Land expropriation without compensation: who will suffer most

In the lead-up to the 2019 General Election President Cyril Ramaphosa is often shown on TV uttering rather enigmatic sound bites about “land expropriation without compensation”. Occasionally he elaborates on this to say that it will be done in such a way that it will not harm the economy.

There has been debate about this for the last couple of years, with the ANC saying that it intends to alter the clause in the constitution that protects property rights, to enable the confiscation of land without compensation. And so this has become a sound bite. President Cyril Ramaphosa has also been in photo-ops, giving out title deeds to people and telling them that these are important documents, without mentioning that his party is planning change the constitution to enable them to be rendered valueless.

Racist groups like Afriforum fill in the blanks for the President’s enigmatic soundbites, by saying that the government intends to take land from white farmers. President Ramaphosa doesn’t have to say anything like or about that, because Afriforum will say it for him, and thus help to secure votes for the ANC from people who might otherwise vote for the EFF and BLF, who have promised to nationalise all land.

The Afriforum campaign has succeeded in spreading disinformation all over the world. Almost every day on the Question-and-Answer web site Quora I see questions like:

• What is your opinion on South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s push for land distribution from white farmers?
• Why is it that no one is talking about the white farmers losing their lives and land in South Africa?
• Why is President Cyril Ramaphosa proposing the expropriation of white farmers‘ lands without compensation?

I have never heard President Cyril Ramaphosa mention “white farmers” in talking about land expropriation without compensation. He doesn’t have to. AfriForum has done it for him. And AfriForum and similar groups have managed to create the kind of impression overseas that is shown in the above questions.

But to see the real threat of land expropriation without compensation, one must listen, not to President Cyril Ramaphosa, but to Gwede Mantashe, the Minister of Mineral Resources. He has been pushing for expropriation of land from black farmers, for the purpose of mining. And by using the land for mining, such expropriation, of course, will not “harm the economy”.

The first to suffer, and those likely to suffer the most, will be people like those mentioned in a report by Human Rights Watch, the Centre for Environmental Rights (CER), groundWork, and Earthjustice. See here: Mining activists in SA face death threats, intimidation and harassment – report | Saturday Star:

The 74-page report, compiled by Human Rights Watch, the Centre for Environmental Rights (CER), groundWork, and Earthjustice, describes a system designed to “deter and penalise” mining opponents.

The authors conducted interviews with more than 100 activists, community leaders, environmental groups, lawyers representing activists, police and municipal officials, describing the targeting of community rights defenders in KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Northwest, and Eastern Cape between 2013 and 2018.

They report intimidation, violence, damage to property, the use of excessive force during peaceful protests, and arbitrary arrest for their activities in highlighting the negative impacts of mining projects on their communities.

“The attacks and harassment have created an atmosphere of fear for community members who mobilise to raise concerns about damage to their livelihoods from the serious environmental and health risks of mining and coal-fired power plants,” write the authors.

“Women often play a leading role in voicing these concerns, making them potential targets for harassment and attacks.”

But municipalities often impose barriers to protest on organisers that have no legal basis while government officials have failed to adequately investigate allegations of abuse.

These protests have been going on for some time, but I have never seen questions on Quora about them, and racist groups like AfriForum are only concerned about white farmers, not black ones.

In the media “farm murders” refers only to white farmers, mostly killed by armed robbers, not black farmers murdered by people acting on behalf of mining companies, or who think they can make more money themselves if the mining companies take over the land.

Last year we learned how the High Court rules in favour of Xolobeni community in historic mining rights case | News | National | M&G: “The Amadiba Crisis Committee launched a court battle against the department of mineral resources and Australian company Transworld Energy and Mineral Resources (TEM) over mining rights earlier this year.”

But if the constitution is changed to allow expropriation without compensation, would the High Court have any jurisdiction in such matters? Ramaphosa makes enigmatic pronouncements, AfriForum produces a convenient smakescreen, and in the murk Mantashe and the mining companies are going around dispossessing black farmers. And people on web sites like Quora are asking if “the West” will allow white farmers from South Africa in as refugees, because they assume, and have been led to believe, that white farmers have all already been kicked off the land.

