annenberg media ♪ narrator: in africa, south of the sahara, european colonization has had tremendous long-term impact on contemporary divisions of land. here, south africa's notorious legacy of race-based laws of apartheid profoundly affected the lives

of the country's population. many people were removed from their ancestral lands and relocated to less desirable areas called homelands. with the end of apartheid, south africa is taking remarkable steps toward a more positive and unified future. at the heart of the transformation, though, is the volatile issue of land reform. repatriating people to their land is a complex and difficult process. we will see how one geographer is using global positioning system-- or gps technology-- as one tool to study how the land resources in south africa are being distributed and utilized. ( choral group singing in native language ) in ail 199 south ricans particited ( cin their nation'sng first democratic elections) and chose nelson mandela as their president.

one of the greatest challenges facing the new post-apartheid regime was toive the jority black population access to the landrom which they had been forcibly removed. they just came in and tell us that we have to move out. we said, "we can't move out, because this land is... is ours. this land was bought by our grandfathers in 1905." but they just moved us, just on account of jlous. apartheid... apartheid wasted our time. narrator: under apartheid, south africa's black majority-- almost 90% of the population-- was moved onto less than 15% of the land. these so-called homelands were often marginal areas with little inand minimal. the white minority controlled were85% of the land,areas

including the richest, most productive areas. white commercial farmers who were heavily subsidized by the government prospered while black farmers struggled to eke out a living, practicing subsistence farming or as laborers for white concerns. man: people were not able to make a living in this economy, and that was the whole purpose of the economy. we saw a situation that necessarily undermined agricultural production and livelihood systems. why? because those areas of south africa designated as bantustans were in fact labor reserves. we see a compression of space. we see high-population densities on marginal lands, and proximity to johannesburg and pretoria-- the main industrial center of south africa. and so those areas served as effective labor reserves, meaning that if we can keep the people in those areas

from garnering a real livelihood, keep them structurally dependent on migration, then we have a large labor pool. narrator: there was a distinct geography of apartheid, a geography of separateness based upon race. as the gnment n to redress these injusces in 1994 and '95, land reform brought euphoric times. woman: so really today, i don't know. since this morning, i had one cup of tea. d i feel that i'm so strongly, i can even jump just because i'm going back to my land. ( singing in native language ) so the idea of a land-reform program is to try and set right some of the wrongs that were done under apartheid, and clearly that's not going to be done overnight, so it's a long-term program. mccusker: land reform essentially is a program

to redress the imbalances of the past. and one of the largest imbalances of the past was in land distribution versus population. it's the largest single, uh, imbalance created by apartheid. so there are three aspects of land-reform program-- the overarching program in south africa. there's land restitution, land reform and tenure-relations reform. now, these three are separate, but go hand-in-hand. land restitution says something that they did under the apartheid era to move someone off a piece of land was illegal, and because it was illegal, it has more standing in court today than just saying, "we want our land back." that's land restitution. usually land restitution either ends up that the farmer has to, uh, sell the land to the government or communities are compensated. the second instance of land reform under this big umbrella of land reform is tenure relations. tenure means the way that people interact with the land. what sort of right do they have to a piece of land?

under apartheid, it was deemed important to keep these relations confused because then the population was... was more influx, could be moved quicker and could be scrambled and confused. the second aspect of land reform is to straighten those relations out. what i'm focusing on is the third aspect of land reform, which is itself called land reform. it means redressing those imbalances through a willing-buyer/ willing-seller program. a farmer-- a white farmer-- is willing to sell his land to the government. the government helps a group of people purchase it, and they start some sort of agricultural project. that doesn't mean that someo's land is getting taken away. it doesn't mean there's a legal challenge. it just simply means land reform as a mechanism of redistributing land. interviewer: are you excited? man: yeah... ( laughs ): yes. interviewer: tell me some of your plans. my plans... let's see. this side is going to be herb,

but there, the front is going to be the flowers. yeah, it's going to be the flowers and the grass later, green grass... yeah. our houses are going to be built here. narrator: people's euphoria was soon tempered by the scale and complexity of land reform. man: when these people were removed, they didn't only lose land. they lost the buildings on the land; eyoscatt when they were moved rough e mol; they lost furniture. some..there were evereports of some people dying. so they have aeady suffered. they will be getting much less than what they had lost when they were removed. the cases that can be the most difficult are those that, um... where there are claims to private land-- where white farmers, for example, have been saying, "we n't accept that thes ople have aims to our land. this land belongs to us."

