These Potatoes Look Like Humans: The contested future of land, home and death in South Africa

These Potatoes Look Like Humans offers a unique perspective on the intersection of land, labor, dispossession, and violence experienced by Black South Africans from the apartheid period to the present, challenging narrow materialist and legalistic arguments. Mbuso Nkosi's book explores the historical framing of the debate and asserts that the meaning of land cannot be separated from spiritual and ancestral connections. He analyzes the 1959 potato boycott in South Africa, revealing horrific accounts of abuse and killings of farmworkers by white Afrikaners. Nkosi argues that the violence was not only about exploitation but also an anxiety white farmers felt about their settler-colonial appropriation of land. He calls for land expropriation without compensation and a spiritual return to home for Black peoples ancestors to overcome dispossession.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 186 pages
Publication date: 01 September 2023
Publisher: Wits University Press

These Potatoes Look Like Humans offers a unique understanding of the intersection between land, labor, dispossession, and violence experienced by Black South Africans from the apartheid period to the present. In this groundbreaking book, Mbuso Nkosi criticizes the historical framing of this debate within narrow materialist and legalistic arguments. His assertion is that, for most Black South Africans, the meaning of land cannot be separated from their spiritual and ancestral connection to it, and this results in him seeing the dispossession of land in South Africa with a perspective not yet explored.

Nkosi takes as his starting point the historic 1959 potato boycott in South Africa, which came about as a result of startling rumors that potatoes dug out of the soil from the farms in the Bethal district of Mpumalanga were in fact human heads. Journalists such as Ruth First and Henry Nxumalo went to Bethal to uncover these stories and revealed horrific accounts of abuse and routine killings of farmworkers by white Afrikaners. The workers were disenfranchised Black people who were forced to work on these farms for alleged 'crimes against National Party state laws, such as the failure to carry passbooks.

In reading this violence from the perspectives of both the Black worker and the white farmer, Nkosi deploys the device of the eye to look at his research subjects and make sense of how the past informs the present. His argument is that the violence against Black farmworkers was not only on the exploitation of cheap labor but also an anxiety white farmers felt about their settler-colonial appropriation of land. This anxiety, Nkosi argues, is pervasive in current heated public debates on the land question and calls for 'land expropriation without compensation. Further, Nkosi argues that the dispossession of land in South Africa was not only a physical act but also a psychological one, as it robbed Black South Africans of their sense of identity and belonging. He suggests that the legacy of dispossession continues to shape the political and social landscape of the country, and that the struggle for land reform is not only a matter of economic justice but also a matter of healing and reconciliation.

In conclusion, These Potatoes Look Like Humans offers a powerful and thought-provoking exploration of the complex relationship between land, labor, dispossession, and violence in South Africa. Nkosi's book challenges the historical framing of this debate and offers a new perspective on the experiences of Black South Africans. His use of the eye as a device to look at his research subjects and make sense of how the past informs the present is a powerful and innovative approach to understanding the complexities of this issue. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in South Africa's history, politics, and social justice.

Weight: 300g
Dimension: 151 x 229 x 16 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781776148400