Teaching Geography Workshop 5: Sub-Saharan Africa – Part 1: South Africa
JIM BINKO:
In the region of sub-Saharan Africa, European colonization has had
tremendous and long-term impact on land division. As we see in the next
half hour, South Africa's notorious legacy of race-based laws of apartheid
profoundly affected the lives of the country's population, removing many
people from ancestral lands.
Such land seizure is explored in Geography Standard 13: How the
forces of cooperation and conflict among people influence the
division and control of Earth’s surface. Today, with the end of
apartheid, South Africa is taking remarkable steps toward a more positive
future. At the heart of this transformation, though, is the volatile issue of
land reform. This process is exemplified in Geography Standard 16:
The changes that occur in the meaning, use, distribution, and
importance of resources. This standard deals with factors that
determine the value of one piece of land over another, as well as how
distribution of that land changes over time. In our case study, we will see
how one geographer is studying South African land use and distribution.
Our objectives here are twofold: First we should be able to analyze how
cooperation and conflict influence the development of social,
political, and economic entities.
Second, we can evaluate the geographic impacts of policy decisions
related to the use of resources.
We close the half hour in the ninth-grade classroom of Maureen Spaight.
Through a role-playing activity, her students gain a greater understanding
of the forces influencing land use.
(\choral group singing \in native language\)
NARRATOR:
MAGDALENA
SEHOLA:
NARRATOR:
In April 1994, South Africans participated in their nation's first democratic
elections and chose Nelson Mandela as their president. One of the
greatest challenges facing the new post-apartheid regime was to give the
majority black population access to the land from which they had been
forcibly removed.
They just came in and tell us that we have to move out. We said, "We
can't move out, because this land is, is ours. This land was bought by our
grandfathers in 1905." But they just moved us, just on account of jealous.
Apartheid... apartheid wasted our time.
Under apartheid, South Africa's black majority-- almost 90% of the
population-- was moved onto less than 15% of the land. These so-called
"homelands" were often marginal areas, with little rainfall and minimal
infrastructure. The white minority controlled 85% of the land, including the
richest, most productive areas. White commercial farmers who were
heavily subsidized by the government, prospered, while black farmers
struggled to eke out a living, practicing subsistence farming. There was a
distinct geography of apartheid, a geography of separateness based
upon race. As the government began to redress these injustices in 1994
and '95, land reform brought euphoric times.
WOMAN:
So really today, I don't know. Since this morning, I had one cup of tea.
And I feel that I'm so strongly, I can even jump just because I'm going
back to my land.
(\singing in native language\)
DAVID COOPER:
So the idea of the land reform program is to try and set right some of the
wrongs that were done under apartheid, and clearly that's not going to be
done overnight, so it's a long-term program.
INTERVIEWER:
Are you excited?
MAN:
Yeah...
(\laughs\)
Yes.
INTERVIEWER:
Tell me some of your plans. My plans... let's see. This side is going to be
herb but there, the front is going to be the flowers. Yeah, it's going to be
the flowers and the grass later, green grass... yeah. Our houses are
going to be built here.
NARRATOR:
People's euphoria was soon tempered by the scale and complexity of
land reform.
MAN:
When these people were removed, they didn't only lose land. They lost
the buildings on the land, they lost cattle when they were removed,
through the removal, they lost furniture. Some... there were even reports
of some people dying. So they have already suffered. They will be getting
much less than what they had lost when they were removed. The cases
that can be the most difficult are those that, um... where there are claims
to private land-- where white farmers, for example, have been saying,
"We don't accept that these people have claims to our land. This land
belongs to us."
NARRATOR:
There are many conflicting claims to land in South Africa. The
government has tried to work around this problem by underwriting the
cost of black citizens purchasing land from white farmers who are willing
to sell. This program aims to redress injustice but also to develop the
rural economy, where the black population lives in conditions of dire
poverty.
MAN:
Our challenge is not just to give people land because there is a demand
for land, but to... to... approaching this matter in a fair manner to ensure
that people get access to that resource which they will then use to the
benefit of the country as a whole.
