Why Is South Africa Being Stirred Up?

Authored by Alexander Mezyaev via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Since the middle of February, the internal political situation in South Africa has worsened once again. During South African president Jacob Zuma’s annual address to the country’s parliament, the main opposition parties, primarily the Democratic Alliance and the Economic Freedom Fighters, became rowdy and delayed the president’s speech for an hour. For security reasons, the parliament building was surrounded not by the police, as it was last year, but by  the SADF staff.

The opposition parties know they are not in a position to take power democratically, so the only choice they have is to destabilise the situation in the country. To be more precise, this means provoking bloodshed and seeing it through to a regime change. The actions of the parliamentary Economic Freedom Fighters party – insulting the country’s president or the parliamentary speaker and behaving like clowns – only seem like hooliganism at first glance. In fact, the tactic is intended to bring different segments of the population into conflict with each other and cause riots that will lead to fatalities. In the meantime, the Economic Freedom Fighters have so far done nothing to try and achieve their declared objectives legislatively. One of the main points of their political programme was the nationalisation of land without compensation, but while the Freedom Fighters were raising an uproar, a bill to change the Land Act, which provides for such nationalisation, was put forward by the African National Congress. This initiative of the ruling party led to even more ferocious attacks being launched against it by the Democratic Alliance, which represents the interest of local and transnational monopoly capital.

On 22 February, the High Court of North Gauteng (where the country’s government is located), ruled in the case brought by the Democratic Alliance that South Africa’s withdrawal from the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is «unconstitutional and invalid». What’s more, the court ordered President Zuma to revoke the notice of withdrawal. Against the backdrop of the recent coup in Gambia, the events in South Africa seem like an attempt, amid instigated large-scale riots, to make the government use force against ‘peaceful protesters’, thereby paving the way for an investigation by the International Criminal Court.

The danger of last year’s pogroms against ‘foreigners’ has come back with a vengeance. On 24 February, large-scale demonstrations were held in a number of cities, including the capital, against immigrants, who then held their own demonstrations in response. Violence was unavoidable. The situation was summed up fairly shrewdly by the leader of the Zimbabwean diaspora in South Africa: «In our view, the xenophobic attacks are well coordinated and political. Opposition parties which are fighting the ANC government want to make South Africa ungovernable and they are mobilising communities to attack foreigners».

Behind this picture is the blatant desire to disrupt the government’s plans outlined in President Jacob Zuma’s address to parliament. These plans include amendments to the law on mineral resources in terms of the State’s right to exercise sovereignty over all the country’s mineral resources, and changes to the racial imbalance within the country’s mining industry. At present, nearly all of the major mining companies are owned by transnational corporations (diamond mining is dominated by De Beers, which is owned by Anglo America plc, and platinum mining is dominated by Anglo Platinum Limited, which is part of Anglo American Platinum Ltd owned by Anglo American plc). The government is planning to pursue direct state involvement in this sector of the economy. A bill on these issues will be introduced into parliament this year.

There are also other plans. An interesting programme is being implemented in South Africa’s agricultural sector to create collective farms. The construction of free housing will continue – more than four million families have already been provided with houses. Nine million households that did not have electricity have now been connected to the grid. Only two of the six million jobs that the government planned to create by March 2019 have so far materialised, but this is also an achievement. A total of seventeen million people, almost one in three, receive social support from the government.

In addition, the government has responded to last year’s mass student protests over the increase in university tuition fees by allocating 32 billion rand to support higher education. This will not solve the problem entirely, but it will allow those less well-off to continue on with higher education.

The bold steps being undertaken by President Jacob Zuma in the social and economic sphere are being reinforced by the pan-African scope of South Africa’s foreign policy. Good examples of this are the plans to create a pan-African free trade zone by merging three regional organisations – the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the East African Community (EAC) – and South Africa’s participation in peacekeeping operations in Lesotho, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Mozambique, South Sudan, Libya, and Somalia.

The ruling African National Congress party conference is set to take place at the end of 2017. The ANC will elect its new leader and, by extension, the country’s most likely president (should the ANC win the parliamentary elections). The approach of this political challenge, along with the South African government’s determination to continue along its chosen course, is increasing the anxiety of those who regard what’s going on as a threat to their centuries-old positions – positions that are no longer looking quite so unshakeable.

