Can farmers trust Ramaphosa’s promises on expropriation? The IRR responds to Max du Preez

Gabriel Crouse of the South African Institute of Race Relations says Max du Preez’s argument, as presented at the Nedbank Vinpro Information Day 2019 in Cape Town, that expropriation will focus on cities, does not hold water. Crouse argues President Cyril

In the cover story, ‘Expropriation is about urban, not rural, land’ ( FW,

15 February 2019), Max du Preez asserts that it “must be clear to everybody that there will never be arbitrary confiscation of property” and commercial farms are totally safe.

The confidence of his assertion, as was given at the Nedbank Vinpro Information Day 2019, appears to rest on his assurance that “I’ve known [President Cyril] Ramaphosa since 1983.”

A guarantee that commercial farms are safe would be very good news, if only Du Preez could be relied upon. To the explanations for the assault on the Bill of Rights that is expropriation without compensation (EWC), Du Preez adds his “own view” that goes like this: since apartheid, “black lives have not changed fundamentally”, thus something must happen “radically”.

But overall black employment has more than doubled in absolute terms in the new South Africa. Black engineering graduates outnumber white ones by two to one. About 17 million beneficiaries receive social grants. The number of families cooking with electricity has increased by 10 million; the number of families with running water has doubled; the families living in formal housing have gone from 64% to 80% of the total population. By 2014, 95% of land restitution claims had been settled, with 1,8 million beneficiaries.

Du Preez says these changes are not “fundamental”. Not only have fundamental changes taken place, but change has gone in the opposite direction. During my high school years, 2003 to 2007,

GDP doubled, raising living standards countrywide. Since then, the economy has been bled into the longest negative cycle since the Second World War.

AN ARCHAIC THESIS

The closest thing to a total unidirectional change to all ‘black lives’ is that the law of the land officially dehumanised them decades ago; now it is left to journalists like Du Preez to refer to ‘black lives’ as if they were some uniform, inert and mindless thing.

Du Preez’s erroneous ‘no fundamental change’ thesis is archaic, but it allows him to hit his conclusion. By saying that nothing has changed, he signals his loyalty to the next phase of the revolution, saying that something radical must happen.

But he can also placate the reader by saying that this should really happen in the cities, not farms, without adding substantive detail.

He further placates the reader by saying government will only ever do something “symbolic”. He “knows” Ramaphosa is just pretending to support EWC and that the ANC “never really cared” much for the politics of land reform anyway.

WHY IS RAMAPHOSA NOT DOING WHAT DU PREEZ SAYS HE WANTS TO DO, NATIONALISING LAND?

The South African Institute of Race Relations (IRR) has tracked over 30 distinct policy moves by the socialist revolutionary faction of the ANC to attack property rights even while true progress was being made. Recent showstoppers include: unilaterally redrawing treaties so that foreign-owned property in South Africa falls under Section 25 of the Constitution, exposing them to the next point; initiating the amendment of Section 25 of the Constitution, which is scheduled soon to offer less protection against arbitrary deprivation; justifying this by reference to congenital “sin”; in November, gazetting a compensation formula under which any farm inherited from a white person is likely to be valued at R0 for “just and equitable” compensation. These concrete moves were all made under Ramaphosa’s signature.

Du Preez is surely right on one thing: Ramaphosa could have lost to Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and she might well have ruined the country by now, which he has not. Du Preez repeats that hypothetical as the last vestige of ‘Ramaphoria’.

But there is another fundamental change Du Preez missed: Ramaphosa won and is in charge, so why isn’t he doing what Du Preez says he wants to do?

Cope MP Mosiuoa Lekota has noted that the president and vice-president are the only citizens sworn to ‘preserve’ the Constitution

as it is. So here’s a hypothetical: after tea with Lekota this Saturday, Ramaphosa reads back over his oath of office, palms his forehead and says, ‘ Jislaaik, that’s actually true.’

Knowing that GDP per capita shrank last year because he pushed EWC, and wanting to reverse that failure, Ramaphosa orders an immediate late-night address as president of the Republic, during which he tells the truth.

“I am constitutionally obliged to withdraw my support for EWC right now! I ask the nation’s forgiveness for violating my oath of office. I will defend and preserve the Constitution as it is.”

Decent South Africans, credit rating agencies and the market rejoice. “He finally found his voice” people say.

On the other hand, Du Preez cannot believe it; neither can women’s minister Bathabile Dlamini. But, if we are going to play the hypothetical game, what could they do about it?

IRR polls show that Ramaphosa is the most popular politician in the country; his personal approval outstrips the ANC significantly because he is seen as Mr Anti-Corrupt, which the party is not.

NOT A HIGH-PRIORITY ISSUE

These polls also show that a single-digit portion of voters consider land reform a priority issue (jobs and safety come first) and EWC has minority support.

In addition, Ramaphosa and his brotherin-law, businessman Patrice Motsepe, are together worth about R40 billion, which is a formidable campaign war chest, especially when you consider that Luthuli House can hardly afford to pay a simple electricity bill.

Ramaphosa is the most powerful man in the country, officially. The ANC needs him far more than he needs the party. Going on precedent, the ANC has no way of withdrawing Ramaphosa this year, as it did Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma, neither of whom enjoyed his preeminence, and a Parliamentary vote of no confidence would be the only sure way for the ANC to lose the next election.

But this is all very abstract. Regardless of what Du Preez “knows”, Ramaphosa has the power, but zero demonstrated desire, to talk down the racial nationalist revolutionaries in his own ranks.