NARRATOR:
Now, seven years after the transition to democracy, how is land reform in
South Africa progressing? What successes in securing justice and
promoting rural economic development can the government and the
people claim? So we are moving towards the westward, the Kalahari.
NARRATOR:
Michigan State University geographer Brent McCusker is studying a rural
area in the northern province to analyze the impacts of reform.
NARRATOR:
During apartheid, this was a large, white-owned commercial farm of Xthousand acres. In 1995, 396 black South Africans purchased the land as
the Mashambalogu communal property association, or CPA. Their
representatives meet monthly to plan development of their land. Brent
joined them during one of his recent research trips.
McCUSKER:
And how are you moving forward?
WOMAN:
Well, we've got cattles that... We know that if this cattle will go rightly...
And then we're going to sell it and then we'll go forward. And we are
producing some other things to plant a garden-- tomatoes and
everything-- so we think those things, also, they are going to help us.
(\speaking \local language\)
TRANSLATOR:
For too long, those who could improve living conditions for the people
were denied access to land. But I think now that we have land, we can
produce and make an income and create jobs for others.
McCUSKER:
Do people come from maybe the government or the university to help
you, to teach you how to plant?
WOMAN:
Yes, they do, yes.
McCUSKER:
They do come. And how often do they come?
WOMAN:
They come once a week.
NARRATOR:
Brent takes the information he gathers from discussions and interviews,
and relates it to satellite images of the region, which vastly expands the
scale of his study.
McCUSKER:
You look at a satellite image, and you see it's got a very broad
perspective. It looks at very large swaths of the earth, and then you can
relate that to an individual story about a piece of land. And then it makes
sense-- you begin to understand larger social processes that happen.
NARRATOR:
Brent confirms his interpretation of the satellite images through a process
called "ground truthing."
McCUSKER:
One of the things that we have to do is we do have to empirically verify
what we've done and make sure it's right. And so what I did in South
Africa was to find a point on the satellite image that was particularly
interesting to me from a landscape point of view. I drive to the place. I
take my laptop computer with my satellite images already loaded-- I
already know where I need to go-- and I record that with a GPS unit. A
GPS unit is a Global Positioning System unit. It will tell me exactly on the
earth's surface where I'm standing at that moment. I can then take a
photograph of the landscape that I see and I can look at what the
photograph sees, versus what the satellite remote sensor sees, and
compare the two.
NARRATOR:
Finally, Brent combines the information from the satellite images and his
ground truthing to make a map of the changes in land use.
McCUSKER:
I generated this map by taking two satellite images, one from the year
2000 and one from the year 1989. I then classified the vegetative cover
on both images and then subtracted one from the other. Basically, I said,
"What was here in 1989, and now what's here?" What we see on the
Mashambalogu CPA is a lot of extensification. Extensification means
you're taking the same amount of land and you're using it less
purposefully.
NARRATOR:
All of the pink areas, for example, indicate land where there was
agricultural production in 1989 but in the year 2000, was mostly
grassland. There are a few areas of intensification-- red and dark-green
areas were agricultural or grassland, and are now residential. But overall,
the CPA's land is less productive today than it was in 1989. The owners
of Mashambalogu need resources and support if they are going to
become successful farmers.
(\speaking local language\)
TRANSLATOR:
It is good that the government has returned land to black people, but it is
also very important that the government train the people who own the
land now. Only with training can we make a better future for our farm.
McCUSKER:
It has been slow, but there are noticeable improvements in people's lives.
One of the largest and most substantial areas of improvement or
transformation is in that of women. Women, for the first time, are being
included in such projects. Before, they were simply left out. So there have
been substantial accomplishments in the land reform program. And it
doesn't mean that just because we don't see a lot of change now that
there won't be change in the future, and there may be a better program
that will, in the future, affect people in a more substantial way.
