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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:The role of history with regard to evidence in land claims as officially proposed: a case study on the farm Deelkraal IQ 142, North West Province
Author:Van Eeden, Elize S.
Year:2007
Periodical:South African Historical Journal
Issue:57
Pages:179-200
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:land conflicts
historical sources
historiography
External link:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02582470709464715
Abstract:This paper debates history's role as multi-perspectival evidence provider in officially disputed land claims in South Africa. It examines the case of a land claim submitted in 1998 on the farm Deelkraal in South Africa's North West Province. The paper reviews diverse evidence, ranging from that based on oral sources collected by ethnologists, and on their observations and understanding of how 'tribes' were constituted, to land tenure records and the inscriptions on old gravestones. This is set against the evidence provided by the post-1994 claimants. The question of how to arbitrate between contradictory accounts of past ownership appears a very taxing one. In essence it was asserted in the land claim that a group of people had occupied Deelkraal territory long before a white farming community set foot in this area. The paper shows that other historical evidence was available, but apparently it was not utilized as part of the claim's motivation and outcome. It seems that oral evidence alone formed the basis of the Deelkraal claim, and that existing research was ignored. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract]
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