Malema links land expropriation fight to centuries of colonial dispossession

Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema has drawn a direct line between South Africa’s colonial past and his party’s ongoing push for land expropriation without compensation, framing the campaign as a historic duty to reclaim stolen land.

Speaking at the EFF’s Land Reclamation Day held at Sophiatown Extreme Park in Johannesburg, Malema told supporters that the party’s land struggle is rooted in the legacy of forced removals, genocide, and colonial conquest that began centuries ago.

‘We are here to finish the work of displaced people.’

“We are here to claim the land which was stolen from our ancestors. We are here to finish the work of those who were displaced, silent and buried. We are here to take the land back, without fear of compensation,” Malema said to cheers from the crowd.

He argued that the country’s historical narrative has been distorted, with the year 1652 marking not the beginning of South African history but rather the start of systematic land theft.

“The 6th of April 1652, Fighters, is the year the European colonial project began on the southern tip of Africa. It is not the beginning of history. It is the beginning of dispossession,” said Malema.

Malema’s EFF rejects current expropriation bill as inadequate

Malema, who has long rejected the government’s more cautious approach to land reform, reiterated the EFF’s firm opposition to the Expropriation Bill signed into law earlier this year. The bill allows for land to be taken without compensation in specific cases, but Malema insists it does not go far enough.

Referencing colonial history, Malema placed responsibility for dispossession squarely on the Dutch settlers and their imperial agenda.

“In that year, Jan van Riebeeck arrived at the Cape, sent by the Dutch East India Company. He did not come as a tourist. He did not come as a refugee. He came as an agent of European imperialism: to secure land, labour, and resources to sustain the Dutch Empire’s maritime trade,” Malema explained.

“He came to build a refreshment station for ships traveling between Europe and Asia, but what started as a trading post quickly turned into a colony,” he added.

Malema said the consequences of that colonial mission were devastating for indigenous communities like the Khoi and San.

“Within years, the Dutch settlers were no longer just merchants. They were landowners, and not by negotiation or invitation, but through encroachment. They pushed the Khoi and San people off their ancestral grazing lands. They erected fences. They brought disease. They killed, raped, enslaved, and dispossessed,” he told the gathering.