To ANC, EFF land solutions
The equitable expropriation of land without compensation can happen through the law alone
tices such as land dispossession? Radical nonracialism, which is not anti-white but anti-white supremacy, is another principled political position from which to engage the race, class, gender and ecological dynamics of South Africa’s unjust food system. This principle informs the campaigning platform of the South African Food Sovereignty Campaign (SAFSC), which is made up of organisations from the agrarian sector, climate justice, food justice and solidarity economy movements.
Formed out of a conference on the right to food in late 2014 and launched in 2015, the campaign has consistently translated and given substance to a South African approach to food sovereignty. Through its hunger tribunal, drought speak-outs, bread marches, food sovereignty festivals, water sovereignty dialogues and activist schools it has evolved an alternative perspective on land and agricultural transformation. This is encapsulated in a People’s Food Sovereignty Act, adopted at a People’s Parliament in 2016, shared with several government ministries last year and recently handed over to a representative of Parliament at a people’s dialogue in Cape Town.
The People’s Food Sovereignty Act is an example of prefigurative practice. It provides a compass to build food sovereignty pathways from below through households, villages, towns and cities. It envisages a citizen-driven process but supported by the state, to build a democratic, just and sustainable food system.
The Act is also an example of a democratic systemic reform, which sets out fundamental differences with the ANC and EFF’s approach to land reform.
First, agricultural land must be treated as having a social and ecological function. This means chemical, industrial and monoindustrial farming is not the way forward for agriculture. Instead, agroecological practices need to be prioritised to produce in harmony with ecosystems, water constraints and more indigenised diets.
Second, small-scale farmers need to be given conditional-use rights of a maximum of two hectares of land as part of the commons but subject to the imperatives of democratic planning. This prevents the overconcentration of land and allows for more than 30-million smallscale farmers to be created in South Africa. The land for this commons will come from the state, religious organisations, communal tenure systems, the private sector and from deconcentrating commercial farms.
Third, the deconcentration of commercial farms must be handled in accordance with the Constitution, as part of a transition, involving a land audit and with a commitment to fair compensation to historically white farmers. A national food sovereignty fund is envisaged, which will be the mechanism to secure funds from South African capital, not the individual taxpayer, to buy out white commercial farmers over a 20-year period and provide capital to small-scale farmers. Finance, industries, retailers, mining companies and every fraction of (white) capital must contribute to this fund, given the benefits they accrued under apartheid and in the postapartheid context. This is the gesture of nation-building required to advance genuine reconciliation.
Fourth, the state is envisaged as playing an enabling role to ensure food sovereignty is realised as a democratic systemic reform driven from below. This includes a procurement role, a pedagogical role, a regulatory role against dominant commercial food interests, a custodial role of the land commons together with a national food sovereignty council and local communal councils. It is also envisaged the state will support a democratic planning mechanism to plan the water, land, seed, production and consumption issues around a food-sovereign system. This is crucial in a climate-driven world.
As opposed to the ANC and the EFF, the food sovereignty proposition envisages an alternative food system controlled by small-scale farmers and consumers but deeply embedded in society. A food-sovereign system will enable South Africa to confront the pathologies of a corporate-controlled food system (such as hunger, unhealthy food choices and globalised diets) while also enduring climate shocks.
The winners in advancing food sovereignty are all of South Africa, thus affirming the radical and transformative politics that are possible with the Mandela practice of reconciliation and in a paradigm of peace.