**7. Endangered lives continue to be normalised**

I became concerned when even some black people who were supposed to have supported the brother in Mamelodi started criticising him and his family for his lost child when the pipes burst. I am referring to the case where Mike Mshiane and his Wife, Vinolia Sikele, lost a child when the water pipes burst below their five-year-old shack in Mamelodi East [35]. For me this incident took the child's life because of the land problem more than anything else. My argument is that if the land redistribution programme had not been delayed and this couple got the land to put their shack or house on good land, their child would still be alive today. They were left without a choice, but to erect a shack in the wrong place because the land issue is still to take more decades to discuss. I do not want to talk about the Alexandra community, the shacks of whom are always washed away whenever floods come through that Jukskei river. The consistent warnings whenever heavy rains and storms are predicted are made to people living in low-lying areas like Alexander and others because it is known that their houses and shacks will be damaged and even taken away. McCain [36] confirms this in his report entitled "Heavy rain causes flooding in parts of Pretoria, with more rain expected." In 2013 some homes of people were swept away by floods alongside the Tugela River in KZN because that was the only piece of land those people would call a home [37]. The lives of those without land remain at risk all the times. Without denying that these calamities and challenges happen in other countries also, the author's argument is that within the context of landless people in South Africa, these would be avoided for some people if they had proper land to build their houses. Without evading the possibilities of natural calamities and disasters like drought, pests and invasions which the author is aware of, it is important to maintain the focus of this specific study, keeping in mind that the future research must attend to those issues for continuity's sake. These are not the only challenges connecting to the topic, but poverty and unemployment as well, but for the sake of space and focus, the author will carry these into the future research.

It is the lives of the landless black people that are at risk there and yet they are expected to talk about reconciliation to someone who stays on a large portion of land. If we take a count of lives that were lost due to this delay of land redistribution, the statistics will show that the life of blacks is not a problem in South Africa. This level of inequality is also exposed during the lockdown due to the corona virus. Nocuze's [38] picture where people were cuing a very long cure to the very small toilet of a certain Nolusindiso Xaka of Khayelitsha is a practical example. These people's dignity is compromised while the lockdown measures of isolation are hindered. This cannot only be blamed on the lockdown measures, but also to the lack of land in which everyone could try to at least build his or her own toilet. It was also argued in that report that residents refused to move their shacks to make space for toilets, merely because there is no enough space left to do that ([38], p. 9).

### **8. Deprivation to basic services**

The 06h00 am news on Wednesday 05 November 2019 from Munghana Lonene (SABC Tsonga Radio Station) included a painful story of people who are starting to dig their wells to get water in Hamanskraal, just about 30 minutes-drive northwards of Pretoria. This is an entirely black township. It should be noted that a large inequality across South African provinces regarding basic services such as piped water, toilets, formal dwelling signals how the structuring of this poverty was meant to benefit the white dwelling places. According to Gradin [39], this was structured so that it could also enhance the racial disparities and seriously deprive the black people from economic opportunities**.** It sounds like a joke to expect someone without a toilet or a bucket toilet to reconcile with someone who has more than five toilets in a house in which only two people live. Practically, there is no equal lifestyle there that can draw these two different families closer to one another. The dignity of the other is undermined from the onset. I will close this section by quoting Gradin : "In summary, the legacy of apartheid and colonisation has left Africans with several drawbacks that make them more likely to be poor, such as living in rural areas or in the poorest provinces, higher fertility, less education, and poorer labour market outcomes, even if it is difficult to determine which of them is more relevant than the others." ([39], p. 194). In one of its broadcasting stations called "Munghana Lonene FM" the SABC indicated that in Merwe, a village outside Malamulele, people are sharing drinking water with their domestic animals (Munghana Lonene News, 06h30 on 11 October 2019). Another report from Limpopo indicated that a young girl, Humbelani Mudzanani was attacked by crocodiles and her body was found floating in the dam. This was because she was supposed to fetch water from the stream since they do not have water in the Tshitomboni village ([40], p. 9). The unfortunate and sad moment for this village is caused by the lack of delivery of one of the basic public services. It should be noted that while some are being killed by crocodiles for fetching water, others are not even fetching water since it is in their houses, and yet, we expect the two kinds of people to reconcile. It is difficult if not impossible to expect the person who sleeps in a linking shack with the one whose dogs are sleeping in a house with ceiling and air conditioner to be on the same level of live, let alone reconciliation. That is in line with what Feely, ([41], p. 1) argues when saying that dignity in every human being is intrinsic and cannot be separated from a human being. There is a clear indication that reconciliation which comes along with justice must not neglect the lost dignity of those who were stripped of the land by those who have the land. Although, the examples given to highlight the lack of service delivery may seem to be of a particular social or ethnic group, the author thinks that these are just examples, but the reality is that all ethnic groups are affected by this delivery. All nine provinces of South Africa have communities that are having such issues as water, sanitation and roads services. The most general one is that of the load shedding, which affects every citizen as well as visitors of the country. This can be summed up by Mazamisa's ([42], p. 213) who called the situation " a devastating effect on many communities and individuals."

