“Movement of Jah people, send us another brother Moses, from across the sea.” When Bob Marley sang these words in his 1977 song Exodus, he drew on an ancient story of deliverance of Israelites forced to move, guided by a promise of freedom from bondage and control.
The song speaks of motion born from pressure and of journeys led by power, faith and survival.
In SA’s rural and customary spaces today, a quieter exodus is unfolding in what appears like a voluntary exodus of scores of people to overpopulated informal settlements closer to the cities.
This exodus is not characterised by crossing seas as the Israelites did; it unfolds through contracts half-understood, payments too small to secure a future, and land slowly slipping from communal hands into speculative circuits of profit by the ‘clever blacks’ with relatively deeper pockets hailing not too far from these targeted customary spaces.
Unlike God’s provision of manna to the Israelites after 40 years of wandering in the desert, victims of rural land commodification and speculative land deals are offered no sustaining miracle.
Their condition is not transitional as it was for the Israelites in the desert; it threatens to become permanent land poverty, a slow starvation of place and belonging.
Land struggles in SA have never been fixed, and they have changed as power relations have changed.
During the colonial period, conflicts over land were clearly defined and power rested with colonial authorities who used unjust laws, violence and racial ideology to dispossess African communities of their land.
Those who lost land were largely black rural populations whose livelihoods, identities and political autonomy depended on it.
Resistance came from kings, chiefs and traditional leaders who challenged land alienation through armed struggle, negotiation and the moral authority of custom.
Dispossession was explicit, imposed from outside and enforced through open coercion.
In contemporary SA, land conflict has become far more complex. The clear divisions of the colonial era have blurred. Figures who once symbolised resistance through customary authority are now, in some cases, involved in enabling exploitative land practices.
Adding to this complexity is the fact that beneficiaries of speculative land transactions are often elites drawn from the same rural communities affected by these practices.
Power no longer operates only from outside rural areas; it increasingly emerges from within them.
SA’s development has long been shaped by a persistent divide between urban and rural spaces.
Investment, infrastructure and policy attention continue to focus on the cities, while many rural areas remain characterised by uncertainty, informality and weak governance.
At the centre of this imbalance is customary land and the continued failure to resolve how it should be regulated.
Despite decades of debate and legislative attempts, land governance in communal areas remains unsettled and continues to expose rural communities to new and less visible forms of dispossession.
Customary land used by millions of rural South Africans is gradually being lost through commodification processes that largely benefit buyers while exploiting sellers.
What often begins as access to land secured through modest payments can evolve into speculative transactions in which the same undeveloped land is resold at much higher values.
These arrangements are rarely recorded formally, yet they are defining the character of rural economies, settlement patterns and social relations.
They point to the emergence of a rural elite that accumulates advantage by exploiting institutional uncertainty, customary authority and widespread poverty.
Dispossession today is often driven by local people operating through custom, authority and unequal access to information.
Contemporary rural land takeovers are frequently justified through the language of development, investment and opportunity.
Yet their outcomes closely resemble colonial forms of dispossession and exclusion.
The mechanisms may differ, but the impact on poor and rural communities remains largely the same.
In practice, customary land increasingly functions like a market. Prices are negotiated informally, location influences value, and proximity to towns, roads or coastal areas raises demand.
For many rural households, participation in these transactions is largely driven by immediate survival needs.
With limited employment opportunities, land is often the only asset that can generate income.
Small payments through these exploitative speculative arrangements can provide temporary relief, but they often come at the cost of long-term security where land is permanently alienated or converted to exclusive use.
The central issue, therefore, is not whether economic activity should take place on customary land — it already does.
The more pressing question is whether such activity can be governed in ways that protect rights, limit elite capture and generate sustainable benefits for communities.
If speculative land transactions indicate the emergence of a rural land market, then policy responses must engage with this reality rather than ignore it.
This does not require converting communal land into private freehold ownership. It requires systems that recognise and record rights, document agreements and provide legal certainty.
Communal land decisions should not be concluded behind closed doors. Transparent consultation and enforceable consent processes are essential to reducing abuse.
Capacity building is equally critical.
Many rural residents enter land agreements without legal support or a clear understanding of long-term consequences.
Training in land rights, negotiation and benefit-sharing can strengthen community bargaining power and reduce vulnerability.
Alternative arrangements such as long-term leases, revenue-sharing models and community equity participation offer mechanisms to turn land-based transactions into sustained sources of income.
When properly governed, these approaches can support local economic development rather than concentrating benefits in the hands of a few intermediaries.
Customary land can either form the basis for shared rural prosperity or reproduce patterns of exclusion embedded in both colonial domination and contemporary market-driven inequality.
The future of customary land will depend on how land is governed in a rapidly changing rural SA, and on whether this quiet Israelites-like exodus continues unchecked.
Ayanda Sondara is a doctoral candidate, land governance commentator and a candidate town planner. He writes in his personal capacity