"Land Homeland"

"[a] 

‘civilising mission’ involved the spread of a rule of law, whereby law was considered synonymous with civil law specifically, or European law broadly; in contrast, the pursuit of ‘law and order’ involved the creation of ‘customary law’ for statutorily defined groups. The statutory definition was sometimes totally arbitrary (as with some ‘tribes’), and at other times took existing notions of difference as its point of departure. At all times, however, it totalised identities, as cultural, legal, administrative and even political. The re-definition reified difference through the force of law, and created administrative systems and units (‘native administration’) that corresponded to these identities (‘religions,’ ‘castes,’ ‘tribes’)...

Colonialism spread two related fictions: that individual forms of [property ownership] tenure did not exist in pre-colonial Africa, and that group tenure was everywhere synonymous with tribally-held land. Both were meant to legitimize the creation of ‘tribal homelands’ where land would be under the authority of ‘customary authorities’."

http://chimurengachronic.co.za/land-homeland/