The ruling African National Congress party will carry forward the constitutional amendment project in order to be able to expropriate the lands of white farmers without any monetary compensation
Of Jacopo Bongini
The government's efforts continue South Africa in erasing any remaining residue of the’apartheid, the policy of racial segregation that from 1948 al 1991 made the African country famous throughout the world. As reported by the Reuters agency, Yesterday the president Cyril Ramaphosa he actually stated, in a public address to the nation, who together with his government intends to push for a change to the constitution, so that it is possible’expropriation of land to white farmers without any right to economic compensation, stating that: “It is now clear that our people want the constitution to be more explicit on the expropriation of land without compensation.
L'Anc, through the parliamentary process, will finalize the proposed amendment to the constitution, which will more clearly outline the conditions under which expropriation of land without compensation can be carried out, acting in the public interest”. Until today the’African National Congress, the ruling party in power continuously since 1994, he has always tried to express himself cautiously on a possible constitutional amendment, considering it a risky strategy, and declaring already last May that the expropriation without compensation could still have been implemented also through the laws currently in force. In recent days, however, the situation seems to have worsened, arriving yesterday at the explicit declarations of President Ramaphosa.
The issue of forced expropriations from white farmers began to resurface in February this year, when the party of’Economic Freedom Fighters, Marxist-Leninist formation often combined with black supremacism, I submit a motion to the government to consider the possibility of a constitutional amendment that would definitively clarify the power of state authorities to redistribute property on racial grounds. On that occasion the party spokesperson Bring back Ndlozi claimed that the expropriation of white land without compensation was justified, as: “It's not really their land” – adding – “In this process, white people should accept the crime of apartheid and colonization, and how these crimes impacted Black people. White people should show remorse, giving up the land they inherited through racist anti-Black dispossession. Justice leads to reconciliation”.
The agrarian reform process for the redistribution of land to blacks has been going on since 1994, when with the democratic transition the institutions had to begin to face the fact that most of the country's agricultural land was owned by the Afrikaner population, the white descendants of the ancient Dutch and British settlers. A factor that constitutes a strong symbol of inequality, helping to remember the segregationist past and to foment the violence that is still perpetrated against whites today. Over the years the ANC has therefore pursued the so-called policy of “Willing-seller, willing-buyer” (Volunteer seller, voluntary buyer), leaving the government responsible for purchasing land from white farmers and then redistributing it to blacks. A social maneuver which, however, over time proved to be a failure, due to the high costs of land from Afrikaner farms – notoriously the most fertile in the country – succeeding in almost 25 years of giving back to blacks just the 10 percent of the land, i.e. one third of the minimum objective established for the 30 percent, circa 32 million hectares that were supposed to be transferred by 2000.
Furthermore, the situation is aggravated by the fact that most of the redistributed lands cannot be adequately exploited by black farmers, who in many cases do not have the technical knowledge necessary to make their farms economically competitive, thus causing them to fail. In fact, for some time the government has limited itself exclusively to expropriating land without subsequently transferring it to blacks, in fear that the latter will resell them to the whites in turn, with the result that currently the 70 percent of the land expropriated since the end of apartheid remains unused. To date in blacks from South Africa, despite constituting the 79 percent of the population, they control only 1.2 percent of arable land, while the 9 percent of the white population manages more than two-thirds of the land between rural and urban areas.
International investors are highly concerned about this possible constitutional reform, according to which the expropriation of land without compensation would be to the detriment of the already suffering national economy. An economy that in recent years has remained well below the growth prospects of 5 percent per year promised by the government, and which saw the unemployment rate inflate to 27,2 percent, with over one hundred thousand people losing their jobs between the first and second quarters of 2018. Investors fear a situation similar to that which occurred in the neighboring countryZimbabwe, where the forced nationalization of farms, in the context of an agrarian reform similar to the one South Africa would like to implement, it was one of the main causes of the country's economic collapse, recently forcing the president's successor Robert Mugabe, the just re-elected Emmerson Mnangagwa, to recall the white landowners back home to revive the fortunes of their crops and consequently those of the entire country.
Despite the protests, the South African president has assured that any changes in land reform will not compromise economic growth. Ramaphosa then recalled how his party has urged the government to launch a reform package as soon as possible to stimulate recovery, including, among other things, investments in public infrastructure, and needing: “This package will build on existing budgetary resources and the pursuit of new investments, while remaining committed to fiscal prudence”.
Source: http://m.ilgiornale.it/news/2018/08/01/il-sudafrica-cambia-la-costituzione-per-espropriare-la-terra-ai-bianch/1560815/