to the field, beside a brand-new housing estate, a large and increasingly angry crowd from the nearby township of Alexandra was confronted by a group of South African policemen, who were trying to seal the area, insisting that the land is private, and that "land-grabbers" would be dealt with harshly.
"Democracy?" scoffed a community leader called Mafasi Kubai, after listening to the pleas of a police captain.
"How can we participate when some are super rich and others are poor. Whites should be empathetic… but they are exploiting us."
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