Oxfam SA oblivious of revolution
DEAR SIR — In dealing with the Expropriation Bill and criticising the African National Congress’s “neoliberal capitalist approach” (Groups peddling land bill panic, June 30), Ronald Wesso of Oxfam SA is clearly sleeping through the national democratic revolution to which the ANC has been committed since 1969.
He seems oblivious to the ANC’s five-yearly strategy and tactics documents, in which the organisation unfailingly recommits itself to a national democratic revolution, which its South African Communist Party ally openly describes as providing “the most direct route” to a socialist and communist future.
The SACP also wants to bring about “state ownership of large-scale farms” and promote peasant farming. In addition, a wider goal of the revolution is to “eliminate” existing property relations.
At its Mangaung conference in 2012, the ANC committed itself to more “radical” steps in this second phase of the transition. Since then, the governing party has cancelled 13 European bilateral investment treaties providing standard protections against expropriation; replaced those investment treaties with a meaningless Protection of Investment Act; reopened the land claims process; and put through Parliament bills requiring the indigenisation of foreign security companies and allowing the mining minister to impose price and export controls on “designated” minerals.
The Expropriation Bill is a key part of the ANC’s long-standing policy push in what is indeed a “revolutionary socialist direction”. This policy push, integral to the revolution, is the key reason economic growth is already so low and joblessness so high. The Institute of Race Relations, in criticising the bill, is not “peddling panic”. There is, in fact, huge reason for concern about a bill that is unconstitutional, will cause even more economic damage, worsen the plight of the poor, and help advance the revolution.
Wesso also seems to favour “land occupations in defiance of the state”. For Oxfam SA to suggest such violent upheavals, in contradiction of the rule of law, is extraordinary. Anthea Jeffery Head of Policy Research, IRR