A Brief History of Land Rights in Kwazulu-Natal
Chris Williams-Wynn
Hunter-gatherers, the early peoples that inhabited the fertile lands that today are known as the Province of KwaZulu-Natal, Republic of South Africa, have vanished entirely and the only evidence that remains from their times is their burial grounds, their waste middens and their rock art. Three hundred and fifty years ago, when Europe and the East already had great libraries and formal land records, there was not even the most primitive of writing that recorded the existence and migration south of African herders and tillers, who either displaced the hunter-gatherers or assimilated them into their own clans. Between the years 1816 and 1828, or thereabouts, King Shaka, leader of one clan of African people, conquered most of the clans that had by then occupied what is now KwaZulu-Natal. Shaka ?gave? a small part of this conquered territory to some European traders. His successor Dingane also ?gave? some land to Gardiner, a British Missionary, and then, in 1838, allegedly a substantial area to the Boer leadership. (The Boers were a large group of migratory farmers of predominantly Dutch descent who sought their own homeland.) These Boers then allocated most of it to land-hungry individuals and land, surplus to their needs, was sold to speculators.
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