City Press

GUEST COLUMN

The day we failed our people

2017-03-05 06:10

Fruits of labour: Ravele Community Property Association farm workers, based in Limpopo, harvest bananas. Most of the farm workers are beneficiaries Picture: Leon Sadiki

Ayanda Dlodlo

By voting against the expropriation of land without compensation this week, the ANC went against its stated commitment to radical transformation.

President Jacob Zuma spoke extensively in his state of the nation address (Sona) about land rights and land restitution, saying: “It will be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve true reconciliation until the land question is resolved.”

He called upon Parliament to move speedily in ensuring that the Expropriation Bill passed constitutional muster, so that it could be finalised into law.

The issue of expropriation without compensation is not foreign to the ANC. Included among our resolutions at the 53rd national conference, which took place in Mangaung in the Free State in 2012, were the following three proposals:

- To replace the willing buyer, willing seller proviso with the “just and equitable” principle in the Constitution immediately, where the state is acquiring land for land reform purposes;

- To advance expropriation without compensation on land acquired through unlawful means, or used for illegal purposes, having due regard to section 25 of the Constitution; and

- To expedite the promulgation of the new Expropriation Act.

Right from the ANC’s founding meeting, held on January 8 1912, the issue of native land and reserves has been central to the organisation’s struggle for liberation.

Speaking at the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College in Tanzania in 1984, then ANC president Oliver Tambo said: “Let us tell the truth to ourselves, even if the truth coincides with what the enemy is saying.”

This statement rings true today – not with regard to current rumours about the possibility of a split in the ANC, but in terms of the notion that whoever is the bearer of the truth should not matter, as long as the truth resonates with our people and the general thrust of the policies of our movement.

To give impetus to Tambo’s words, the ANC dedicated 2017 as the year of “unity in action” for all South Africans as we move the country forward.

Confused and hurt

It is time to activate those wise and deliberate calls for unity of purpose and enjoin citizens to rally around a common cause, no matter who initiates it – as long as it is in line with our commitment as the ANC to improve the lives of our people.

Against this backdrop of the ANC’s rich history and its resolutions taken, the party’s objection to this week’s motion in Parliament, brought by the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) – who proposed lending support to the ANC if it amended section 25 of the Constitution, allowing land to be expropriated without compensation – left many of us ANC members confused and hurt.

We felt that by rejecting the EFF’s attempt to pass this motion to amend the Constitution’s property clause, the party had squandered an opportunity.

Our outright dismissal of the motion, announced by ANC MP and chairperson of the rural development committee Phumuzile Ngwenya-Mabila, sent an unfortunate message to those who rely on ANC lawmakers to champion the cause for true and meaningful transformation.

The call was most likely made by the EFF to score political points, as it is prone to do, but it does not take away from the fact that this call is premised on the ANC’s founding principles of the return of land to those who were dispossessed.

The reality is that the land question has occupied the ANC’s agenda since its formation, and will continue to do so until land is returned to its rightful owners, the black majority.

In reply to the Sona debate, Zuma made it clear that the organisation was committed to finding all constitutional and legal means to expropriate land without compensation.

He said this to accentuate the ANC’s new policy of embarking on a sweeping programme of radical economic transformation.

How ANC MPs missed this resounding message from the president is strange.

The least the party could have done in response was to elaborate on its plan to return land to the people.

Instead, in an unfortunate and probably uncalculated move, we, the majority in the House, contradicted not only the president’s statement, but also the gist of the radical economic transformation agenda of the ANC.

Given that this type of transformation is not possible without access to land, to frustrate the agenda put forward by the EFF appears to frustrate the very policies Zuma announced.

Reclaiming our birthright

As an ANC member of good standing, I am confident that I speak for millions of our people when I state, on record, that the party is committed to returning land to its rightful owners. We will spare no effort in realising this objective.

Amending section 25 of the Constitution, which deals with land reform, is not negotiable if we are to achieve equitable distribution of land.

To quote parts of section 25 verbatim, this is what it provides for:

1. “No one may be deprived of property except in terms of law of general application, and no law may permit arbitrary deprivation of property.”

2. “Property may be expropriated only in terms of law of general application –

(a) for a public purpose or in the public interest; and

(b) subject to compensation, the amount of which and the time and manner of payment of which have either been agreed to by those affected, or decided or approved by a court.”

As the custodian of the aspirations of the poor in this country, the ANC should have tabled the motion for discussion in Parliament to pave a way for the realisation of this milestone of our struggle.

ANC MPs need to realise that democracy demands that we sometimes support the views of our traditional opponents if those decisions help to advance the cause of our struggle.

We have fought for so long to build these democratic institutions, it works against our objectives and values to close rank now.

Of course, opposition parties will always look for a loophole to denigrate the efforts of our movement, but ultimately, our triumph lies in consolidating the victories of our hard-earned democracy. This includes amending the Constitution when the need arises.

After all, our democracy came about through a negotiated settlement, which we knew would present us with challenges going forward.

Having chosen to resolve matters at the negotiating table, rather than embark on an all-out liberation war which would ravage the country, was the ultimate act of patriotism.

We opted for this with our eyes wide open and now, two decades into democracy, we see a relatively stable country and a prosperous nation.

Despite this, the black majority remains in a state of penury as we have not succeeded in sufficiently reversing the economic legacy of apartheid.

Section 25 represents one of the major concessions made by the ANC in its adoption of that compromised political settlement during the early 1990s.

