When you have no land and education you’re finished unless you wake up in time
Undeveloped or underdeveloped societies are characterized by a high degree of illiteracy. These societies therefore depend on land for their subsistence livelihood. As they get educated and develop non-agricultural skills, they move out of land-based activities and shift residence from rural to urban areas. The smart ones, however, keep a piece of land in the countryside just in case. In Uganda land in the countryside has saved many lives during economic and political hard times. When Amin’s government started hunting down the educated in towns, many fled the country while many others retreated to their pieces of land in the countryside where they kept a low profile and survived.
In South Africa, the minority white settlers that had wanted to rule forever decided that the best way to do it was to dispossess the black majority of their land and deny them education. The training that few blacks got was related to their work. For example, drivers were taught how to read road signs. The whites reasoned that it would be dangerous to provide education to blacks in areas where they will never work such as engineering. Blacks were therefore dispossessed of their land and denied education. I have studied the apartheid system in South Africa and written about it. In my first book titled “Critical Issues in African Development” published in 1997, I wrote two chapters on education and land ownership in South Africa.