Answer to Question #309120 in History for Ntethe

Question

Outline briefly the myth of the empty land

Answer 1

The Empty Land Theory is a theory that was propagated by European settlers in nineteenth-century South Africa to support their claims to land. Today this theory is described as a myth, the Empty Land Myth because there is no historical or archaeological evidence to support this theory.

Despite evidence to the contrary a number of parties in South Africa, particularly right-wing nationalists of European descent, maintain that the theory still holds true in order to support their claims to land ownership in the country. 

In order to legitimize European settlement in South Africa Holden argued Europeans and the Bantu tribes had entered South Africa at roughly the same time and that up until that point South Africa had mostly been an ‘empty land’. The theory outlined by Holden claimed that the Bantu had begun to migrate southwards from present-day Zimbabwe at the same time as the Europeans had begun to migrate northwards from the Cape settlement, with the two movements finally meeting in the Zuurveld region between the Sundays River and the Great Fish River. This, the theory claimed, gave equal rights to the land to whoever could take ownership of it, with force, and maintain that ownership. There were, therefore, no ‘original’ inhabitants with an ‘original’ right to the land, only two migrating groups who had equal claim to it.