narrator: there are many conflicting claims to land in south africa. the government has tried to work around this problem by underwriting the cost of black citizens purchasing land from white farmers who are willing to sell. this program aims to redress injustice but also to develop the rural economy, where the black population lives in conditions of dire poverty. man: our challenge is not just to give people land because there is a demand for land, but to... to... approaching this matter in a fair manner to ensure that people get access to that resource which they will then use to the benefit of the country as a whole. narrator: now, seven years after the transition to democracy, how is land reform in south africa progressing? what successes in securing justice and promoting rural economic development can the government and the people claim? so we are moving towards the westward, the kalahari.

narrator: geographer brent mccusker is studying a rural area in the northern province to analyze the impacts of reform. is this true scrub land or is it more savanna? narrator: during apartheid this was a large, white-owned commercial farm. in 1995, 396 black south africans purchased the land as the mashambalogu communal property association-- or cpa. mccusker: in south africa after 1994, there were a series of social projects. one of the projects was to give a social benefits grant because people had been materially and economically dispossessed in apartheid. so at 1994, each citizen who was previously classified as historically disadvantaged was allowed to apply for a 15,000 rand social grant, which is about a little under $2,000. they could use it for a child's education. they could use it for building a house--

buying a new house. they could use it for upgrading their land, for fertilizers or they could purchase land with it. what we see on the mashambalogu cpa is a group of people who got together to obtain a farm. for this particular farm, it took 396 people pooling their social grant together to purchase this farm. so it's 396 times 15,000 rands. that white farmer made out like a bandit. narrator: today the cpa representatives meet monthly en ofand. brent joined them during one narrator: today the cpa representatives of his recent research trips. mccusker: and how are you moving forward? well, we've got cattles th... we know that if this cattle wi go rightly. and then we're going to sell it and then we'll go forward. and we are producing some other things to plant a garden-- tomatoes and everything-- so we think those things, also, they are going to help us. to plant(aspeaking- tomatoes locanguageh)ng--

translator: for too long, those who could improve living conditions for the people were denied access to land. but i think now that we have land, we can produce and make an income and create jobs for others. mccusker: do people come fromto helyou, the toch yount or thow to plant? yes, ty do, yes. mccusker: they do come. anhow often do they come? narrator: brentakes the informationk. he gathers from discussions and interviews and relates mccusker:ellite you look at a satellite image,. and you see it's got a very broad perspective. it looks at very large swaths of t earth, and then you can relate that to an individual story about a piece of land. and then it makes sense. you begin to understand larger social processes that happen. narrator: brent confirms his interpretation of the satellite images through a procs cagroundthing."

mccusker: one of the things that we haveo do is we do have to empirically verify what we've done and make sure it's right. and so what i did in south africa was to find a point on the satellite image that was particularly interesting to me from a landscape point of view. i drive to the place. i take my laptop computer with my satellite images already loaded. i already know where i need to go. and i record that with a gps unit. a gps unit is a global positioning system unit. it will tell me exactly on the earth's surface where i'm standing at that moment. i can then take a photograph of the landscape that i see, and i can look at what the photograph sees, versus what the satellite remote sensor sees, and compare the two. narrator: finally brent combines the information from the satellite images and his ground truthing to make a map of land use.

