One of history's most dangerous myths - Anneliese Mehnert
From the 1650s through the late 1800s,
European colonists descended
on South Africa.
First, Dutch and later British forces
sought to claim the region for themselves,
with their struggle becoming
even more aggressive
after discovering the area’s
abundant natural resources.
In their ruthless scramble,
both colonial powers violently removed
numerous Indigenous communities
from their ancestral lands.
Yet despite these conflicts,
the colonizers often claimed
they were settling in empty land
devoid of local people.
These reports were corroborated
in letters and travelogues
by various administrators,
soldiers, and missionaries.
Maps were drawn reflecting these claims,
and prominent British historians
supported this narrative.
Publications codifying the so-called
Empty Land Theory
had three central arguments.
First, most of the land
being settled by Europeans
had no established communities
or agricultural infrastructure.
Second, any African communities
that were in those regions
had actually entered the area
at the same time as Europeans,
so they didn’t have an ancestral claim
to the land.
And third, since these African communities
had probably stolen the land
from earlier,
no-longer-present Indigenous people,
the Europeans were within their rights
to displace these African settlers.
The problem is that all three of these
arguments were completely false.
Almost none of this land was empty
and Africans had lived here for millennia.
Indigenous South Africans
simply had a different practice
of land ownership
from the Dutch and British.
Land belonged to families or groups,
not individuals.
And even that ownership
was more focused
on the land’s agricultural products
than the land itself.
Community leaders would distribute
seasonal land rights,
allowing various nomadic groups
to graze cattle or forage for vegetation.
Even the groups that did live
in large agricultural settlements
didn’t believe they owned the land
as private property.
But the colonizing Europeans had
no respect for this system of ownership.
They concluded the land
belonged to no one
and could therefore be divided
amongst themselves.
In this context, claims that
the land was “empty”
were an ignorant oversimplification
of a much more complex reality.
But the Empty Land Theory allowed
British academics to rewrite history
and minimize native populations.
In 1894, the European parliament
in Cape Town
took this exploitation even further
by passing the Glen Grey Act.
This decree made it
functionally impossible
for native Africans to own land,
shattering the system of collective
tribal ownership
and creating a class of landless people.
To justify the theft, Europeans painted
the locals as barbarians
who lacked the capacity for reason
and were better off being ruled
by the colonizers.
This strategy of stripping locals
of their right to ancestral lands
and casting native people as savages has
been employed by many colonizers.
Now known as the Empty Land Myth,
this is a well-established technique
in the colonial playbook,
and its impact can be found
in the history of many countries,
including Australia, Canada,
and the United States.
And in South Africa, the influence
of this narrative can be traced
directly to a brutal campaign
of institutionalized racism.
Barred from their lands,
the once self-sufficient population
struggled as migrant laborers and miners
on European-owned property.
The law forbade them from working
certain skilled jobs,
and forced Africans to live
in racially segregated areas.
Over time,
these racist policies intensified,
mandating separation in urban areas,
restricting voting rights,
and eventually building to apartheid.
Under this system,
African people had no voting rights,
and the education of native Africans
was overhauled
to emphasize their legal and social
subservience to white settlers.
This state of legally enforced racism
persisted through the early 1990s,
and throughout this period,
colonists frequently invoked
the Empty Land Theory
to justify the unequal distribution
of land.
South African resistance movements
fought throughout the 20th century
to gain political and economic freedom.
And since the 1980s, South African
scholars have been using
archaeological evidence
to correct the historical record.
Today, South African schools are finally
teaching the region's true history.
But the legacy of the Empty Land Myth
still persists
as one of the most harmful stories
ever told.
