ANC land decision end of the beginning
You can only assume the pressure was immense. For the ANC national executive committee to announce it would seek to change the Constitution to accommodate the expropriation of land without compensation is a huge change of heart.
But as the process of public hearings into the proposition has moved from region to region over the past few weeks the outcome has become inevitable. There are too many poor people in this country for even the most reasonable of debates to proceed.
As it is, the national executive committee “lekgotla” on Monday and Tuesday, baited by constant hectoring from the EFF, finally lost its collective nerve and forced its president to announce that the party would no longer even wait for the parliamentary public process to finish. The Constitution will be amended to explicitly allow for expropriation without compensation.
It is a big moment for SA, and for President Cyril Ramaphosa. His reservations about expropriation without compensation are well known. But even as he danced about his late-night announcement on Tuesday — “the ANC will finalise a proposed amendment to the Constitution that outlines more clearly the conditions under which expropriation without compensation can be effected” — you could tell he was lost.
Events, the EFF and too much of his own party have run ahead of him. To hold the ANC together he is having to catch it up, not lead it. If the party wins a majority in the 2019 election he might be able to catch his breath and do his job, but by then he may not even want to.
In the meantime, his mere announcement on Tuesday will do enormous long-term damage to the economy. The markets know he is rattled. They will sense weakness. Investors will look elsewhere. His investment envoys, charged with raking in $100bn in the next five years, may as well stay at home. The right-wing farmer lobbies and SA’s competitors will get heard first.
Ramaphosa will explain. The ANC will explain. Yes, we know no one is going to lose their home. Yes, there will be no land invasions. Yes, with an accompanying infrastructure build, expropriation without compensation might even be a growth opportunity.
But it’s too late for explaining and, anyway, that’s now, with Ramaphosa still around. What waits to replace him one day are some of the most frightening politicians on the planet. Besides, when you’re explaining, you’re losing.
How typical of an ANC, with its profound ignorance of how wealth and jobs are created, that it should propel its leader onto national television to announce a catastrophic diminution in investment security in the Constitution on the same day that unemployment rose to an official 27.2%. Include people not even bothering to look for a job anymore and that number rises to well over 40%.
Hell, according to the statistics there are now more people unemployed than employed in every South African province except Gauteng and the Western Cape. There is no sign that this government has any plan to turn that around. In fact, if it were to be doing its job properly, in the short term at least the numbers should get worse as the public sector is right-sized. But hey, not before an election, man. You crazy?
At the Treasury they know how bad the public finances are. There will be preparation to seek a bail-out from the IMF if Ramaphosa’s Tuesday shock freezes up investment. The only way to counteract that quickly would be with an interest rate increase (election or no election, someone has to stand up for reason) to keep foreign funds flowing in.
Institutions such as the Reserve Bank and the Treasury do extraordinary work holding SA on course. But they can only do so much. Tuesday night may not, to be Churchillian, be the end, as social media seemed to have it soon after the announcement. It may not even be the beginning of the end. But 24 years after democracy this coming change to the Constitution is sure as hell the end of the beginning.
There is simply no rational or workable alternative in an open economy to the sanctity of title. In SA the status quo was always going to have to be challenged. We understood that and our past demanded and demands it. But the ANC has wasted every opportunity it has had in the past 24 years to fix the land question.
We will now all pay the price for a political decision made under political pressure and not out of principle. The poor, who long for and deserve a piece of land to call their own, will still have to wait. The ANC will not transform itself overnight into a delivery machine. It cannot. It is just too hopeless.
Ramaphosa knows he is in trouble and is politician enough to look around for something to cheer up the people he has let down. I suspect him bending to the national executive committee’s will on land will give him space to press through changes in the Zuma-aligned National Prosecuting Authority and that Shaun Abrahams will finally lose his head.
I’d drink to that, but if you’re poor it’ll mean nothing. If you’re poor your life is about to get much, much worse as even the few job opportunities available dry up. It could have all been very different these past two decades.
Cry the beloved country.
WE WILL NOW ALL PAY THE PRICE FOR A POLITICAL DECISION MADE UNDER POLITICAL PRESSURE AND NOT OUT OF PRINCIPLE