Land reclamation, an idea whose time has come
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, like his Zimbabwean counterpart President Emmerson Mnangagwa, is facing a crisis of expectations where people expect miraculous results from their new administrations.
This is natural considering people’s sentiments that the past administrations were not as people-centred as they would have wanted. It is also expected because people vote for a Government of their choice, which they know would deliver. Both leaders will also be going to the polls soon — President Mnangagwa this year, and President Ramaphosa next year. These are all make-or-break elections for the ruling liberation movements: Zanu-PF and African National Congress.
While President Mnangagwa’s challenge is to demonstrate that he can continue Zanu-PF’s legacy of governing the country after former president Robert Mugabe, President Ramaphosa is faced with a game changer that will revolutionise the South African political and economic landscape since the end of apartheid.
A historic sitting of South Africa’s National Assembly, last Tuesday, overwhelmingly voted for the expropriation of land by the State, without compensation.
All political parties, with the exception of the Democratic Alliance that protects the interests of white monopoly capital, passed this do-or-die motion tabled by the Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema.
Like his Zimbabwean counterpart, President Ramaphosa can now say, South Africa “is now open for business”, although the elite, who constitute the minority, would accuse him of throwing caution to the wind for taking the Zimbabwe route.
The land question is an emotive issue in any part of the world, but we hope that in South Africa, apart from consultations with all stakeholders
— the people in particular - they will use the knowledge learnt from various countries to best advantage.
They might not adopt the Zimbabwean model, but we believe that there are major lessons they can draw from the land reform programme of 2000.
The Zimbabwe Constitution in Chapter 16 is about “agricultural land”, and it has been restated time and again that the land reform programme is irreversible.
It is common knowledge that the white minority population will not want to part with the land stolen by their ancestors, centuries ago, and that they will work in cahoots with some Western governments to ensure that the exercise fails.
Just like during the liberation struggle and the past weeks, the people of South Africa must speak with one emphatic voice on the land issue. United they should stand, but if they get divided and follow the DA way, they will not reclaim the land.
If whites wanted an equitable distribution of wealth through land, they would have welcomed the exercise, instead of casting aspersions, which they have already started doing. Reassurances about property rights are being given, but they are choosing to ignore them.
They thought that “expropriating land without compensation” was former president Jacob Zuma’s mantra, making analysts think that President Ramaphosa had been captured by white monopoly capital.
However, should they fail to bring closure to the land issue, there is no way that President Ramaphosa’s administration will achieve radical economic transformation, which he referred to in his maiden State of the Nation Address when he said: “We remain a highly unequal society, in which poverty and prosperity are still defined by race and gender . . . Radical economic transformation requires that we fundamentally improve the position of black women and communities in the economy, ensuring that they are owners, managers, producers and financiers.”
Thus the inevitable that people have been waiting for since the demise of the apartheid regime must take its course. It is the ANC’s responsibility to fulfil this major objective that emboldened young men and women to fight the evil apartheid system.
President Ramaphosa’s administration should not even be apologetic about it, and neither should it be distracted by antics of hoisting the apartheid flag like they did on the so-called pejorative “Black Monday” last year.
As ANC Youth League and current National Executive Committee member Ronald Lamola remarked last week, President Ramaphosa’s government “needs legislation as forceful as war”, to see them through the coming turbulent times.