Land ownership in South Africa

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32975, 22 July 1972, Page 14

Land ownership in South Africa

Sir, —Lieutenant - Colonel Elderton based his figures for land ownership in South Africa on a total area of “712,000 square miles.” No wonder he is confused and his statistics false. The thirtieth “Official Yearbook of the Union of South Africa” published in Pretoria in 1961 by the South African Bureau of Census and Statistics, states on page 10: “The total area of the Union is 472,359 square miles.” Colonel Elderton’s claim that “two million Bantu” live in the white areas is also wrong. The May 6, 1970, census indicated that 8,060,773 Africans live outside the African homelands, while only 6,997,179 actually reside in their homelands. It must also be remembered, of course, as the South African Consul-General (Mr P- H. Philip) pointed out in “The Press” on February 10, 1971, that “the Bantu do not enjoy citizenship rights in the white areas.” —Yours, etc., NIGEL S. ROBERTS, Lecturer in Political Science, University of Canterbury. July 21, 1972.

Sir, —Colonel Elderton states that the total area of South Africa is 712,000 square miles. According to the “Encyclopaedia Britannica,” however, the country’s area is 472,550 square miles. It could be that he is adding the area of Namibia (317,725 square miles), which was I mandated to South Africa by the League of Nations, but ■that would give a total considerably larger than Colonel Elderton’s figure. It seems that both his mathematics and his geography could stand improvement.—Yours, etc., EDWARD COUNTRYMAN. July 21, 1972.