By Golden Guvamatanga 

THE historic signing of the Expropriation Bill into law by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, on Thursday last week,  marks a significant step in ongoing efforts to right colonial injustices of the past. 

Through the Bill, the ANC — South Africa’s ruling party and one of Africa’s oldest liberation movements — seeks to redress colonial imbalances on issues to do with ownership of land and property ‘for a public purpose or in the public interest’ as cited in Section 25 of that country’s Constitution.

“This law will assist all organs of State — local, provincial and national authorities — to expropriate land in the public interest for varied reasons,” President Ramaphosa announced in a statement.

“Local, provincial and national authorities will use this legislation to expropriate land in the public interest for varied reasons that seek, among others, to promote inclusivity and access to natural resources.

“The Bill repeals the Expropriation Act (of the apartheid regime crafted in 1975) and provides a common framework in line with the Constitution to guide the processes and procedures for expropriation by organs of the State.”

That, however, immediately provoked a predictable whiplash from an angry Western-founded and funded opposition, the Democratic Alliance (DA) and ANC’s ‘partner’ in the Government of National Unity.

South Africans, like the rest of the peoples from the derisively called ‘developing world’, have justifiably been clamouring for access to their land and natural resources.

But those calls have often been stymied by the likes of DA and opposition parties in Zimbabwe who are shamelessly in favour of the pre-independence land tenure patterns, something they provocatively refer to as the ‘struggle for democracy’.

In South Africa, opposition parties like the DA and VF Plus tried in vain to stop enactment of the Bill, ‘arguing’ that the proposed law should be limited to expropriating State-owned land.

How the State can expropriate what it already owns and controls defies logic!

This is because those two parties are, in fact, owned and controlled by white monopoly capital which owns the land in South Africa. There is no prize for guessing why they will, as was the case in Zimbabwe, fight to maintain the current untenable status quo of their bloodline.

According to a 2017 Land Audit by the ANC-led government’s Department of Rural Development and Land Reform Land Audit, whites — who make up nine percent of South Africa’s 64 million population — owned 72 percent of its prime land.

“The Land Audit reveals that white people own 26 663 144 ha or 72 percent of the total 37 031 283 ha farms and agricultural holdings by individual landowners,” reads part of the report.  

The ‘case’ for the DA

As widely expected, the DA and monopoly capitalists in South Africa were always going to argue for, and on behalf of, their own.

And it is not difficult to trace the source of that anger.

Thanks to their colonial hangover, the DA and its handlers believe that black people must not own land anywhere in the world and in their perverted opinion, South Africa must not ‘descend’ into another Zimbabwe.

We will explain why that inane argument gets traction both in South Africa and in Zimbabwe, but mostly in Western capitals.

On Saturday last week, DA leader John Steenhuisen, was literally frothing at the mouth,  when he said he would declare ‘war’ on the ANC over the Bill which he described as ‘unconstitutional’.

“I yesterday wrote to President Ramaphosa to object in the strongest terms to the fact that he signed the Expropriation Act (Bill) this week in contravention of a clear legal opinion . . . that the Act is unconstitutional,” he told the media.

But the undiluted truth is that South Africa’s long overdue land reform cannot be halted by Steenhuisen’s hollow threats. To put it simply,  the DA cannot stop an idea whose time has come. 

The fallacy of ‘Zimbabwe situation’

Western countries, the principal drivers of the vain neo-colonial agenda, have since the turn of the millennium been on a spirited war of aggression against liberation movements to stifle the fulfilment of the ideals of the liberation struggle through their shameless attempt to halt redistribution of land and natural resources to their rightful owners. 

Often citing what they claim is the ‘Zimbabwe situation’ in which they claim that Harare’s Land Reform and Resettlement Programme of 2000, not their illegal economic sanctions, ‘destroyed’ the country’s economy, most liberation movements had been almost cowed into not giving back the revered asset to their people.

The scaremongering tactics often claim that Zimbabwe chased away ‘productive’ white commercial farmers to countries like Zambia and Malawi, which, curiously, failed to feed their people due to the devastating effects of the El Nino-induced drought.

There is, however, impeccable evidence that land reform has not only benefitted the masses but has boosted production — statistics to that effect are in the public domain. 

If those whites who went to Zambia and Malawi were as productive as is often touted, how and why would those countries be reeling from the adverse effects of one bad season?

It is a fact that soon after Zimbabwe repossessed its land and gave it back to the masses, there were frenetic attempts by the West to subdue the country by imposing illegal economic sanctions and availing huge funding to those who relocated to neighbouring countries who, after more than two decades, have failed to break even.

In the then Rhodesia, it took those farmers more than 60 years to make a profit from the land, something that has been achieved by black farmers in less than two decades.

While the ANC has finally come to the party, it is incumbent on all liberation movements to follow suit and give the masses what rightfully belongs to them.

While the backlash and retribution from the West is going to be swift and violent, it is time all liberation movements closed ranks against these marauding forces. It is imperative that all progressive forces, like BRICS+, SADC and AU, among others, rally behind the South African government in this bold move.