Food sovereignty the viable alternative
Among the issues are the need to ensure food security in the future and whether
Although Jacob Zuma has fallen, South Africa has not escaped the miasma of a “Zumafied Parliament”. His reign represented the degeneration of political leadership and the serious weakening of democracy. The ANC’s and the Economic Freedom Fighters’ (EFF’s) support for a motion to amend the Constitution to advance land expropriation without compensation reflects the absence of deep and serious political debate in our democracy.
One would have expected that, post-Zuma, the ANC would reach for a modicum of engaged deliberation on such a fundamental question, which has to be addressed in a manner that takes the country forward.
Moreover, the ANC was not blindsided by the EFF’s motion, which was merely confirming its December conference position (and the ANC Youth League’s own documents that predate the EFF’s formation).
Both the ANC’s and the EFF’s authoritarian populist positions share one thing in common. For the EFF and the ANC, land grabs are about revenge. To address the wrongs of colonial and racist dispossession, white farmers must be punished. Some would argue further that Nelson Mandela’s reconciliation politics have failed.
Yet, as academic and author Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni points out, the paradigm of war in modern Western society, based on the logic of racial division and coloniality, was rejected by Mandela and instead there was a deep decolonial impulse in his ethical approach to reconciliation through his “paradigm of peace”.
Like all political practices, it was grounded in immanent possibility. There were paths taken and not taken. It also means that, as a political resource, Mandela’s reconciliatory practice can be put to work to achieve more radical outcomes.
The new anti-white racism of the EFF is shared by the ANC. In this instance, the ANC is clearly far from Mandela but even further away from the principle of nonracialism, including radical nonracialism that advocates fundamental transformation. What the ANC stands for at the level of principle is increasingly unclear. Post-Zuma the ANC’s trust deficit with South Africa is still widening.
To be a vengeful racist addressing the land grievance comes with its dangers. Such an approach presumes that all white farmers (about 35 000) are supremacists and must be treated as such. A sharp, racialised antagonism is created with white farmers and more generally white South Africa. A volatile racial fault line is constructed in our discourse, which can take on a life of its own in everyday politics.
The grammar of race war, militant posturing, racial innuendo and symbolic violence sets the stage for confrontation. Julius Malema and the EFF, of course, are not the only ones with a capacity for racial violence. White South Africa, particularly conservative Afrikaners, are armed and therefore the potential for deadly political conflagration is a possibility. A race war in South Africa, over the land, simply means we all lose.
At the same time, there are differences between the EFF’s and the ANC’s positions. The EFF views the state as a custodian of all land, providing use rights to individuals and corporations for a maximum of 25 years, subject to renewal. Although the language of “small-scale” farming is evoked, the EFF has not given it much thought. It is very likely big farmers would emerge in their revolving-door framework to access land use. The state is also meant to support small-scale farmers with procurement opportunities and protections. Ultimately the EFF views small-scale commercial agriculture as a viable prospect in the context of export to the wider African market.
Though the EFF proposal is shot through with inconsistencies, it is primarily about state-supported capitalist agriculture that could compete and displace peasant agriculture in the wider African context. This is a far cry from pan-African solidarity with Africa’s peasantry.
There will be winners and losers in the EFF’s proposal. For the ANC, agrarian transformation is primarily about supporting smallscale farmers to become viable commercial enterprises in the “first economy” and for export markets. Agrihubs, extension services and financing is geared towards this pathway. In this policy framework there have been and will continue to be winners and losers.
Yet does one have to be a revengeful racist to address historical injus-