Thabo Mbeki, a former President of the ANC and the country, has recently suggested that the organisation he has been a member of for decades must disregard and defy its Conference resolution on the land question.
He specifically said, "We should therefore not proceed with the Constitutional Amendment reflected in Para 6.1.1, and the 6.1.1 of his suggestions document is the ANC’s proposed amendment which amongst other things says, “where land and improvements thereon are expropriated for purposes of land reform as contemplated in subsection (8), the amount of compensation may be nil.”
Mbeki, whose ideological and political guidance regressively contributed to what presently defines South Africa—structural unemployment, inequality and poverty, wherein white people continue to own most of the wealth and control the economy.
The leaders of South Africa, before and after 1994, have endowed the current generation of youth with the highest levels of unemployment and defined by deep levels of chronic and multidimensional poverty, particularly for black people.
Whilst colonialism and apartheid purposely institutionalised black marginalisation, isolation, inequalities, and poverty. The post-apartheid government willingly served to reproduce the marginalisation, poverty and inequalities defined along racial lines. The post-apartheid government has been in office for 27 years and has not significantly shifted the property relations and black marginalisation, landlessness, and poverty designed and institutionalised by protagonist and architects of colonialism and apartheid.
The national wealth of our country, the heritage of all South Africans, has not been restored to the people as envisioned by the Freedom Charter. South Africa's land has not been re-divided amongst those who work it. Whilst there were objective domestic and global impediments to restore wealth and re-divide the land as envisioned in the Freedom Charter, there are subjective impediments, including leaders like Thabo Mbeki. They do not want to alter the colonial power and property relations. They gullibly hope that the former colonisers will somehow be the ultimate saviour through investments.
After years of political self-isolation, Thabo Mbeki has recently regained some degree of exuberance to engage in domestic public discourse. Mbeki recently said his political self-isolation was because his party, the ANC, was misleading society when it claimed it had a good story to tell. But, of course, this is not true. Thabo Mbeki's political self-isolation was in protest of the decision the ANC's National Executive Committee took in September 2008 to recall him as President of the Republic. Nevertheless, his return to public discourse must be welcomed, and he should appreciate that the rules of the game are inspired by Amilcar Cabral, who said, “hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories...”
These concise reflections will expose the lies and falsehoods told by Thabo Mbeki in his suggestions that the ANC must defy its own resolutions on the land question. We must do so because the land question constitutes the core of our economic freedom generational mission. Failure to confront those who distort the essence of what we stand for will amount to counter-revolution. Additionally, we must respond to Thabo Mbeki’s suggestions to rescue the otherwise gullible elements in the liberation movement, which aimlessly follow what leaders, present and previous articulate, without closer scrutiny.
Mbeki’s first falsehood is on nationalisation and expropriation. His suggestions begin by saying the December 2017 54th National Conference of the ANC adopted resolution says nationalisation of land without compensation should be one of the methods and means used by the State to address land reform. He went to say such nationalisation of land without compensation should be such that it does not have a negative impact on food security, agricultural production, other economic sectors and investment in the economy”. This is false and deliberately misleading.
The December 2017 54th National Conference of the ANC never adopted a resolution that says nationalisation of land without compensation. The ANC resolution of the land question said, “expropriation of land without compensation should be among the key mechanisms available to government to give effect to land reform and redistribution".
Right-wing opponents to land expropriation without compensation conflate nationalisation and expropriation. The two are not the same. This is done to undermine a genuine call for repossession of the land to the ownership and benefit of the people as a how and not just a few white people, mainly white men. They use State's incapacity to delegitimise nationalisation. In contrast, the call is for expropriation of land to end land ownership on a racial basis and for all land to be shared amongst those who work it to end food insecurity.
Even more so, Mbeki’s suggestion that expropriation will discourage investment that South African cannot afford. He based this on selective and misinterpretations of China’s path to economic growth when it opened the economy to international capital. Mbeki's second falsehood is that China was able to eradicate poverty by getting some people rich first.
There is context to China's path to economic prosperity. Despite the open economy, China never surrendered its ownership and control of the land. The land in China remained in the control of the State as enshrined in the Constitution. Today, China is the world's number 1 destination for foreign investments. Every investor that invests in China is fully aware that the Chinese government owns the land.
Mbeki ignores the fact that China's socialist path to the industrialisation has proven to be superior. China's socialist management of its economy illustrates that a planned economy does lead to the rapid quantitative and qualitative expansion of productive forces, which in turn progressively impact the lives of the people. China has uplifted more than 700 million people from absolute poverty. China is not controlled by a handful of super-wealthy capitalists who dictate what the Communist Party of China should do.
Mbeki’s third falsehood is that State custodianship will lead to a very serious disincentive investment that our country cannot afford. He suggests that owners of capital would see an amendment to allow land expropriation without compensation as opening the door to any Government to expropriate any property without compensation. There is no empirical evidence or data to support this observation. Instead, the data points to the complete opposite. All South Africa’s Special Economic Zones and Industrial Development Zones are on land under the custodianship and ownership of the State, and that's where most productive physical investments happen in South Africa.
