Land: politicians must hear people

The land reform, or expropriation, or restitution – whatever you call it – has just got even messier. Even as President Cyril Ramaphosa was promising European parliamentarians this week that the whole land issue will be dealt with responsibly, parliament’s joint constitutional review committee (CRC) was pointing to the possibility that the whole “consultation process” may be little more than a scam.

Despite receiving more than 720 000 submissions on the issue, the CRC has decided to consider only 400 of those. The Institute for Race Relations (IRR) considers this manifestly unjust and believes the decision has already been made. So that’s why they’re going to court to try to stop the process.

The IRR describes the principle of land “expropriation without compensation” – which has been promoted by Ramaphosa himself – as “nationalisation by another name”.

At the same time, as we report today, a senior executive of the World Bank said yesterday the land expropriation plans had “unnerved” potential investors, because they were reluctant to plough money into a country where security of tenure was not cast in stone.

The ANC is determined to push ahead with land reform … sidestepping the uncomfortable reality that the lack of progress in this area since 1994, is solely its fault. But the debate has inflamed passions and spurred racism on both sides.

So, it is interesting, and somewhat ironic, that the most recent survey by data analytics firm Afrobarometer shows that most South Africans of voting age are far more concerned about jobs and security than they are about land.

That is correct because, despite the populist claims to the contrary and the emotional rhetoric flowing from people like the ANC and EFF, you can’t eat land. Merely possessing land is no guarantee of economic freedom or even basic monetary security.

Perhaps our politicians should listen to their people.