Even as we reflect on the achievements of our democracy through compromise, we have a duty as the people’s movement to assess the effects of these compromises with a view to taking hard decisions about the future of the indigent of this country.

Therefore, we should have supported the EFF’s motion, with modifications.

Parliament should have gone on to outline a credible legal process to achieve the amendment.

Section 25 can be changed in such a way that is satisfactory to all if we all commit to the agenda of radical economic transformation.

Having voiced its rejection of the motion, the ANC needs to now reassure the masses of our people about its commitment to the freedom struggle pioneered by our forebears.

Let me remind all South Africans that this has been a struggle to restore the dignity of the African through reclaiming our birthright, which is land ownership, and all the benefits that represents.

Dlodlo is deputy minister of public service and administration, and is chairperson of the ANC legislature and governance subcommittee

City Press

MONDLI MAKHANYA

Populist road to ruination

2017-03-05 06:10

Mondli Makhanya

Zimbabwe is still suffering from the wild, populist and self-serving decisions of 2000. Land is a word that has been very much on the lips of South Africa’s first citizen of late. 

In 2000, this lowly newspaperman secured a ringside seat to watch the unravelling of Zimbabwe.

The invasions of white-owned farms by mobs led by war veterans was in full force. President Robert Mugabe had just lost the constitutional referendum and was livid. The opposition had campaigned hard against him and the people had listened to them, not him.

Once revered by the people but now scorned by them, the old man was fearful of what this meant for the upcoming parliamentary election.

He needed a love potion to “woo back lost lover”, as the traffic-light pamphlets say.

His love potion was the land question and the continued domination of this crucial economic sector by a minority.

Twenty years after independence, white farmers controlled most agricultural land. With agriculture – in particular, tobacco – being a major component of the gross domestic product and a huge foreign exchange earner, white Zimbabweans were in the pound seats economically. They enjoyed extreme wealth compared to their black compatriots. This was a source of much resentment.

Mugabe knew what pressing the land button meant. Land was at the centre of the two Chimurengas – the 1890s uprising against the colonial occupiers and the 20th-century liberation war. Because so much blood was spilt getting the land back, the issue was, and is, close to the hearts of Zimbabweans.

So, the self-serving Mugabe started spewing anti-colonial, anti-West and anti-white rhetoric. This spurred the invasion of white farms, often with the support of the security forces. The Zanu-PF government slyly attributed the invasions to the impatience of the people.

The result of this was the destruction of Zimbabwe’s agricultural sector, which had a knock-on effect on all other sectors of the economy.

Industry collapsed, unemployment rocketed, infrastructure fell apart, inflation soared, the Zimbabwean dollar became worth less than single-ply toilet paper and supermarkets could not even stock the most basic products. Zimbabweans fled south, west, east, north and beyond the seas.

Within eight years, the country was on the brink of becoming a failed state as policy and governance became whatever Mugabe and Zanu-PF’s hardliners woke up thinking on a particular day. The five-year Government of National Unity, brokered in 2008, brought some respite and arrested the decline.

But Zimbabwe is still suffering from the wild, populist and self-serving decisions of 2000.

Land is a word that has been very much on the lips of South Africa’s first citizen of late. The more he has become embattled, the more he has aped Mugabe’s land rhetoric. He has belatedly discovered the land question and made it a pillar of his legacy. He has upped his anti-colonialism and anti-Western pitch.

Cognisant of the racially defined gross inequality, he makes a point of stoking the already high levels of anger among the black poor.

The rhetoric grew louder and crazier as he faced a revolt from within his own party. The frequency increased after last year’s damning Constitutional Court judgment on the Nkandla saga and the August 2016 municipal election results.

When ANC veterans and stalwarts challenged his leadership, he characterised them as pawns of the powers who were afraid of his radical stance.

Some of the rhetoric is the stuff of fantasy. Who in their right minds would vocalise a private thought about pushing the restitution deadline a few centuries back, when South Africa is battling with the 1913 cut-off date? On Friday, he added this idea to his file of lunacies. Addressing the National House of Traditional Leaders, he called for “a precolonial audit of land ownership, use and occupation patterns”. He said once such an audit was done, a single land law would be “developed to address the issue of land restitution without compensation”.

Constitutional amendments would then be made to ensure this happened, and the National Land Claims Commission would be made a chapter 9 institution, with powers similar to those of the Public Protector. Interestingly, he made this statement just days after his own party members had argued and voted against such a move in Parliament.

In doing so, they were informed by the fact that the Constitution is not a hindrance to land restitution and land reform.

The process has been bedevilled by poor implementation on the part of the state. It has also been hobbled by the fact that black South Africans are not as romantic and sentimental about land as Zimbabweans and some of our other neighbours.

Mentally, they have long moved on, and those with sentimental attachments have them because there is a recent history of rural to urban migration in the family.

Hunger for land is in the urban areas, where people are living on top of each other in informal settlements. And that is a totally different headache, which requires the kind of energy that is being spent obsessing about impractical fantasies.

So, inasmuch as there may be this populist agitation around land from high up, this is a fire unlikely to catch. What will catch is the racially charged nature of the agitation. It is this part that will resonate with the urban poor. Whether the president and those around him who are stoking this racial anger will be able to channel it is doubtful.

This is the danger of populism. It provides simple answers to complex problems and avoids proper thinking and planning. The aftermath is almost always ruination. Just ask our neighbours.