Since Trump brought up South African land expropriation, it's time we talked about the truth of the matter

The debates about land need to be understood against centuries of systemic dispossession of African people’s land through colonial domination

The president of the United States of America, Donald Trump, in his short but incendiary term has been no stranger to controversy. In a message shared by Trump on Twitter, he called on the secretary of state Mike Pompeo to investigate the unfolding developments around land contestations in South Africa, writing: “I have asked Secretary of State to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers. ‘South African Government is now seizing land from white farmers’”.

Trump’s claim itself does not exist in a vacuum. Longstanding right wing campaigns spearheaded by organisations such as Afriforum and campaigns like Red October led by Steve Hofmeyr actively promote a narrative which rests on the claim that white South Africans, and white farmers in particular, face violent persecution under the African National Congress.

As recently as May 2018, Afriforum CEO, Kallie Kriel, accompanied by his compatriot Ernst Roets, embarked on political tours to the United States. The pair went on to meet US National Security Advisor, John Robert Bolton, and participate in a debate on broadcaster Fox News to promote the narrative of “white genocide” and appeal for international support.

Amidst the distraction of social media, it is important to focus on whether the process of land expropriation without compensation stands to entrench existing inequalities in land, or whether it opens up possibilities for this to be dealt with in South Africa.

At this juncture, “die swart gevaar” (black danger), an apartheid term and racist imagination referring to the perceived security threat of the impulse of violent revenge from the Black population towards white South Africans, has made its way back into debates and contestations about radical land reform.

Through the eyes of the popular narratives of the Zimbabwean experience, we have been inundated with reports that predict another catastrophic land reform process. This perspective has been canvassed without a sober recognition of key historical processes that shaped the unfolding of events in Zimbabwe. Instead, through inflamed racial fear and uncritical assumptions that largely compliment mostly right-wing representatives of the white minority bloc, we have been distracted from the most pertinent considerations about land reform.

The debates about land expropriation need to be understood against centuries of systemic dispossession of African people’s land by colonial domination. The expansion and imposition of colonial rule in South Africa dates back to 1652 and by the turn of the 20th century, most of the land that African people fought to maintain had been conquered through violent methods.

These later decades merely demonstrated the consolidation of colonial rule through harsh draconian legislation intended to prevent all Africans from owning vast tracts of land in South Africa and thus delineating them to limited, often uninhabitable territorial spaces.

The Native Land Act of 1913 became an important legislative introduction and structural turning point in the consolidation of land by the white minority. It limited African land ownership to seven per cent, though this would be subsequently increased to thirteen per cent and taken away from masses of African people surviving on an independent means of subsistence.

This historical process would eventually undermine and destroy a vibrant African commercial farming sector. By pushing Africans out of their land through violent conquest and law, many people were left with little choice but to sell their labour in mining reserves that served as the backbone of apartheid’s economy and the maintenance of racial capitalism. South Africa was also inundated with laws that solidified the forcible removal of people from their homes, which saw in the distortion and displacement of family life through political and cultural means.

Activist scholars in South Africa have provided detailed accounts of the active strategies and tactics employed to discourage the rise of black farmers emerging in the 19th century. Historical records show how intensive support was extended to white farmers to bolster and cement their dominance in commercial agricultural production.

The apartheid government drew on leadership and close alliances from white farmers through the provision of state subsidiaries, favourable credit facilities, grants, transport concessions, tax relief, disaster management and the availability of cheap black labour to work on their behalf.

As a result, skewed and racially-informed approaches to land ownership were soon in line with the government’s goal towards economic accumulation and domination. In summary, the so-called persecuted white farmers Trump rushes to support today, are among an elite minority who accrued immense wealth through support provided to them by the development of the Apartheid state.

Earlier on this year, African National Congress (ANC) reiterated that the government would pursue the expropriation of land without compensation without endangering or destabilising agricultural production, ensuring food security is not compromised, and financial services, which hold nearly 70 per cent of commercial farmers’ debts, are not negatively impacted.

At every given opportunity, the ANC has insisted on reassuring big business and investors that land reform will not compromise food security, or lead to white farmers being stripped of land in an economically detrimental manner.

Thus far, a motion has been passed by parliament in support of land expropriation without compensation, particularly in favour of an amendment of the property clause, section 25 of the constitution.

It is not clear what this process entails or what radical land reform might look like, at this stage a committee has been appointed to review the constitution in line with the proposition for land expropriation without compensation. And land public hearings across all nine provinces, led by the parliament’s constitutional review committee, have been taking place in order to audit the public’s views on proposed amendments of the constitution.

Activist scholar Mazibuko Jara argues that whilst there is a lot of state land, a lot of the productive land is held by agrarian capital and is entrenching exploitation, oppression and accumulation by a few, whilst also generating poverty and landlessness.

He further states that “the low prioritisation of radical land reform is fundamentally shaped by two things: the weak and fragmented nature of the political voice of rural social movements, and the ANC’s commitment to neoliberal economic policy which continues to face fierce resistance from grassroots movements”.

It is our duty is to bring into sharp focus the urgent struggles of farm workers and the landless black majority, who, rather than facilitating the imagined persecution of white farmers, are still forced to build ever-sprawling townships at the edge of urban centres.