Back in May, I worked for a now-defunct Taxpayers’ Union organisation for two weeks. I wrote several articles for them which were never published. I feel they are still relevant today, and hope you find them interesting.
In the push for land reform, even the most dismal pessimists did not anticipate that the EFF’s plans for outright nationalisation would be on the cards. And yet as of today, it appears that that is precisely what the ANC is entertaining.
The original ANC proposal was for the right of the state to confiscate land without compensation. It still allowed for the existence of privately owned land and communal land in traditional areas, but would give the ANC the power to confiscate property of any kind with little prior notice or justificationand a long and convoluted process of appeal, in the name of “national interest”, a term so notoriously vague that it has been used to justify every great abuse of power in history.
What the EFF has called for is the full nationalisation of all land and property, in perpetuity. It calls the ANC’s position a “sell-out” position, which cannot be tolerated. In response, the ANC has offered to nationalise the land until they decide on what to do with it, which the EFF still labels an insufficiently radical position, but which is effectively identical in terms of what it means for ordinary South Africans.
This comes on the back of calls to nationalise all data and intellectual property, and a proposed confiscation of firearms and banning of their use in self-defence. The total picture is one of a move towards total power over all spheres of life in the country, unchecked by any authority, unmediated by any form of institutional or popular power, subject only to the courage of our court justices, whose own properties can be seized in turn.
Once these measures are undertaken, the only private businesses capable of operating without the say-so of the outrageously corrupt and racist ruling party will be those tied to their own patronage network and those international corporations capable of controlling enough international trade to threaten the state as a whole. In other words, it will create conditions that resemble the worst features of the economic policies of the fascist and communist governments of the 20th century.
As the economy slides into de-industrialisation, and the state gears itself towards ever-more state-driven employment programs on the back of the new IMF loan, we will witness an unchecked race to the bottom. For some time now, the ANC and the EFF have been closely collaborating
While ANC websites and policy reports can be a notorious dog’s breakfast, their reports for the United Nations on progress toward Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) are meticulous and detailed. This is not ancillary – SDG 10 in particular refers to equitable access to land and property, a turn of phrase long promoted by communists in the West to justify increased redistribution. It is on these terms that the ANC defends their predatory policy, as the proposed constitutional amendment itself says:
“The state must take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to foster conditions which enable state custodianship of certain land in order for citizens to gain access to land on an equitable basis.”
While there is no evidence that the redistribution of property increases food security or decreases poverty – in fact, the opposite has consistently been proven true throughout history, most poignantly so in the 20th century – it is precisely on such terms that the bill is defended, as Ramaphosa himself said, in an act of verbal extravagance unmatched by all but the most shameless of sham preachers, land reform would turn South Africa into a “garden of Eden”.
But revolutionaries do not break eggs in order to make delicious omelettes, they promise omelettes in order to justify breaking eggs. The president’s flippant and easy lie on farm murders while in America, in which he denied that even a single white farmer had been murdered, his infamous comment that whites must be boiled slowly like frogs, and his declaration that King Dingane, who massacred whites attempting to purchase land while unarmed under his protection,was a freedom fighter - all these remarks find their central context under the current practice of land reform.
The land which has been taken now lies fallow and unused, with millions of hectares of nationally owned arable land lying idle, not redistributed to black farmers at all, but simply taken from whites. It is a policy of slow destruction and ineluctable Zimbabwefication, where every defence against the rising tide of lawlessness and chaos and corruption is stripped away to make the social environment so intolerable that despair destroys any desire to fight back.
While it may be tempting to think that such malicious intent is impossible from our president, it may be recalled that he sent thousands of unarmed protesters to storm the machine gun-manned barricades at the Ciskei border, and as the bodies lay bleeding in the grass, smiled for the cameras and declared it a propaganda victory. His ruthless authorisation of violence against the wildcat strikers in Marikana are simply the tip of the iceberg.
The ANC’s general strategy from 1979 onward was to turn every single man, woman and child into an instrument of war – any person could be drafted into service of violent revolution at any time. The frequent necklacings which characterise South African township justice were used as an instrument of terror against hundreds upon hundreds of poor black South Africans who dared to join the wrong liberation party, or fell foul of the whims of a local party boss.
The capacity for cruelty and callousness among the ANC is of such unmeasurable magnitude that they rival, and often outmatch, cruelties committed by the previous regime. The unrelenting crimewave, which has claimed over half a million lives under the present regime, is not only actively supported by the ruling party, through explicit pacts with gangsters in opposition-run areas, but they cannot even bring themselves to pretend to care about the consequences – as Charles Nqakula said, if you don’t like it, you can leave.
But where exactly are the ten million minorities in South Africa to go when the economy is flattened and the government has plenary power to confiscate property? Who will pay for those plane tickets and accommodation? When systematic discrimination against all minorities is enshrined in not just the law but the constitution, in the pursuit of a nebulous and pernicious form of collective punishment known as “social justice”, there can be no doubt that we are caught between the devil himself and the deep blue sea.