ABSTRACT
When Ndebele landless challenged the private ownership of Doornkop and asserted their right to land they did not own, they were drawing on, as well as helping to construct and modify, a broader ethic of land as a right: an inalienable possession. Echoes could be heard here of the statements about ‘land that is rightfully ours’ at the Durban meeting (Chapter 1); of the words of Commissioner Seremane at the 1994 Doornkop reclaiming ceremony that ‘each and everyone has land as a birthright’ (Chapter 2); and of the ‘communal land ethic’ which human rights lawyer Gilfillan had discerned in the course of dealings with her clients (Chapter 3). There were also resonances with similar views recorded earlier in that century. In 1931, D R Hunt, the Native Commissioner of the time, wrote of the insistence of the Pedi royalty that ‘they should not buy what already belonged to them’ (Hunt 1931).1
