Supreme Court changes ruling on forced removals, traditionally

From 1960 to 1983, the apartheid Government forcibly moved 3.5 million Black South Africans in one of the largest mass removals of people in modern history. There were several political and economic reasons for these removals. First, during the 1950s and 1960s, large-scale removals of Africans, Indians, and Coloureds were carried out to implement the Group Areas Act, which mandated residential segregation throughout the country.  As a result of this Act, all Black people living in so-called White areas had to be removed to new areas set aside solely for Black occupation. Second, African farm labourers made up the largest number of forcibly removed people, mainly pushed out of their jobs by mechanization of agriculture. While this process has happened in many other countries, in South Africa these rural residents were not permitted to move to towns to find new jobs. Instead, they were segregated into desperately poor and overcrowded rural areas where there usually were no job prospects. Third, removals were an essential tool of the apartheid government's Bantustan (or homeland) policy aimed at stripping all Africans of any political rights as well as their citizenship in South Africa. Hundreds of thousands of Africans were moved to resettlement camps in the Bantustans with no services or jobs. Initially a Cabinet order was sufficient to carry out an order to forcibly remove a group of people from their land. However, on 19 September 1985 a Supreme Court ruling declared that forced removals of communities from traditionally-held lands would have to be approved in Parliament. The Government had earlier suspended its policy of forced removals pending a review by Parliament. This followed an appeal to Queen Elizabeth by the KwaNgema community in the Transvaal, about the Governments intention of moving them from their ancestral land, to make way for the building of a dam. Due to the Supreme Court ruling, Ben Wilkens, the Deputy Minister of Development and of Land Affairs, announced that the community of KwaNgema would not be resettled as planned but alternative land or compensation would be given to those whose land fell within the designated areas. President P.W. Botha announced that amendments were to be made to clauses in the Orange Free State (now Free State) statute book, which regulated the movement and settlement of various categories of people. This was to tighten the loopholes that made it possible for the Supreme Court to give a ruling against the government and the law preventing Black people from owning land. Interestingly, the ruling gave the community of KwaNgema the ownership of land and a say on forced removal, which was against the government policies on land at the time.