Land reform casts shadow over S Africa’s stability

Financial Times ^ | May 1 2005 | Ian Bremmer

[Tailgunner Joe]

Financial analysts are smiling on South Africa. In January Moody’s upgraded the country’s sovereign risk rating from Baa2 to Baa1 on the strength of the country’s steady economic expansion and continued growth in consumer demand. Capital inflows are predicted to remain strong in 2005, largely because South Africa’s growth since 2000 has exceeded 3 per cent a year – a considerable improvement over the stagnation of the late 1990s.

But a significant downside political risk looms as recent developments in land reform programmes in neighbouring Zimbabwe and Namibia bode ill for what may soon become a bitterly divisive 2008 South African presidential election campaign.

The landslide victory of Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF Party in Zimbabwe’s parliamentary elections on March 31 resonates in South African politics, particularly around the controversial programme of “land reform”, by which land is incrementally redistributed from white to black South Africans. Mr Mugabe’s heavy-handed populism is based largely on the forced eviction of Zimbabwe’s white landowners, by any means necessary, in favour of poor blacks. Thabo Mbeki, South Africa’s president, is well aware of Mr Mugabe’s popularity with many in South Africa and may now feel compelled to speed up land reform in his own country.

In fact, pressure is rising throughout the region for a more aggressive government approach on the issue. Hifikepunye Pohamba, newly elected president of Namibia, warned last month that the patience of black Namibians with white landowners is running out and that Namibia could face a “revolution” unless white farmers agree to give up their land.

South African officials, too, are now talking up measures to speed up land reform as part of the drive to address injustices from the apartheid era. Tozi Gwanya, South Africa’s chief land claims commissioner, commented within days of Mr Mugabe’s victory that black ownership of South African land has only increased from 13 per cent at the end of apartheid in 1994 to 16 per cent today. He acknowledged the country remained well short of the target of redistributing 30 per cent of land to blacks by 2014 and asserted that something needed to be done about it.

Mr Gwanya was quick to insist South Africa would not follow in Mr Mugabe’s lead in condoning violent expropriations of land. It is no secret that forcible seizures of white-owned farms in Zimbabwe have ruined a once-strong economy and left agriculture in ruins. Yet, Mr Mbeki understands that South Africa’s blacks are frustrated with the stubbornness of white landowners, and the pressure to up the pace in politically divisive ways is growing as candidates jostle for popularity ahead of South Africa’s next presidential election.

Divisions over land reform and relations with Zimbabwe extend to Mr Mbeki’s ruling alliance. Mr Mbeki quickly embraced Mr Mugabe’s election victory, which the US, European Union, and many in South Africa denounced as far from “free and fair”. In doing so, he angered his African National Congress coalition partners, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the South African Communist party (SAC), who favour an aggressive stand against Mr Mugabe.

Cosatu, in particular, complains it has been marginalised from the ANC’s policymaking process. Cosatu has already endorsed current vice-president Jacob Zuma for president in 2008. If Mr Mbeki, who is retiring at the end of his current term, sidelines Mr Zuma in favour of defence minister Patrick Lekota or foreign minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, who are believed to support Mr Mbeki’s conciliatory approach to Zimbabwe, Cosatu might well bolt the ruling alliance. It may even be tempted to follow the example of the Zimbabwean opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party and transform itself from a labour union into an alternative leftwing political party that directly challenges the ANC. Cosatu and the Communists have also complained that the government’s macroeconomic strategy and the privatisation of state assets have failed to create jobs. Mr Mbeki’s relationship with Cosatu will remain tense and fears will grow that the ruling alliance may splinter into rival factions.

Candidates to become South Africa’s next president for the next South African presidency know they face increasing pressure over the land reform issue. A growing unemployed black population of about 25 per cent may begin to agitate for land and other structural reforms. With agitation comes the threat of violence.

If commodity prices fall or the service sector does not rapidly expand to absorb unemployed young people, it is possible that a new leader lacking the stature of Nelson Mandela or Thabo Mbeki would be unable to hold off popular discontent. with continued structural economic inequality.

The Land reform exacerbates another problem for the South African economy: white emigration. While exact numbers are difficult to gather, it is safe to say that more than a quarter-million 250,000 whites, many of them young, ambitious and well-educated, have left South Africa since 1994. Controversy over land reform would racially polarise the nation’s politics. In that event, the pace of white emigration would surely accelerate, and South Africa’s economy would lose a lot of skilled labour.

Just as Mr Mbeki ignored the condemnation from Washington and Brussels of Mr Mugabe’s “victory” and of his own near-total silence on the spread of HIV/Aids, – more than 5m million South Africans are now living with HIV – he is likely to ignore any western criticism of his own actions in advance of the next elections. Increased Chinese investment in South Africa’s mineral wealth sweeps aside much of the economic leverage the United States US and European Union could use to influence Mr Mbeki’s political choices. And Mr Mbeki’s sense of African pride and self-sufficiency, articulated through his “African Renaissance” initiatives, will prevent him yielding to western pressure.

South Africa’s economic stability is overvalued because the potential for political turmoil is rising. South Africa is not Zimbabwe, and Thabo Mbeki is not Robert Mugabe, but the pressure to redress fully apartheid-era wrongs is common to both countries. And with more than 80 per cent of South African land still in white hands more that 10 years after the end of apartheid, that pressure is only going to increase.

[Nyboe]

In the end, all the whites in Africa will be slaughtered after their land is taken and their wives and children are raped.

[DeweyCA]

Communists, inciting racism into the politics, will make South Africa a hellhole within a few decades. The rest of the whites should get out soon. Let the South African commies deal with the Chinese commies. That is whom they will feel more sympatico with. It's sad to see a country go down the toilet, but I doubt if it can be reversed.

[Chode]

in the 60's, the Jewel of africa was the Belgian Congo.
the whites were all slaughtered and in thirty more years... you will never be able to tell that a white man had ever set foot there.

then, mysteriously, almost like a miricle... the Jewel moved to Rhodesia.

but not for long... it was stolen by savage thugs and renamed zimby after which all the whites were driven off the only productive land and it was turned into a dead zone.

left alone, in eighty years, you'll never be able to tell a white man had ever set foot there either.

now, surprise surprise surprise... the Jewel has moved to south africa.

and the thugs there, are going to follow zimby's lead and turn IT into a dead zone too, that in 100 years will return to the jungle like all the rest of africa and there will be no more Jewel of africa.