Handle land reform issue carefully, Mlangeni warns
FORMER anti-apartheid stalwart and Rivonia trialist Andrew Mlangeni has warned that the land reform project would be a disaster if not handled well. He said the Afrikaner farmers would put up a fight. Mlangeni was among prominent South Africans at the Inclusive Growth conference organised by the Kgalema Motlanthe Foundation held at the Drakensberg at the weekend.
The conference, the brainchild of former president Kgalema Motlanthe, discussed the country’s pressing problems, including the state of the economy and governance, challenges of poverty, unemployment, inequality and the way forward. The contentious land issue, state capture and the economic legacy of apartheid were among the dominant discussions.
Mlangeni, 93, said the process was sensitive and was likely to cause divisions. He said the government had to start by giving up the land it owned.
“If the government is not very careful with this problem it will get problems. Farmers, especially the Afrikaners, are not going to give up this land issue very easily. There must be an immediate finding out of how much of land belongs to the government and then they can start distributing that to the people.”
At its conference in December, the ANC agreed to push for amendments to the constitution that would pave the way for the government to expropriate land without compensation.
In February, President Cyril Ramaphosa told the National Assembly that expropriation of land without compensation would be handled in a responsible manner to ensure the economy and food security were not adversely affected.
“In dealing with this complex matter, we will not make the mistakes that others have made. We will not allow smash-and-grab interventions,” Ramaphosa said.
The National Assembly has since set up a constitutional review committee to review section 25 of the constitution and consider whether it should be amended to allow for the expropriation of land without compensation. Almost one million submissions had been made by yesterday.
Mlangeni said while he was fully behind the project of land reform, he did not know where to stand on the debate on the amendment of the constitution, but urged the government to immediately redistribute.
“We will learn as time goes on which is the best method of distributing this land to the people who require it,” he said.
Among attendees at the threeday event were Ramaphosa, former deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas, senior public servants, academics, captains of industry and civil society organisations.
Business Leadership SA chief executive Bonang Mohale said land expropriation without compensation could have been executed without much flurry over the past years, adding that he backed it.
“As business, we support that President Ramaphosa responsibly announced it in his State of the Nation address and housed it properly in the ad hoc constitutional review committee so all of us can ventilate our contentious issues around land,” he said.
Anti-apartheid activist and economics professor Ben Turok said while people were quick to praise the democratic breakthrough and its benefits, there was little emphasis on the economic legacy of apartheid which he said had to be tackled if the country was to turn around its fortunes.
“We like to talk about human rights and about the political dispensation, but there is an economic legacy which is terribly important and we have to face it.
“The huge inequalities and wealth – somehow we are shy to talk about inequality of wealth – and yet the Gini coefficient that indicates that is 0.95 whereas the Gini coefficient of income is 0.67. So our wealth inequality is not only highest in the world but beyond comparison with any country in the world.”
Turok said the country’s economy was also riddled with concentration where monopolies were operating in particular sectors while the financial sector was internationalised, which he said are also legacies of the past.
“One of the problems of concentration in certain sectors by monopolies is that those monopolies block new entrants, and there is research showing that all over the place new entrants – in particular black entrants – are being blocked by the concentration and the monopolisation of the economy.”
Turok said the control of large chunks of South Africa’s stock exchange by international agencies made it difficult for the government to restructure the economy for the benefit of the country.
Jonas said the government faced a tough challenge as state capture had hollowed out state capacity and reduced business and investor confidence.
He blamed state capture for weakening strategic and technical capability as meritocracy was subordinated to the deployment and appointment of “enablers” of capture at executive, administrative and technical levels.
“Hard skills in corporate governance, finance, supply chain, risk, technical professions were hollowed out, as state institutions were re-purposed away from their service delivery mandates. These losses incurred by state inefficiencies resulted in fewer resources available for pro-poor and anti-inequality fiscal expenditure.
“As cases of corruption and capture became public knowledge (as in South Africa with its free press and robust civil society), there has been the corresponding loss of state legitimacy required to lead society behind a common purpose.”