SEHOLA:
I grew up in the land like this. I stayed when I... I born in the farm where I
used to work for a white person for nothing. But now, when we've got this
land, to me, it's a big bargain. We thank God for that. If, really, this
community here will be one and doing some things going forward will, in
future... really, we're making a big fortune of future for us.
GIL LATZ:
There is, perhaps, no region more often described in terms of its
problems than sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, it is rich in resources, in
beautiful and varied landscapes and in the strength of its people. Yet the
profound economic, political and health care challenges that characterize
this region simply can't be ignored. Many of the roots of these problems
can be found in the troubling historical geography of colonialism.
Let's look at the political boundary system left behind by retreating
colonial powers. These borders have little relationship to the physical and
human geography of the areas they divide. The north-south orientation of
many of the countries in western Africa, for example, is at odds with the
climate, cultures and traditional migration patterns here.
Throughout the region, the states created by the colonial borders lack the
cultural and national unity so crucial to political stability in an emerging
state. It's also important to remember that the great majority of Africans
live today as their predecessors did-- by subsistence farming, herding or
both. This livelihood was changed little by colonialism.
As populations in these areas grow rapidly, there is a new urgency to
devise the institutions-- educational, governmental and economic-- that
can help Africa come to terms with the historical geography of
colonialism. One encouraging example is land reform. As seen in South
Africa, land reform is as important for righting the social injustices of the
past as it is for creating an effective rural economic development policy.
In these and many other ways, the emergence of democracies willing to
right the wrongs of the past can lead the states of Africa to participate
more fully in the opportunities of the 21st century.
SUSAN HARDWICK: The ownership and political control of rural land is a fascinating topic in
human geography. When South Africa ended the practice of apartheid,
they made a commitment to redistribute lands to black residents who
were forced off their lands. As you saw in this case study, they still have a
long way to go.
But land reform is possible. It happened here in Mexico, after a revolution
in the early 20th century. This family lives on an ejido, or collective plot,
taken from a large landholder. The ejidos had limited power and success,
and like South Africa, they often occupy marginal land.
Land reform is a critical need in much of Latin America. Here in
Guatemala, just three percent of the farmers control two-thirds of the
arable land, still used to grow coffee, bananas and sugar cane like this. In
the Russian Federation, resolving land ownership issues is a constant
problem. Here, privatization of state-owned land is just a small part of a
profound economic and social transition. Although the world is becoming
more and more urbanized, rural and agricultural land use and ownership
issues will continue to affect us all.
BINKO:
Now, how would you teach the central ideas presented in the case study
on South Africa to a class of adolescents? In the lesson that follows, our
teacher, Maureen Spaight, uses a geographic perspective as a unifying
element in pulling all of these influences together in ways that are
understandable from a ninth-grader's point of view.
Using steps of the inquiry method, and South Africa as her example, she
draws her students into an investigation of the forces of cooperation and
conflict and their impact on how land and resources are divided. We will
see students engaged in role-playing and other group investigations.
They use geography as a way of examining past and present trends in
land use and land ownership.
As you watch, identify how role-playing activities help students
analyze the relationships between the spatial distribution of
settlement and resources. Group activities provide the setting for
students to express their ideas and reach agreements before reporting
their findings to the total class. If we expect students to be productive,
articulate and informed citizens, they need planned opportunities such as
those used in Maureen's class, to study issues and articulate their views.
Let's watch as Maureen leads her students through an examination of
land use in South Africa.
MAUREEN
SPAIGHT:
There's a lot of activity going on in Africa today, okay, that... there are...
there are conflicts, based on leadership styles, based on types of
government; that overall, Africa is starting to emerge as many new
democracies-- not just one, but many, many of them-- all right? How do
they resolve their conflicts in terms of land: management of the land,
ownership of the land, use of the land? And that's what we're going to be
talking about today.
NARRATOR:
In this two-part lesson, Maureen Spaight's ninth-grade civics class
explores issues of conflict and cooperation surrounding land distribution
in South Africa. Maureen began the class with a review of the African
continent and its topography. Now she focuses on South Africa. All right,
let's zoom in here on a place called South Africa. Okay, this is where our
focus will be today, all right? What important location that we just
mentioned, Ryan, is in that land called South Africa?
