Land ‘at root of poverty’
Does this forecast a turning point for ANC?
LAND redistribution is at the centre of South Africa’s economic problems of inequality, unemployment and poverty.
This was the message from President Jacob Zuma yesterday, addressing thousands of supporters at the Royal Bafokeng Sports Palace in Rustenburg during the ANC’s January 8 statement.
Zuma said the ANC had been striving to place the economy on a new growth path that would deracialise it and make a fundamental break with the ownership patterns of the past.
He called on the private sec- tor to play a greater role in this.
Describing the land dispossession of indigenous black people as “stolen land”, he spoke in emotive terms.
It was the second time in two days he had said this.
On Friday he quoted the ANC’s first secretary-general, Sol Plaatjie, saying “when we slept we had land and when we woke up we had nothing – we were worse than slaves”.
He said the source of poverty, inequality and unemployment was land which was “taken, not bought, but the government of the people has to buy it back as if it was sold”.
“One of the most fundamental historic injustices is the son for this. The ruling party realises, late in the day, that the underlying problem isn’t racism, at least not in the form of nasty attitudes towards blacks. What fuels these attitudes is the continuing structural legacy of colonialism and apartheid.
“We will continue to address the economic legacy of apartheid. Race and class are inextricably linked as a result of more than 300 years of systematic discrimination, dispossession and super-exploitation on the basis of race.
“There must be redress and ongoing active interventions to ensure all our people benefit, equitably, from our freedom,” said Zuma.
A key part of the legacy of colonialism is land dispossession. Strikingly, for the first systematic dispossession of our people’s land,” Zuma said yesterday.
“The challenges of poverty, inequality and unemployment have their roots in the vast tracts of land stolen from the indigenous people. The speed of land reform and levels of support for emerging farmers must be radically accelerated.”
Zuma said the ANC would continue to work with all sectors to find lasting and meaningful ways to effect redress for the centuries-long injustice of land dispossession.
“It is vital that, as South Africans, we feed ourselves; therefore we must be self-sufficient in food production,” he time I can remember, an ANC president referred to “stolen land” and an urgent need to redistribute land equitably as part of the effort to transform the economy.
Zuma used language one would associate with the PAC of the first democratic elections in 1994 – or the EFF today.
The rejection of the PAC’s “land first” message in those elections (only 1 percent voted for it) lulled the ANC and the country into believing land and other emotive reminders of dispossession would not be important in post-apartheid South Africa for a while.
It is clear this no longer holds true. The economy is at the centre of all the ANC must do, and land dispossession still defines its nature.
Even the political crises added. “The return of land must enable an increase in food productivity. As the Freedom Charter says, the land shall belong to those who work it.”
Land redistribution has remained an albatross around the neck of the ruling party since 1994, with several land reform targets not met.
The National Development Plan has stressed addressing the inequitable distribution of land is a crucial step in integrating rural areas into the mainstream economy.
Zuma conceded the ruling party was “scratching the surface” in dealing with instruments needed to address the problems of poverty, inequality that dog South Africa and the ANC go back, ultimately, to the failure to deal with dispossession.
The growing social distance between the governing and the governed stems from disenchantment over the slow pace of economic change experienced by the majority.
Zuma and the ANC leadership are unsurprisingly keen to close the chasm between poor communities and the ANC, even if that means sacrificing some control at municipal level.
This would explain the decision to allow communities – not exclusively ANC members – to decide who party candidates would be in this year’s elections.
“We remind branches that we select three nominees at an and unemployment.
One of those instruments was land, he said.
Zuma said the ANC would maintain strict fiscal management and respect for public finances. He did not mention the economic fallout from his firing of former finance minister Nhlanhla Nene.
Zuma attributed economic challenges to global factors, saying the world economy was still experiencing low growth following the global economic crisis of 2008.
He said the government was implementing strategies and programmes to mitigate the worst impact of the minerals price crash and drought. ANC branch meeting and present our nominees at a community meeting.
“The community is then given an opportunity to interrogate these nominees and to give their views on who must be the candidate.
“The ANC branch must, unless there are overwhelming and compelling reasons to the contrary, confirm the nominee who holds the majority of community support.”
This social distance also manifests as the alienation of young people, and #FeesMustFall showed this alienation was, for the first time, leading to organised, successful political action.
That represents both a threat and an opportunity to an ANC that needs to find a new way to speak to the youth.
The ANC cannot be unaware that Zuma is a 73year-old man presiding over a country with a median age of 25. One way to respond to the crisis faced by this demographic is a focus on higher education funding.
Zuma announced increased funds for poor and academically deserving entrants to tertiary institutions, and increased funding to the National Students Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) over and above its budget allocation for the current year.
“Our government has reprioritised almost R2.6 billion to ensure deserving students are not barred from continuing their studies because of outstanding university fees.
“The ANC government is committing an additional amount of more than R4.5bn to the NSFAS for the 2016/17 financial year.
“This is on top of money that has already been allocated to post-school education, and these loans will go a long way towards supporting financially needy and academically deserving students.”
The potential salvation of the ANC lies in closing the social distance between itself and ordinary, mainly black and poor South Africans.
While these people have continued to support and vote for the ruling party, the gap has increased and there are growing signs of their willingness to ditch the ANC.
The party knows this – which explains the “back to basics” approach of this year’s January 8 message.
Whether it will work should be clearer later in the year, when the party faces possibly the toughest elections it has ever had to fight.