It’s considered wise not to take action in response to strong emotions, sweeping away sense and sensibility.
It’s better to reflect and take a moment to consider concerning repercussions of actions that can irrevocably alter the future. Such wisdom was amiss during an open dialogue on the Expropriation Act at the University of the Western Cape’s (UWC) Bellville campus, featuring communities, students, activists and the Minister of Land Reform and Rural Development, Mzwanele Nyhontso.
Between the lines, this dialogue didn’t necessarily require a trained ear to identify blanket generalisations, diluted rhetoric related to past injustice and misleading narratives on SA’s land ownership.
What’s remained quite clear since the signing of this stirring act, however, is the ANC’s desperate attempt to regain support following the establishment of the Government of National Unity (GNU) in the wake of its dwindling majority vote. Support for this act from the audience in the Minister’s presence was palpable, jovial and somewhat overwhelming as the crowd intermittently joined in song. And Afrikaners, farmers or white South Africans (who knows), were affectionately told to take the US up on its offer – ‘you are welcome to leave,’ said the minister. As if leaving their home country of established ancestry for generations won’t be a loss, but an overall gain for the country.
See, the idealism of ‘what can be’ thanks to the act, evoked optimistic sentiments stemming from real life experiences of those who hunger for land and emancipation from past and present rule.
Of course, the act outlines reasonable conditions by which land or property can be expropriated to publicly benefit those who work it and have been unjustly stripped thereof. The question, however, remains: How will it be enforced at the hands of powerful government factions that have failed to prove its competence in nearly every other metric measuring good governance?
Just look at Eskom, education, health, housing, development, road-, water and sanitation infrastructure; especially witnessing decaying ANC-led provinces.
Not to mention “failed land reform” at the hands of the very same who now promise that they will ‘really deliver this time’.
All while the optimistic consensus of Expropriation was shared, heard and appreciated, the very first question addressing the protection of private property against (very real) threats of illegal land grabs, triggered an abrupt and silencing uproar.
(Just a month ago, an illegal land invasion was set in motion in Seshego, Limpopo, with its instigators citing the Expropriation Act as a license to do so, as reported by the SABC. Within hours, shacks were steadily erected.)
I was the “sister” who raised this question. And mid-question, I was swiftly stripped of the same open platform the UWC sought to provide.
Faces in the audience expressed sheer disgust, as if I had spit on holy ground, soon followed by passerby threats like: “Do not come here with your agenda!”
What comforted my disturbed sense of hijacked freedom of speech, was my continued faith in SA’s sensible majority. The very same whose votes paved the way to the establishment of something like the GNU… slowly eating away at the ANC’s sovereignty.
But why was I this disturbed?
Because the same sweeping rhetoric that surrounds this discussion, is what feeds the radical and reckless extremists that would take law into their own hands.
With targeted owners of private property left to fend for themselves at the mercy of lengthy and bankrupting legal battles, while the state simply shrug – “it’s not our land, it’s not our problem”.
It’s funny how, when opponents or critics of the Expropriation Act raise alarming red flags reminiscent of points in history when radical policies like it was rolled out (I mean, just look at Zimbabwe) – these are easily dismissed as paranoia, misinformation or conspiracy theories. Even if it is in reaction to chants calling for the killing of whites, dismissed by the Human Rights Commision as ‘taken out of context’.
If enough emotion sweeps up the marginalised engulfed in abject poverty and overpowers the unreliable protections of the Expropriation Act, the grim “misinformation” by the likes of AfriForum and American president Donald Trump become an increasing probability.
Clearly, this act has no shortage of calls to action – but what would be wise in this discussion is serious calls to caution, to say the least.
