Between Malema and Hermann (II)

A creative kind of land arbitration is what South Africa requires. Not any template established by countries with different historical experiences. Kenya was able to redistribute land in the 1960s under President Jomo Kenyatta because its “willing buyer-willing seller” program was funded by its former colonial overlord, Great Britain. President Mwai Kibaki went a step […]

A creative kind of land arbitration is what South Africa requires. Not any template established by countries with different historical experiences.

Kenya was able to redistribute land in the 1960s under President Jomo Kenyatta because its “willing buyer-willing seller” program was funded by its former colonial overlord, Great Britain.

President Mwai Kibaki went a step further in 2006 when he repossessed all land owned by “absentee landlords” in the coastal strip and shared it among squatters.

South Africa’s neighbour, Namibia, was confronted with a situation in which white settlers (less than 20 percent of the population) owned about 75 percent of the land. President Sam Nujoma followed the constitutional path where a legislation made it compulsory for white landowners to cede land for redistribution and be compensated appropriately. The process has been adjudged slow because the system is based on willing seller only. The government had to curtail possible restiveness by compulsorily redistributing 12 percent of the total commercial farmland in the country to black Namibians.

The Zimbabwe model which so much appeals to Malema and other far left activists has proved to be a sure route to ruination, borne, as it was, out of a knee-jerk reaction to British failure to live up to its pledge to fund compensation of farmers. Different countries, different strokes.

I am convinced that the South Africans have the creativity to rise above narrow perspectives and fashion out a workable, sustainable land redistribution programme that will be fair, just and beneficial to the country and its citizens, black, brown, yellow or white.

For starters, it is important that the attachment of blacks to their ancestral lands is appreciated. In Africa, land is identity. The British poet, historian and politician, Thomas Babington Macaulay, could have been referencing Africa when he wrote, “How can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his gods?

It also helps to remember that the whites in the country didn’t sneak in yesternight. You cannot redress a wrong perpetrated over centuries in one fell swoop unless you’re thinking extermination and the rest of the world (which did nothing to protect you during your dark days) will not stand akimbo and watch you enforce jungle justice.

So, which way forward?

We have to ensure that the kind of land arbitration and redistribution we are designing is not the type that re-victimises the victims of apartheid; not the type that Samuel Gompers describes as “arbitration between the lion and the lamb, in which the lamb is in the morning found inside the lion”.

We have come a long way from the Native Lands Act of 1913 which outlawed the establishment of farms, sharecropping or cash rentals by blacks outside the reserves to which they were forcefully consigned. Last February, the South African parliament passed a motion to allow for the expropriation of land, in the public interest, without compensation, on the grounds that the land was originally seized by whites without just compensation.

But what is the reality, sans sentiments? Between 1994 and 2016, the South African government had spent more than 60 billion Rand on land reform projects which have failed to stimulate development in the targeted rural areas. According to the South African Government’s Financial and Fiscal Commission, land reform as a mechanism for agricultural development and job creation has failed as “majority of the beneficiaries seek work on surrounding commercial farms instead of actively farming their own land….”

Perhaps it is time to consider new ideas. Suppose, as a general rule, parliament was to establish a base point of percentage holdings based on demography, would the heavens fall? I mean, everything considered, is it unthinkable to concede 10% of the current land holdings of the white population to them on freehold basis while redistributing the rest as per laid down community-centred formulae?

One of the conditions for the concession to white farmers would be that they would mentor a specified number of their black compatriots to make a success of their own enterprises because their destinies are tied. If honestly brokered, this kind of scheme could weld the country together even more.

The matter of compensation can be dealt with by discounting the market value of the acquired lands and agreeing to pay a token spread over the next 25-50 years. That way, the government is not under undue financial pressure and the white farmers are reassured that the country they have made their own cares about them. Remember, they are also South Africans!

What about game reserves? Those can be run as public liability companies with shares sold to the public through the stock exchange, provided one single entity is not allowed to corner more than 10 percent of the shares.

There is, however, one factor which black South Africans have not tied to the way forward which I think is crucial if future generations are to be spared the comparative backwardness of their grandparents. South African blacks deserve free, compulsory education up to tertiary level to empower them to contribute meaningfully to their country’s socio-political and economic life. As Henry Peter Brougham says, “Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.”

Somebody should please whisper these ‘blasphemies’ to Malema and Hermann.

Kemi Adeosun’s resignation

Former Finance Minister, Kemi Adeosun, did the civilised thing by resigning from the federal cabinet on account of her NYSC exemption brouhaha. Nice one, Nigeria!