‘Constitution enables land reform including via expropriation.’
THE land question has suddenly become the focus of national debate. Much of the discussion has been ill-informed and naive. A number of our more credible commentators, such as the excellent Ruth Hall, have pointed out that it is simply untrue to claim that the constitution somehow mandates a “willing seller” approach to land reform. In fact, the constitution explicitly enables land reform including via expropriation.
There are three reasons land reform after apartheid has largely failed. The first is that there has been a lack of political commitment to land reform from the ANC.
The second is the land reform programme has not fully understood that most South Africans are now urban based and require urban land. The third is that most beneficiaries have chosen to be paid out in cash rather than to take land.
But there is another point that has not been made which is that land reform is a fundamental plank of democratic and authoritarianism forms of politics, as well as socialism and national socialism. For instance, the 25-point programme of the Nazi Party, announced in 1920, included the demand for “the enactment of a law to expropriate the owners without compensation of any land needed for the common purpose”. What this means is we cannot assume that a commitment to an expropriation-based approach to land reform is progressive.
Julius Malema’s EFF is a contradictory phenomenon but it is clearly a highly authoritarian project that, as numerous commentators have observed, has often taken a form much closer to National Socialism than Democratic Socialism.
We all know that in Zimbabwe an expropriation-based approach to land reform was used to extend the lifespan of a highly authoritarian, corrupt and repressive regime. It was also carried out in such a destructive way that the economy collapsed leading to mass emigration.
But it is also true that there is an urgent need for land reform. This is a matter of historical justice as well a matter of dealing with the massive inequalities in our society. The question is not whether or not we need radical land reform but, rather, what form radical land reform should take.
Malema’s plan to vest all land ownership in the state is a deeply authoritarian ambition that can only result in serious risk to democracy.
Imagine, for instance, if Jacob Zuma’s state had full ownership of all land in the country? The idea is almost too ghastly to contemplate. We can’t assume that just because Zuma was eventually removed from office that we will never have so a compromised leadership again. After all, David Mabuza is a literal heartbeat away from the presidency.
However, if land is restored to people in a way that enables common ownership, the possibility of a more democratic society emerges.
There is also an urgent class question. If land is to be expropriated, will it go to elites around the party leadership or will it go to working class and poor people?
These questions are not trivial. They are vital questions that need serious answers. An expropriationapproach to land reform could result in the accumulation of wealth and power by a new elite in an authoritarian state. But it could also result in the democratisation of society and the reduction in inequality.
It is also critically important that we think strategically about land reform in terms of the balance of forces in global power relations. Going down the route of Zimbabwe will be a catastrophe of the masses of our people. The EFF has a long history of association with Zanu-PF and simply cannot be trusted to take democracy and the well-being of the masses of the people seriously. The Zimbabwean disaster must be avoided at all costs.
What is required is a tactical approach that steadily shifts land ownership patterns without sinking the economy. This requires a realistic understanding of the global balance of forces, and careful and sophisticated strategic thinking about how to navigate this terrain. The kind of strategic thinking required to achieve meaningful land reform without sinking the economy and further impoverishing millions of people is completely lacking in the kind of authoritarian populism, sometimes skirting fascism, that we have to associate with Malema.
It is telling that Malema and the EFF offer the ultra authoritarian solution of vesting the ownership of all land in the state. But it is also telling that they see the state as the vehicle to change land ownership patterns. A radical, progressive and democratic approach would reject this authoritarian politics entirely and aim to build a popular movement that, like the Landless Workers’ Movement in Brazil, could expropriate land from below.
The EFF has focused its energies on electoral politics and building a media-driven electoral strategy. It has not focused on building popular movements. When there have been land occupations organised from below, it has occasionally given them rhetorical support. But there is no sign the EFF is building a real popular movement to expropriate land from below.
Malema, not unlike Donald Trump, is a reckless actor willing to do great damage to his society if it gets him more media space and time. And our media enables this by treating Malema as a spectacle that is useful for them to generate clicks. This is irresponsible journalism.
What is required now is serious evidence-backed analysis on how we can move forward effectively and quickly. People like Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, Ruth Hall and others who offer serious, considered and informed analysis need to be given the space that they deserve in the national debate. The reckless populists like Malema and the ANC’s Fikile Mbalula need to be treated as the self-interested and anti-democratic actors that they so clearly are.
The uncritical embrace of reckless populism led us to the brink of disaster under Zuma. It has taken the US into a very dangerous place. It led the UK into a very messy situation with Brexit. It is time for us to learn our lesson and make a decisive break with reckless and self-serving forms of populism.
The interest in land reform is a welcome development. But let us not squander it by surrendering the terrain to the kinds of reckless populists who would lead us into disaster. Let us grasp this opportunity to have a serious and credible discussion, an evidence-backed discussion, on how we make real progress on the land question without sinking our economy, creating new forms of inequality or risking the emergence of a totalitarian state.