South Africa: A History of Taking

SOUTH AFRICA

A History of Taking

Demonstrators sporting socialist slogans took to the streets of South Africa last month. “Yes to land expropriation without compensation!” read one demonstrator’s sign in a photo with this BBC article.

The protesters’ demands reflected frustration with the lack of progress in redistributing property since the end of apartheid, the white supremacist system of segregation that prevailed in South Africa through 1994.

Land reform is a huge issue in South Africa. One set of statistics says that whites represent 9 percent of the country’s population but hold 72 percent of the land that is owned by individuals. Agence France-Presse provided some context, breaking down the history and complicated claims on land that might have been seized under a colonial regime and then passed through many hands over the years.

The country’s first black president, Nelson Mandela, had promised to redistribute some wrongfully taken land to citizens. But few such transfers have actually happened.

President Cyril Ramaphosa recently empaneled a commission to investigate the issue. The panel recommended seizing land, in some cases, without paying the owner. Those cases include “abandoned land” and “land held purely for speculative purposes,” Radio France Internationale explained.

RFI noted that Ramaphosa appointed the panel under pressure from the Economic Freedom Fighters, a far-left political party that has been attacking the slow progress of the ruling African National Congress.

A majority on the panel also recommended a constitutional amendment to clarify that the grounds for seizures without compensation must be limited. They certainly had Zimbabwe on their minds. Former Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe tried expropriation but set in motion a downward economic spiral that eventually led his allies to oust him from office.

Panel member Dan Kriek, president of a group representing commercial farmers, argued against a constitutional change. “I do believe that if we go the way of amending the constitution, we will do much harm to our economy,” he said. “We will not get foreign investment. We will see inward and external investment drying up as the levels of uncertainty will increase.”

Analysts writing for the Daily Maverick were skeptical about whether Ramaphosa and his allies could pull off even unambitious land reforms, with or without taking someone’s homestead on the veldt. Corruption riddles South Africa’s cash-starved government.

Indeed, South Africa’s credit rating is junk. “South Africa isn’t benefiting from the global hunt for yield,” Bloomberg understatedly reported. The country’s anti-corruption watchdog recently accused Ramaphosa of money laundering and misleading parliament about campaign contributions. Luckily for him, Al Jazeera reported, a court recently issued an order to forestall prosecution until he has time to appeal.

South African society is straining. Gun-related crime is surging in the cultural capital of Cape Town, swamping emergency rooms, for example, wrote the Independent Online, a local news outlet in the city.

Governing with justice requires a difficult balancing act between pressing needs. Unfortunately, time is running out as people lose patience.