Anthony Kambi Masha
Cape Town - Although South Africa’s history is replete with iniquitous policies that were pursued by the white settler colonial governments through a plethora of discriminatory measures, the Natives Land Act 27 of 1913 was the most notorious as it resulted in more land being made accessible to white farmers and the clear confinement of black people to dwell within the assigned “native” territories (13.5%).
Land reform attempts to fight poverty, boost rural economic growth and create jobs. In the rural areas, land symbolises security, identity, history and a favoured home for retirement.
Land incorporates everything that characterises black South Africans.
The Freedom Charter of 1955 set the goal of sharing the land. Despite South Africa’s reform policies, the promise to redistribute 30% of white farmland (via redistribution and restitution) to black communities by 1999 was not realised: by 2018, only about 9.7% of farmland had been redistributed to black communities.
The state has also extended the target year for achieving the transfer of 30% of land to 2030, signalling the struggle to return land to black communities.
Land reform gets only 0.4% of the budget, raising questions about whether the ANC prioritises it. ANC land redistribution is limited; it failed to fulfil the dream of millions of landless people in numerous ways.
As land reform has been slow in South Africa, some argue that it must be done without due process, while others say it should be done constitutionally. Section 25 of the Constitution is not an impediment to land reform; the main challenge is a failure of implementation.
Therefore, the government needs to pay compensation for any land expropriated in the national, public interest.
After the ANC split in 2013, Julius Malema’s EFF became an active, confrontational and enthusiastic radical and populist political force.
The EFF’s founding texts included land expropriation without compensation (LEWC).
Malema’s EFF adopted “economic freedom in our lifetime” after splitting from the Jacob Zuma-led ANC in 2013. Malema proposes expropriating all South African land and giving recipients usufruct rights licences.
The EFF supports property abolition, like the SACP did before 1994. People who go on and on about LEWC without being informed by policy, strategies, models and academically documented work shouldn’t be taken seriously.
What follows hereunder are lessons for Malema and for those who think that LEWC can go unchallenged.
In 1994, South Africa became a democracy for the first time, and the concept of a “new” South Africa was born. Since the early 1990s, South Africans of all races could legally work together, live together and socialise in a way they were denied from doing in the past. Despite many stories of friendship and co-operation, divisions still run deep and people sometimes struggle to find common ground.
An uncontested fact is that the process of land redistribution since 1994 has been inordinately slow. This has led to bitterness among certain sections of the populace who are getting impatient. Hence the call for LEWC is receiving significant support.
But even if the ANC wins a two-thirds majority in elections, amending the Constitution to mandate LEWC is risky. Two admonitions are worth noting in this regard: One is that immediately after 1994, the ANC-led government agreed on ensuring that land was redistributed, but this was never really carried out, mainly because of investor concerns and fear of potential economic sanctions.
The second is that when the ANC pushed for Radical Economic Transformation at its December 2017 elective conference and endorsed LEWC, immediately, former US president Donald Trump threatened the government if it pursued expropriation.
Clearly, the negative reaction to LEWC in South Africa was seen as a broader attempt by the Western countries to stifle any left-leaning/socialist development.
Dr Masha (PhD, D.Admin) is a social realist, academic and an accidental writer on land matters. He writes in his personal capacity.
Cape Times