Colonial Constructions of Friendship and Land Dispossession: Implications for Contemporary Land and Environmental Defending

The dispossession of indigenous lands is an important yet underexplored area in community psychology. If we are to deepen and strengthen a decolonial approach to studying land and psychology, what can we learn from historical land dispossession in the first place? Informed by the need to be vigilant about taken-for-granted concepts such as ‘friendship’, this study analysed records of the annexation of Mpondoland in 1894. Mpondoland was the last area of South Africa to fall under colonial rule. The study showed how, paradoxically, friendship was evoked to justify land dispossession as for-the-good of those dispossessed. The chapter reflects on how similar framing of friendship continues to frame contemporary land struggles in the same geographical area.