RYAN:
The Cape of Good Hope?
SPAIGHT:
The Cape of Good Hope. Now, we're going to look today at that theme of
hope. This is a land that, like other places, has had conflicts, but they
also now have hope that those conflicts will be resolved.
SPAIGHT:
Whether I teach literature or civics or economics, I think I always have to
tie in the geography, because that's the integrating force. As a civics
teacher, I find that the history and the geography of South Africa
especially helps me. One of the themes that is prevalent throughout my
school year is for my students to know how democratic principles
evolved. South Africa's a perfect example. Here they have this... this
living... unfolding drama.
Colonization is really about three things. It's about taking three things.
And what would they be?
STUDENTS:
Land.
SPAIGHT:
To take someone's land, and then when you get there?
GIRL:
Money. To take their money or their labor, right, because labor is money.
And lastly, what else is taken in the end? Their...?
GIRL:
Power and... identity.
SPAIGHT:
Their power and their identity, thank you. So it's a matter of take land,
labor, identity. And that's what Paton was talking about. I'm going to take
a quick look here with you at some of the things that happen when one
group wants another's land. When we talked about Mandela and when
we talked about Biko, they referred to a place... like the Hausa tribe or
the Malawi tribe or the Zulus and the Swazis.
These are just a smattering of the thousand different culture groups and
language groups that are in Africa. All right, what happens when you take
another group of people... who move in... and try to align their culture with
the cultures that are already there? What... what happens? Can you do
that, Andy? Not easily, at least, can you?
Okay, here's our task. Taking a new land and deciding how are we going
to divide it, and you're going to have to represent someone else's
perspective.
NARRATOR:
Each group member is assigned one of five characters:
Each group
member is also given a name tag and a situation card with his or her
perspective on how the land should be used.
SPAIGHT:
You're going to come up with one plan-- just one for your whole group-and to do it in a way that will be good for others as well as for yourself.
BOY:
I have three kids.
STUDENTS:
I don't care about your kids Some people have 12 kids. So how are they
going to pay all the taxes for all the development? He's going to ship his
goods on our railroad. Then I make profit. So he'll keep his money... I'll
keep you full... We're the middleman. We only care about the money.
Yeah, I'll keep you full, I care about my end... I'm supposed to be... You
lose out. People get fed, though. ...from the World Health organization. I
want to industrialize. So do I, because I want money. So we all want to
industrialize, but you don't want to industrialize.
GIRL:
It's going to, like, ruin the land. It wouldn't be beautiful anymore. It'll repair
itself though.
BOY:
You need some of the land, a touch, so then you can be happy.
GIRL:
Like a reservation or something? Yeah. Yeah, but the reservation is
always the nasty part of the land. It's always, like, gross. Then give her
some good. No, give them the nasty. You guys, we have to compromise.
Give her the mountains. We can't build on mountains.
SPAIGHT:
I like to group and regroup, because I find that certain students have
different talents. Again, if we're talking about conflict, compromise and
working out solutions, we want to have all the talents and skills working
together.
BOY:
All right, Charlie, you're the doctor, so, uh, yeah, you talk about the
hospital.
STUDENTS:
I'm going to make a little map of my... I'm talking about the, like, factories,
because there'll be more jobs... How many plants... how many factories
are we going to have? Just the whole industrial area where any
companies that are environmentally safe can move into. But they have to
get inspected. Hospitals should be in a central location. The hospital's
going to be in a central location. What about the factory?
BOY:
And the factory, for me... The factories are kind of going to... All right,
and the recycling plant.
BOY:
Help make some... Help make medicine and stuff?
BOY:
Medicine-- he'll grow some medicine, like herbs. And, the, uh, what else
do we have? Nothing illegal. The recycling plant will help with, like, IVs
and needles and stuff, make those out of recycled things. Is there a
volunteer that will be the first group to get up? Okay, well, first we're
going to have a hospital, and that's going to be in the center of the whole
area, so it's same distance from everywhere, and then right outside that,
we're going to have... half of it is going to be industrial, for jobs. Out here.