mccusker: i generated this map by taking two satellite images-- one from the year 2000 and one from the year 1989. i then classified the vegetative cover on both images and then subtracted one from the other. basically, i said, "what was here in 1989, and now what's here?" what we see on the mashambalogcpa is a lot of extensification. extensification means you're taking the same amount of land and you're using it less purposefully. narrator: all of the pink areas, for example, indicate land where there was agricultural production in 1989, but in the year 2000 was mostly grassland. there are a few areas of intensification. red and dark green areas were agricultural or grassland and are now residential. overall the cpa land was less agriculturally productive in 2000 than it had been in 1989. the owners of mashambalogu will need resources and support

if they are gog to become successful farmers. ( speakingocal language ) translator: it is good that the government has returned land to black people, but it is also very important that the government train the people who own the land now. only with training can we make a better future for our farm. it has been slow, but there are noticeable improvements in people's lives. one of the largest and most substantial areas of improvement or transformation is in that of women. women, for tirst time, are being included in such projects. before, they were simply left out. so there have been substantial accomplishments in the land reform program. and it doesn't mean that just because we don't see a lot of change now that there won't be change in the future, and there may be a better program that will, in the future, affect people in a more substantial way. i grew up in the land like this.

i stayed when i... i born in the e farm where i used to work for a white person for nothing. but now, when we've got this land, to me, it's a big bargain. we thank god for that. if, really, this community here will be one and doing some things going forward will, in future... really, we're making a big fortune of future for us. narrator: in south africa, as in many african countries south of the sahara, the gacy of colonialism is still felt today. with the end of apartheid, the south african government made a commitment to redistribute lands to black residents who were forcibly relocated to homelands. but land reform is a complicated process that will continue for many years to come. for geographers, tools like global positioning system technology can help monitor progress and assess outcomes.

africa, south of the sahara, is a region of great natural beauty and great human potential, but it also confronts overwhelming challenges. multiple factors like poverty, underdevelopment, war and political instability collude to make life expectancy in this region the lostworl in the east afcacounyofya, the hiv virus which causes aids, coupled with many of these ftors, has crted an epidemic of devastating proportions. how disease is disibutedphers through polationsfusion- in both space and time. in kya, we find that dfusion hd through gration to urban areas, with further transmission along cross-continent trade routes. as the effects of the aids epidemic multiply ugho tations oafrica south of tahara,

the human aneconomicos tbe twill be felt for years to come. inhis ruranyanillage, like so many others, a mahe died young-- only 35 years old. he leaves the children and a widow. (urners singing in local language ) tragically, thisamily's experience is not unusual. the national ministry of health in loestimatesage ) that over two million people in kenya, including 10000 children, are infected with the hiv/aids virus. ople contie singg ) woman: fure developmentf kenyath the is at riskirus. as a result of hiv/aids. for example, child mortality rates had gone down over the years and are now starting to go up again.

hiv/aids is prevalent particularly among those in their mid-20s to their mid-40s. this is the labor force of kenya, the most productive people. these are the people earning the money and developing the nation, and they're dying. narrator: families are destroyed by the spread of aids. thousands ofldnecome oran. ( boy speaking local language ) translator: there's my father and there's my two brothers. narrator: disease was devastating th societies of sub-saran africa long be y's aids crisis. thal tropicainctions, widespread poverty, long bunderdevelopment, war anlicaturmoil a contributd to making life expectancy in the region the lowest on the planet. malaria, the most widespread disease, infects more than 300 million people on the continent, and new drug-resistant strains

of the bacteria that cause malaria are spreading rapidly. sleeping sickness, cholera and new killers like the ebola virus take proportionally more lives in sub-saharan africa than anywhere else. ( people singing in local language ) man: a lot of diseases that we have in our part of the world are preventable diseases-- diseases about which you can do a lot. if we had good housing, if we had ample room for people to live, if we had enough and good, appropriate food, if there was enough ample water, and if we were able to immunize all of the children under the age of five against the five immunizable diseases, anth babo de with the cal, little epidemics, i'm... iof the diseasestually loowhich are now prevalent80% in this part of the world.

