South Africa’s ANC a Party of Pillaging Despots

Never mind that Trump’s blunderbuss fulminations against the Expropriation Act (EA) were partly inaccurate. As was the case with his 2018 railing against a supposed genocide of white farmers, the exaggerations and distortions of his claims should not detract from some important truths about what is happening in the South Africa that exists behind his burble and bluster.

The first inescapable truth is that farmers ARE disproportionately the targets of murderous criminality. Also, the gruesome nature of the violence is likely, albeit empirically impossible to prove, tied to hateful incitement spewed by black radicals who have the tacit approval of the African National Congress  (ANC).

The now routine spectacle of a massed stadium singing ‘Kill the Boer, kill the farmer’  — a merry ditty led on stage by MPs, Cabinet ministers, and the occasional president — is far more than just a pardonable and somewhat amusing relic from the Struggle era. In a volatile country where black racism is condoned but the careless use by minority groups of a word offensive to Africans can unleash the full fury of the State —  fired, fined, jailed and professional life destroyed  — this is not a joke but a calculated act of aggression and intimidation.

The second truth is that the EA is not just a benign bit of legislative housekeeping to virtuously tie together in a neat constitutional bow some previous omissions, duplications and contradictions in the law. The EA is by far the most dangerous and legislatively cunning piece of legislation passed by the ANC. If fully exploited by a malevolent state it would endanger all private wealth — not only your farm in the countryside but your erf in the city and the savings in your pension fund  — and kill foreign investment stone dead.

To understand the intentions behind the EA, one only has to look at its genesis. In 2018 the ANC tried to change the Constitution in order to allow expropriation without compensation but was unable to muster the necessary two-thirds majority. The ANC was not deterred. The EA is the legislative solution to that defeat and seeks to achieve the exact same aims but without the drama and negative international publicity that will result from a further attempt at whittling away constitutional protections. The fact that the South African media almost universally opposed the constitutional amendment but have universally supported the EA is testimony to Ramaphosa’s guile and their gullibility.

Expropriation laws are commonplace. In functional democracies they allow the State to expropriate for public purpose, most commonly land for transport corridors or infrastructural developments like power or pipe lines. In these countries, the process is transparent and challengeable, the compensation is fair and impartially determined.

However, in contrast to best international practice, South Africa’s EA is monstrous in several aspects. It extends significantly the definition of public interest, to allow the seizure of land and natural resources to redress racial injustices. It allows confiscation with zero compensation, including when the land has not been developed, is an investment vehicle, the owner could not be contacted, or on any old say-so of any court or arbitrator, as long as they took into account ’all relevant circumstances’. Land deemed ‘abandoned’ — conceivably, for example, if a farmer has been unable to remove land invaders — can also be seized without compensation.

The EA also opens the door to the government placing private property in the ’custodianship’ of the State. The Institute of Race Relations warns: ‘The government has twice used [this] legal trick to expropriate property without paying, with water resources in 1998 and with mineral resources in 2002.  Former owners lost the powers and benefits of ownership without receiving any compensation.’

A KwaZulu-Natal businessman that I spoke to, who sold his land holdings some years ago in despair over the ANC’s inability to manage an orderly land reform and redistribution process, warns that the EA ’will change the very fabric of society’ in South Africa. ‘Whatever he got wrong, Trump got the racial connotation right,’ he says.

‘Anyone who has had experience of the tactics currently being employed by the government for acquiring land for redistribution will recognise how the process will unfold. Target parcels or farms adjacent to tribal and township areas or, on a larger scale, buy alternate farms in a block, move in black tenants and wait. Withhold all police or State support and use stock theft, vandalism, poaching, fence cutting, petty theft and intimidation to make the cost of property protection untenable, thereby forcing the land owner to move off the property. Then take it. Previously, for a song, but subject to long delays if the owner was intractable. Now, immediately and for nothing.’

The supposed legal protections that Ramaphosa and the Democratic Alliance (DA) are emphasising, he says, are a sop. ‘They know full well that resorting to the courts is cost- and time-prohibitive in all but the biggest cases. And, considering that the State becomes the owner the instant the notice is issued, by the time any judgment is issued, the worth of the item or compensation in question will have been whittled away to nothing.’

A wastrel, incorrigibly kleptocratic ANC whose greatest threat is from political parties on the hard left and is itself stacked to the rafters with populist leaders like Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi, who canvassed without rebuke in last year’s general election on the promise ‘vote ANC and after the election you will be able to go to any private hospital for free treatment’. What could possibly go wrong?

Of course, as the ANC and its claqueurs keep reassuring us, our Government of National Unity is not a malevolent actor. (Let’s put aside for a moment any evidence to the contrary, like the recent steamrollered passage of BELA, a law that will be slow poison to the survival of Afrikaans.)

Just have trust, is their refrain. However, no citizen should have to depend on the rectitude of whoever is in power for the protection of their property or livelihood. A good law is entire unto itself — drafted to be as immune to abuse by rulers with evil intentions as is possible. If Ramaphosa were not acting in bad faith, as he clearly is, he could, by sending the EA back to Parliament to remove the contentious ambiguities, have easily placated even harsh critics like AfriForum.

It is remarkable that Ramaphosa’s refusal to compromise one iota does not ring alarm bells with the DA, with organised business, and with a critically flabby media commentariat. It should be obvious that the uncertainties in the EA are not the unfortunate result of poor legal draftsmanship. On the contrary, they are deliberate vulnerabilities, the result of excellent but misbegotten legal draftsmanship, and will sooner or later be exploited by the redistributionist radicals.

No one has ever gone far wrong in being sceptical about the professed intentions of the State. But, as history shows, many have come to rue their naïveté in trusting governments that were subsequently shown to be acting deliberately with sinister motives.

A good, no-nonsense guide to the Expropriation Act from the Institute of Race Relations can be read here. 

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