Abstract

The article analyzes the internal logic of the conceptual and structural hierarchies involved in slavery and apartheid land law. The rendition or recovery of fugitive slaves and the eviction of ‘squatters’ from land during apartheid both involve the use of legal procedures and institutions to protect property interests. However, in the period following the emancipation of slaves and the abolition of apartheid, this logic was not abandoned – liberty was acquired at the price of economic subjugation. The new forms of slavery will continue unless the abolition of slavery and the termination of apartheid are explicitly celebrated as political acts that replace the urge to dominate and possess with a measure of public-spiritedness and non-possessiveness. Politics can be kept alive only when the compelling logic of domination and hierarchy is resisted through a different, public-spirited rendition of eviction.