narrator: in 1994, dr. bhachu was optimistic about future prospects for health care in africa, but in the last eight years, an aids epidemic of extraordinary magnitude has totally changed the landscape of medical concerns. sub-saharan africa is now the site of more than 28 million of the world's 40 million cases of aids. within sub-saharan africa, however, there is gat v in the rate of infection. some of the highest rates are in southern africa. a few nations have not been severely affected. kenya falls somewhere in between. as a geographer, i was interested in how aids had spread across kenya. i actually saw an article published in the paper about, um, the rate of new aids infections every year, and i said, "wow, there's all this information. i can... i can map this." narrator: the data veronica mapped documents a process

that geographers call "diffusion"-- the spread of a phenomenon over space and time. in 1986, which was before the government began collecting information on aids, there was a zero rate of reported infection across the country. in 1987, infection of the population by the hiv virus was reported only in the areas surrounding kenya's three major cities-- mombasa, nairobi and kisumu. but in 1990, the picture changed dramatically as rates of infection continued to rise in urban areas and also began climbing in rural areas. ouma: what's happening in the case of aids is that it tends to, um, diffuse, um, hierarchically-- large urban center, second largest urban center, like that. at the same time, you're also finding this contagious diffusion, which is really the spread from the source region-- be it nairobi or mombasa-- outward to the surrounding areas.

narrator: in 1993, the rate of new infections was approaching a saturation level, or equal rate of new infection throughout the entire country. as the number of adult aids victims grew, many women passed the disease on to their unborn children. man: that child, she's unfortunate. she was delivered by... delivered by a mother who was positive, and she acquired hiv intrauterine. and then since then, she was growing well, but now she's suffering aids, and from that, now she's suffering from tuberculosis. now she's on treatment. the spread of aids in kenya is greatly facilitated by a weak and deteriorating infrastructure that has promoted ill health, it has promoted migration, poverty. resources in rural areas are limited, so we have a culture of migtion into urban areas. this mobility has facilitated the spread of the disease as well.

narrator: veronica's diffusion maps summarize the results of human activities: work, travel, migration and above all, sexual practices. in 1993, kenya's aids education strategy was tightly focused. man: we have targeted specific high-risk groups. we work with truck drirs on the trans-african route; we work with the sex partners of the truck drivers; we work with the, uh, hotelkeepers or hotel owners where the truckers stop overnight. we're expanding this high-risk program to include other highly mobile workers in east africa. narrator: but hiv/aids infection continued to mount, reaching 15% by the year 2000. average life expectancy in kenya dropped from 60 to 49 years. finally, in 1999, kenya's president declared hiv/aids a national disaster

anlooked to s africa igors a beerpproach. in uganda, a broad-based, forthright public health campaign had made a big difference. man ( over loudspeaker ): ...at the health center tonit. me to the health ceny fohiv teing and counseling. to leae out is n svice... naator: aggressive campaigns widespad publicity to get pabout the disease and even television dramas all raised awareness. well, it is true. i don't have aids, but i'm carrying the virus. i don't feel sick, but one day i'll become very sick and die. don't ever believe that you are safe. learn the facts about aids. man: ♪ out there somewhere, alone and frightened... ♪

narrator: reducing the hiv infections from 14% to eight percent, uganda's example showed how important an aggressive public education campaign can be. but eight percent is still a disastrous epidemic. now a new strategy may provide the weapons to win the fight against hiv/aids in africa. until very recently, people fighting aids in africa have assumed that victims of the disease would not have access to effective drugs that patients in the u.s. and europe now receive. but in the last few years, health care advocates and political leaders including n. secretary-gener kofi annan, have begun to campaign for low-priced drugs to treat the infected. the potential benefits are immense. drugs will slow the transmission of the disease. drugs will prevent deaths and help to preserve the labor force. and drugs mean that a generation of children

will not grow up as orphans. ( playing upbeat tune ) if the anti-aids campaign in africa succeeds, it could be an inspiration to fighting other diseases that have long denied the people of africa an opportunity to reach their full potential. ( man singing upbeat tune in local language ) ( singing in local language ) narrator: in the developing world, infectious diseases are responsible for almost half of all deaths. the most prevalent: malaria, tuberculosis and hiv/aids. the highest concentration of hiv/aids is in africa, home to 13% of the world's population, but nearly 70% of all aids cases. medical geography provides greater understanding

of disease diffusion through space and time. in kenya, weee h human migration to urban areas of disease diffusion promotes further transmission and proliferation of disease. medical geographers hope that their findings may help health workers bring disease under control.