*Land Redistribution: A Thorny Issue towards Reconciliation in a Post Apartheid South Africa… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.104380*

### **9. Fuelling of xenophobic attacks**

I am convinced that whenever the land and resources are less than the consumers, the likelihood is a conflict in the form of xenophobia or afroforbia. There is one biblical story that can be used to explain this further. In Mark 6:35–40 the disciples of Jesus Christ had only five loaves of bread and two fishes, while the estimated crown on the day were about 500. Since it was humanly impossible for the available food to feed the large number of listeners, the disciples were quoted saying:

*"This is a remote place," they said, "and it's already very late. Send the people away so that they can go to the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat." This was a way to evade the responsibility of being a brother or a sister in terms of sharing the resources. (Mark 6, pp. 35–36).*

The spirit of Ubuntu of sharing the little we have can often be challenged by the size of the resources we have. There are many ways of trying to evade responsibility when the challenge is that of sharing very limited resources. The current state of affairs in South Africa is characterised by the fact that it is those in the majority that do not have land. It does not mean that it is not a right for everyone to have a piece of land, but the government is in the same corner which the disciples of Jesus found themselves in when confronted by a large crowd with very little food. It is possible to think of solving the problem by sending the crowds home to enjoy the little resources without being faced by hungry people. Hatred among South Africans can also be fuelled by lack of land while others have it in abundance.

One of the reasons given for the xenophobic attacks in South Africa was that the foreigners are taking their jobs because they are ready to be paid peanuts. This is because the locals have trade unions that give the farm owners a tough time and instruct them to pay the workers decent living wages as well as giving them living conditions in their workplaces. Among others, many farm workers have been complaining that they stayed on the farms for many years and yet they do not have the right to own the land on which they can bury their loved ones. The experiences of the clash between residents and municipality law enforcement staff like those reported from Mfuleni has become a normal order of the day because the majority of black people do not have a piece of land just to put their houses or shacks. This is exactly what Merten [3] refers to in her report with sad pictures of the people with their belongings without roofs since they were buildings were destroyed, when she said: "Land ownership in South Africa remains a contentious issue, while calls for redistribution grow louder." Marten also believes that an access to land is one of the keys to uplift unemployment. It is suspected of course, that one of the reasons the land distribution is a very slow issue it's because the government loves money and they expect people to pay for the land, meanwhile the majority of the poor in the country are poor and unemployed. VeIi Hlatshwayo [43] was quoted saying: **"**The attacks against blacks by South Africans show that there is a need to continue the revolution. Until wealth and land is equally distributed among the citizens, such story will continue." This is a clear indication that the reconciliation that is being expected in South Africa is still trapped in the web of the issue of land.

Besides xenophobic violence, the black local people often engage in battles over the land issue. In the programme entitled "Tiko axi etleri"the SABC Radio Station Munghana Lonene reported that one man was hospitalized as a result of the shooting that occurred between the two local village leadership over a land dispute outside

Tzaneen. This is the village under the local chief Nkuna and the Mkgolobodo village which fought about a land grabbing until guns were used. The destruction of people's homes and their goods was also mentioned (SABC, Tiko, 19 January 2022: 06h00-07h00).