And then the other half, on the other side of the hospital, is going to be
lots for homes. And we're going to put in a recycling plant.
SPAIGHT:
Where will you get the finances for this? How will you finance this whole
operation? Who will put in the money for industrial development, the
residential? Will the government be sponsoring this?
BOY:
Taxes and stuff. We won't overtax, but taxes, funds from the government.
Well, we'll probably... We're going to apply for a grant to clear out the
space for the industrial, and then we're going to, like, have different
companies apply for the... apply for the area.
SPAIGHT:
Could I ask each of you then to present your perspective, and why you
agree or disagree with this plan?
STUDENTS:
You want to go? Want me to go? Yeah, go. All right. I agree because the
hospital will provide assistance to injured people at a cheap cost they can
afford. It will also provide training for people who want to be a doctor,
therefore creating more jobs. I agree because all of the reserved land is
not going to be touched, so the animals can still live... whatever. And, um,
the industries and... they're going to have all good products, so the
recycling factory will be good for the environment. And that's why I agree.
GIRL:
I'm industrial. Um... the factory will promote business for others and I can
make money.
SPAIGHT:
And you will make money-- that's the bottom line, huh?
GIRL:
Nah, it's good for everybody else, because a lot of other people make
money, too, because they'll be getting jobs. And as long as everybody's
happy, then I'm happy too.
SPAIGHT:
Okay. And Mr. Farmer? Mr. D.J.?
BOY:
I agree because I... after I grow my crops, I can sell them to the, uh,
factories, and the factories can manufacture them and they ship them
down the railroad.
SPAIGHT:
And so that will keep a lot of jobs... going?
STUDENTS:
Yeah, yep.
SPAIGHT:
Okay, well, I think you did a very nice job.
BOY:
We are keeping... most of the land~ reserved for later use, if necessary...
Well, for later use, if necessary, so... we're going to be calling this our
reserve land. Um, we also have a section dedicated just... dedicated only
for industry. And... then we have a corner for farming and mining.
GIRL:
Well, I'm a little worried about how we manage the space, because it
doesn't look very... right.
(\laughter\)
SPAIGHT:
Very what, please?
GIRL:
Right, I guess. I don't know.
SPAIGHT:
It doesn't look very right. Could you explain that?
GIRL:
Well, I just don't think there's enough room for the people. And if you're
going to have a whole half of the area that's reserved for absolutely
nothing, then there's not a lot of room for industry. Funding is going to be
a problem because that looks like it's going to cost a lot of money, and
I'm sure the people aren't going to want to pay the taxes. It wasn't very
easy agreeing with Peter... Pietr. So I just think we need to work it out a
lot better.
SPAIGHT:
We've seen then, that the same piece of land can be used in many
different ways. And the issues are, are those ways compatible, are they a
win-win situation for all the players or at least most of the players, and, if
not, what accommodations can we make to the other people who don't
seem to be happy with that plan?
NARRATOR:
Maureen wraps up with a homework assignment. Students must read
one of five articles about Africa, analyzing the conflicts and potential
solutions.
SPAIGHT:
Good luck tonight with the play. I'll be there cheering for you, okay? And
have a good weekend.
BINKO:
Maureen Spaight understands that the historic and geographic
background to today's issues in South Africa cannot simply be told to the
students. Instead, we see her use question-based instruction to lead
students through the necessary research, analysis, and presentation of
the issues. I think the use of hats and other props is a clever, even
playful, way of helping students get into their roles and begin to see
issues from a personal perspective. This approach also supports their
development in taking a critical stance on issues, whether in the
classroom or in their own personal lives.
Also worth noting was the teacher's success in reducing the broad
concepts of cooperation, conflict and resources to three very specific
examples: land, money and power. These are concepts that are easily
understood by adolescents and stand a good chance of being applied
beyond the bounds of today's lesson.