There is sometimes confusion between nationalisation and custodianship created to deliberately cause confusion by right-wing reactionary forces and derail parliamentary processes to amend the Constitution. Nationalisation is defined as a transfer of ownership of means of production and exchange to the State and to utilise them for collective interest. The primary meaning of custodianship is the safekeeping and protection of materials relating to the past, which may or may not involve limiting or promoting access to such material.
The State is currently custodian of including the land parcels in the control of the Department of Public Works, Trade & Industry, Forestry and Agriculture, SANPARKS, different government departments and Municipalities. For instance, the land given to FORD automotive for the recently unveiled auto special economic zone in Tshwane cannot be used for any other purpose despite the industrial expansion.
Mbeki’s fourth falsehood is that expropriation without compensation, and State custodianship means arbitrary deprivation. He suggests that some government in future might decide that it wants to expropriate a mine without compensation. This is a mistaken interpretation and apprehension of land tenure systems and tenure security guaranteed by different legislations, including the MPRDA and all land tenure laws applicable in South Africa.
No one has ever suggested that there must be arbitrary deprivation. Hence all political parties in Parliament agree that sub-section 1 of section 25 of the Constitution must be retained. It reads as follows; "No one may be deprived of property except in terms of law of general application, and no law may permit arbitrary deprivation of property”.
The Constitutional Court case, Agri SA v Minister for Minerals and Energy (CCT51/12) of 2013, distinguished ownership and custodianship. The majority view was that the custodianship exercised by the State did not amount to an acquisition of the right and only defined and did not define what custodianship means, beyond the State being a "facilitator" or a "conduit" for others to access South Africa's mineral wealth. The court distinguished between the reason for expropriation in that it is custodianship because the State did not acquire the mineral rights to exploit them itself but on behalf of people.
The difference between nationalisation and custodianship is that nationalisation translates to the transfer of ownership to the State. The State takes some form of management or control of nationalised assets. Whereas custodianship suggests, the State acquires rights on behalf of others to facilitate access without control. Under state custodianship, there must be rules of administration applicable.
Mbeki’s fifth falsehood is that the Freedom Charter does not advocate for land repossession. The Freedom Charter says, “THE LAND SHALL BE SHARED AMONG THOSE WHO WORK IT! “Restriction of land ownership on a racial basis shall be ended, and ALL THE LAND RE-DIVIDED amongst those who work it, to banish famine and land hunger…". Suppose the stated intention of the Freedom Charter is to RE-DIVIDE ALL THE LAND. Where and how should the democratic government get the land to re-divide amongst those who work it, banish famine and land hunger if not through expropriation, and establish custodianship of all the land?
More than 72% of South Africa's arable land is owned by white people and not farmworkers (those who work it). This means that the title deeds of more than 70% of South Africa's land, which the Freedom Charter says, must be re-divided to those who work it is in the hands of few white people, and South Africa's Constitution says expropriation of such land must be subject to compensation.
In the current discourse of land ownership, farmworkers’ security of tenure in farms is perennially under threat, with farm evictions taking place almost every day of farm dwellers who do not have any other home. The Freedom Charter's objective for the re-division of all land perfectly and squarely justifies the call and demand for State custodianship of all South Africa’s land for equal redistribution (re-division) to those who work it. We should reasonably add to those who need it.
What happened when Mbeki was in self-isolation? On 27 February 2018, the National Assembly adopted a Parliamentary motion brought by Economic Freedom Fighters. We understand that as Thabo Mbeki was in self-isolation, he believed that the ANC NEC and Parliamentary Caucus initiated the process.
It is the EFF motion adopted by the National Assembly that mandated the Constitutional Review Committee to review and amend Section 25 to make it possible for the State to expropriate land without compensation and mechanisms for expropriating land without compensation; and propose the necessary constitutional amendments regarding the kind of future land tenure regime needed, considering the necessity of the State being a custodian of all South African land.
State custodianship of South Africa's land is objectively the only mechanism to guarantee all South Africans equitable access to land. Any other method will not even scratch the surface of massive land poverty and hunger that defines the black majority and Africans in particular.
Land poverty and hunger are undoubtedly a direct consequence of the barbaric colonial conquest and the nonsensical, cruel system of apartheid that entrenched dispossession and isolation of the indigenous Africans. State custodianship of the land seeks to realise the Freedom Charter’s objective that ALL LAND must be re-divided to those who work it.
What is to be done? The EFF has firmly articulated its position to the Ad Hoc Committee tasked with amending Section 25 of the Constitution. We are not going to compromise and vote for a sell-out amendment that still speaks of compensation.
The final amendment to Section 25 must clearly state that land is a natural resource and the common heritage, which belongs to the people under the custodianship of the State. The State must take reasonable legislative and other measures which enables state custodianship and for citizens to gain access to land on an equitable basis. Anything less than this will be a clear demonstration of how little lawmakers think and understand land hunger amongst black people and the need for restorative justice.