President Cyril Ramaphosa’s assurance in parliament this week that South Africa “will never allow forced removals again in this country” is to be welcomed. However, it will not be the last word on the vexed issue of land reform, which has been brought into sharp focus by US President Donald Trump’s “refugee” offer to Afrikaner farmers “dispossessed” of their land, which no-one says has happened.
That no-one has been deprived of their land under the democratic dispensation in South Africa is testament to the durability of the guarantees of private property provided in the constitution. Yet it is also true that the government’s land reform efforts thus far have been a dismal failure. The evidence strongly suggests that merely replacing owners and not supporting the new ones with expertise and the wherewithal is the shortcut to disaster that has given land reform a bad name and threatened food security.
While land reform should be a national priority in South Africa, this has not been the case, with the issue relegated to a junior ministry. The result is that most farmland is still owned by whites 30 years after the end of apartheid, which is surely not what the authors of the constitution had envisaged.
Looking beyond the more ludicrous aspects of Trump’s Elon Musk-assisted interpretation of recent developments in South Africa, the Expropriation Act recently assented to by Ramaphosa is hardly the cure for the lopsided patterns of ownership. Not only does the constitution enshrine the right to private property, but it also enjoins and permits the government to expropriate private land on the willing seller, willing buyer principle.
Histrionic appeals to ignorant and powerful foreigners cannot help, and will only inflame a problem that has been centuries in the making.
In failing to give effect to the land reform provisions of the constitution, the government has done a disservice to the people of South Africa.
To pretend that the Expropriation Act, which replaces similar legislation from 1975, is somehow a magic bullet for land reform is disingenuous in the extreme. DA federal council chair Helen Zille has, in a court application opposing the act, suggested it is similar to apartheid legislation that allowed for arbitrary land grabs. She has accused the ANC of “trying to smuggle in further powers of expropriation without compensation”. However, whether she is right or not, the claim that the act is likely to deter investment and confidence in South Africa, raising a question mark over the sanctity of private property, is debatable.
What is certain is that no law in and of itself is adequate for the demanding task of land reform. It will require a joint effort by the government, the private sector and organised agriculture to bring about a situation where ownership is broadly reflective of the population — and with the effect of enhancing, not imperilling the nation’s food security.
If, as its critics suggest, the Expropriation Act is a populist sop thrown to the masses as a substitute for meaningful and large-scale land reform, it represents yet another missed opportunity for the country.
Groups presuming to have the interests of Afrikaners (especially farmers) at heart have also learnt a valuable lesson from the Trump contretemps, with opponents declaring their pleadings and statements to foreign audiences as treason. Though this overstates the case, what has hopefully been learnt is that the future success of South Africa is premised on negotiations and compromise, and that the solution to our problems can only come from us as South Africans. The government, too, has to embrace the spirit of give and take.
For too long, the agricultural sector and land reform have been relegated to the bottom of the list of priorities. In the headlong rush to embrace the information age and the new economy, it is often forgotten that South Africa is a major agricultural producer by world standards. It should be employing many more people in its value chains.
Nobody, at least nobody with South Africa’s best interests at heart, wants Zimbabwe-style land grabs and the implosion of our food-producing sector. If we accept that the racially skewed ownership patterns are harmful to our future, and we accept they have to change, we will have to find a mechanism to ensure this change happens effectively. Histrionic appeals to ignorant and powerful foreigners cannot help, and will only inflame a problem that has been centuries in the making.
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