Ashley Westaway

During apartheid, black South Africans were all assigned to Bantustan “homelands” and, in many cases, the original residents of these areas were crowded out of farming and into townships within these boundaries. As a result the local farming economy in the Bantustans collapsed. Since then, the post apartheid regime has unfortunately refused to recognize the rights of the citizens living in the former Bantustans. Instead the government left key elements of the apartheid system in place, particularly the concentration of people in townships and welfare subsidies. Ashley Westaway is working to reverse the lingering effects of the apartheid system and completely reinvigorate these areas by introducing aggressive rural development that leverages existing financial and human capital and is based on widespread small-scale farming. By reclaiming dispossessed land and leveraging available community resources like local student populations and university partners, Ashley is sparking the development of vibrant rural economies.

Ashley is reestablishing small-scale farming by leveraging existing resources in struggling regions of South Africa. Though the Bantustan regions are often destitute, Ashley realized that cash does flow there and could be used to spark the development of a vibrant rural economy. Therefore, as a first step, he is harnessing government funds paid out in restitution claims with government grants to develop infrastructure while also attracting private investment and international donor funding. The work that he has led has helped poor, isolated rural settlements use these resources to start communal farms, build schools and local heritage museums, start tourism initiatives and get the local government to increase service delivery to these once remote areas.

However, in order to create economic vibrancy, Ashley knows that simply directing more resources towards the community is not enough. Rather, more focus must be placed on developing human capital by training a new generation of farmers, improving the quality of education and restoring dignity to these areas. To accomplish this, Ashley is taking advantage of human capital existing in the regions (particularly in universities) and building up local research capacity by attracting students to work on projects in these areas.

As financial resources are harnessed and human capital grows and improves, former Bantustans are now poised to tackle other engrained social problems.

In 1951, the apartheid government introduced the Bantu Authorities Act to establish “homelands” (Bantustans) in which the black rural population was forced by legislation to live. Ten Bantustans were created in South Africa with their own political, economic and social institutions to create the illusion of independent homelands. These areas were dominated by the economic engine of the apartheid state and were dependant financially for survival on the South African government of the time. As a means of effecting the divide and rule policy, these homelands were created to reflect the ethnic identities of the people that had traditionally occupied the areas. As a result, Black people had no choice or freedom of movement and were forced to develop allegiances to these homelands based on ethnic group identification.

These homelands made up 13 percent of the country’s land while the rest was reserved for the white population. Only about 55 percent of South Africa’s population lived in the Bantustans, while the remainder lived in designated labor pools located in townships, shanty-towns and slums on the outskirts of cities, and were schooled to supply the white economy with a cheap source of manual labor. The creation of the homelands or Bantustans was a central element of the apartheid strategy as blacks were denied property ownership and lost their original South African citizenship and voting rights, allowing whites to stay in control.

With time, some Bantustans received independence, including Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda, and Ciskei (the so-called TBVC states), and some received partial autonomy, but were never granted independence. These independent nations had their own governmental structures that were put in place through a local election which was declared by the international community as irrelevant as it was led by and was a creation of the undemocratic South African government at the time. The Bantustans’ governments were invariably corrupt and little wealth trickled down to the local populations, who were forced to seek employment as “guest workers” outside the Bantustans.

In the 1930s, a policy known as ‘Betterment’ planning was implemented in the former homelands and other “black” areas in attempt to impose regulations and control land usage. Under Betterment, designated areas were divided into distinct land use zones for residential, arable and grazing usage, and all people were forced to move into the residential zones. Furthermore, people were dispossessed of arable and grazing land and various rural agricultural programs and traditional land and farming practices were destroyed. Furthermore, the loss of land ownership and tenure which resulted led to an exodus of young people from these areas, choosing instead to go to urban areas where they became part of the labor contingent. Eventually only the elderly and very young children existed on the barest minimum in these areas, eking out an existence dependant on money sent to them from family working in the urban areas.

For many years, the homelands were kept afloat by massive subsidies from the South African government. Unsurprisingly, they were extremely unpopular among the urban black population, many of whom lived in squalor in slum housing. Their working conditions were often equally poor, as they were denied any significant rights or protections outside the Bantustans.

Even after the democratization of the country in 1994, statistics show that life in the Eastern Cape Bantustans (Ciskei and Transkei) has not improved, and that the average person survives on R255 per month, well below the poverty line of R322 per month drawn by the President. Further, only 16 percent of the economically active population is employed, only 4 percent of households derive an income from agricultural activities, and half of all households suffer from food insecurity and rely on rivers for water.

In 1998, Ashley convinced the Border Rural Committee (BRC) to fight against the prejudicial exclusion of dispossession implemented in the former Bantustans. This decision initiated a series of improvements over the years including the favorable settling of ten restitution claims in the Keiskammahoek district of the former Ciskei. The terms of the settlement agreements dictated that half of the value of dispossessed land is to be paid to descendants of dispossessed households and the other half is pooled for community development. The development funds are entrusted to the local Municipality and Ashley has been a leader in using the South African legal framework to create vehicles to reinvest in community and development.

Subsequent legal efforts by Ashley’s organization have led the government of South Africa to drop its opposition to a broader land claim that will revive restitution for millions of people whose land rights were violated. In Ashley’s next step, he plans to shift his focus from the legal process to reestablishing small scale farming in the former Bantustans of Ciskei and Transkei.

Currently, Ashley is utilizing available community resources to assist in the revitalization of the former Bantustans. For example, by partnering with the University of Fort Hare, he has started a compulsory community engagement initiative built into students’ curriculum which Ashley to get young people more involved. Ashley is also getting local students and international students in on a volunteer basis to work in these communities.

After having discussions with members of the community it became clear to Ashley that they wanted to utilize the land in a productive manner. Therefore, he is also starting to establish agricultural businesses in these areas, and there are currently plans for blueberry exports, wattle, honey and apples, maize, soybeans, Lucerne, vegetables such cabbage, spinach, beetroot, beans, butternut, carrots, and essential oils. Additionally, indigenous forests abound in all these areas and can provide medicinal plants, firewood, building materials, and the so-called luxury woods for furniture and ornaments.

The Embassy of Belgium and Co-operation Finland South Africa (COFISA) program have already invested resources in Ashley’s work to improve the economic development of the region. He is also currently working with two programs of the EU to increase investments over the next five years.

Ashley was born and raised in Port Elizabeth. At 18, he attended the University in Grahamstown. Social and political realities were not spoken about at home, and Ashley had a very sheltered childhood. Nonetheless, he developed a love of history early in life and a constant thirst for knowledge.

When he was becoming a Christian, Ashley had an epiphany and began to seriously question and struggle with issues relating to apartheid policies in place, which so clearly disadvantaged and disenfranchised the black South African population. His persistent questions and challenges to the status quo were not welcomed and at 17, he was excommunicated from his church. This incident did not sway his beliefs, however, and even after completing school, he refused to be conscripted into the South African army, which was then used to perpetuate apartheid.

During his time in university, Ashley’s religious views began to change. Although, he initially became involved in his current work when he joined the BRC as a researcher, he moved beyond academics into activism, and was appointed at a very young age to lead the organization. He later wrote a doctoral dissertation reflecting the work he was doing and has brought new life, vision, and strategies to the institution.

Ashley, well on his way to being fluent in Xhosa, realizes that his sense of well-being is integrally linked to his goal of achieving redress for the millions of people in the Eastern Cape who were dispossessed through the apartheid.