 

 

Land expropriation without compensation

Oh the irony!

President Cyril Ramaphosa is handing out title deeds to land which he wants to empower the government to expropriate without compensation. Ramaphosa hands out title deeds in Tembisa during Thuma Mina campaign – The Citizen:

He said through handing over title deeds, the government was giving people their dignity back, giving them a store of wealth and empowering them economically.

“A house is the most important asset that one can own,” Ramaphosa said.

He urged title deed holders to treat their certificates as valuable assets, adding that title deeds would be handed out throughout the country.

How can he do this with a straight face — tell people that these certificates are “valuable assets”, when his own government is planning to remove all value from them? The government giving with one hand while it takes with the other.

President Cyril Ramaphosa handing out title deeds (The Citizen)

President Ramaphosa chaired the commission which drew up the Constitution, including the restrictions on expropriating land without compensation. He, of all people, ought to have known what that clause was there for — because previous governments of the National Party had expropriated land without compensation, or with derisory compensation, to be able to move people around in its ethnic cleansing programme.

When Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as South Africa’s first democratically-elected president he said “Never again”, but it seems that those who have followed him thought he meant again and again. And removing that clause in the constitution will open the way to all kinds of abuses — abuses that we thought we would never have to suffer again.

The relevant section of the Bill of Rights reads:

2. Property may be expropriated only in terms of law of general application ­

a. for a public purpose or in the public interest; and

b. subject to compensation, the amount of which and the time and manner of payment of which have either been agreed to by those affected or decided or approved by a court.

I believe a great deal of thought was given to that, and I was aware of many instances of abuse under the previous National Party government that had led to that clause being inserted into the Bill of Rights.

Among those abuses were the removal of people from Khumaloville to Hobsland. There was a black farming community at Khumaloville, where people had title to the land, and had two acre plots. The National Party government expropriated the land and offered the people half-acre plots at Hobsland in exchange. They were offered compensation of R42 for their two acres, and were given the opportunity of buying a further half acre at Hobsland for R55. At Hobsland they would also be subject to restrictions on their farming activities.

That was in the 1960s, under the programme of “Blackspot Removals”, and such things occurred all over the country.

Another instance, not concerned specifically with compensation, but rather with the abuses of expropriation, happened in the 1970s, not, this time, in the name of Blackspot Removals, but rather in the name of “Homeland Consolidation”.

A number of sugar farms between Eshowe and Empangeni in Zululand were expropriated from white farmers to be added to the KwaZulu “homeland”. One of the farmers, Guy Chennells, proposed that he stay on his farm for a couple of years, and share his skills and experience with the incoming black farmers, to enable them to make a go of running the farm. This was rejected by the National Party government, and a few years later the reason for the rejection became apparent — there were no black farmers. The farm, now owned by the government, was occupied and profitably farmed by a National Party functionary at a purely nominal rental, who was in no hurry to move out and thus consolidate the “Homeland”.

We are familiar with such corruption in our own day, as we see similar activities in state-owned enterprises such as Eskom. But they were less well known in the old days, not because they didn’t happen, but because back then we didn’t have a free press that could report them. If journalists knew of such things they were too scared to report them, and in the case of the few bolder exceptions, their stories were often spiked, because the shareholders in the newspaper firms were afraid.

Cyril Ramaphosa gives assurances that “land expropriation without compensation” will take place in an orderly and responsible manner, and of course when he is handing out title deeds to people he isn’t planning to immediately take them away again. But what he is planning to do is to remove the protection that would prevent anyone else from taking them away, as Julius Malema of the EFF is already promising (or threatening) to do if his party comes to power.

So Cyril Ramaphosa reminds me of B.J. Vorster who, whenever he proposed legislation that would grant him and his police extraordinary powers, would always reassure the public that these powers would not be abused and would be used responsibly, and that “the innocent had nothing to fear.” And in a way Cyril Ramaphosa is doing the same thing, saying, in effect, “don’t trust the constitution, trust me.”. .

And I’m reminded of this every Sunday in church when we sing

Put not your trust in princes, in sons of men,
in whom there is no salvation.
when his breath departs he returns to his earth;
on that very day his plans perish