"It's A Declaration Of War": South Africa's President Calls For Confiscation Of White Land

After South Africa"s embattled president Jacob Zuma pledged, in a surprising address to parliament one month ago, to break up white ownership of business and land to reduce inequality (in a State of the Nation address which was disrupted by a fistfight), it now appears that Zuma"s intentions to convert what was until recently Africa"s most prosperous economy into a new Zimbabwe were all too real, and as the Telegraph reports, the South African president officially called on parliament to change South Africa’s constitution to allow the expropriation of white owned land without compensation.

Zuma, 74, who made the remarks in a speech on Friday morning, said he wanted to establish a “pre-colonial land audit of land use and occupation patterns” before changing the law.

“We need to accept the reality that those who are in parliament where laws are made, particularly the black parties, should unite because we need a two-thirds majority to effect changes in the constitution,” he said.

In recent months, Zuma, who has lurched from one scandal to another since being elected to office in 2009, has adopted a more populist tone since his ruling African National Congress (ANC) party suffered its worst election result last August since the end of apartheid in 1994. The party lost the economic hub of Johannesburg, the capital Pretoria and the coastal city of Port Elizabeth to the moderate Democratic Alliance party, which already held the city of Cape Town.

The ANC is also under pressure from the radical Economic Freedom Fighters, led by Julius Malema. Malema has been travelling the country urging black South Africans to take back land from white invaders and "Dutch thugs". He told parliament this week that his party wanted to “unite black people in South Africa” to expropriate land without compensation.

“People of South Africa, where you see a beautiful land, take it, it belongs to you,” he said. Although progress has been made in transferring property to black South Africans, land ownership is believed to be skewed in favour of whites more than 20 years after the end of apartheid. The Institute of Race Relations, an independent research body, said that providing a racial breakdown of South Africa’s rural landowners was “almost impossible."

“In the first place the state owns some 22 per cent of the land in the country, including land in the former homelands, most of which is occupied by black subsistence farmers who have no title and seem unlikely to get it any time soon,” the group said. “This leaves around 78 per cent of land in private hands, but the race of these private owners is not known.”

As the Telegraph adds, Zuma’s comments caused outrage among groups representing Afrikaans speaking farmers on Friday.

The Boer Afrikaner Volksraad, which claims to have 40,000 members, said its members would take land expropriation without compensation as “a declaration of war”.

“We are ready to fight back,” said Andries Breytenbach, the group’s chairman. “We need urgent mediation between us and the government. "If this starts, it will turn into a racial war which we want to prevent.” As noted above, Zuma first mentioned the expropriation of land in his opening of Parliament speech last month, but Friday was the first time he called for a change in the law.

In his February speech, he controversially called in the military to maintain “law and order” on the streets of Cape Town ahead of expected protests calling for him to step down.

It was the first time in South Africa’s history, including the heavily militarised apartheid era, that the president has ordered the military to provide security at parliament.

Meanwhile, the populist wave is spreading and as discussed at the end of February, the local police had to fire rubber bullets into a crowd after anti-immigrant protests turned violent in the capital Pretoria.

President Zuma’s aggressive move toward redistribution comes as his African National Congress party prepares to elect a new leader to succeed him in December and as he finds himself under growing pressure over corruption allegations. It is disturbing that in order to deflect from his own failings as president, Zuma is willing to risk an economic fate reminiscent that of its neighbor to the north, Zimbabwe, where shortly after a similar confiscation of what land, the economy disintegrated into a hyperinflationary supernova.

It took Zimbabwe 15 years to admit its mistakes, and invite white farmers back. It now appears that South Africa will have to learn from the mistakes of its northern neighbor in due course.

Zimbabwe 2.0: South Africa's President Vows To Redistribute White-Owned Land And Businesses

In a stark flashback to the events that led to Zimbabwe"s terminal collapse into banana republic status, as well as unleashing hyperinflation and economic devastation, on Thursday South African President Jacob Zuma pledged to break up white ownership of business and land to reduce inequality, in a State of the Nation address which as the WSJ reports was disrupted by a fistfight, walkouts and a release of pepper spray in the parliamentary chamber. It appears South Africa is not fond of implementing "Rule 19."

Scenes of verbal and physical clashes inside the parliament, some 27 years to the day after Nelson Mandela was released from prison, as well as Zuma"s contentious speech, highlight the precarious future course facing Africa’s most developed economy.

As the WSJ reports, on Thursday, lawmakers from the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters "shouted over an initial attempt by Mr. Zuma to start his speech, after complaining about what they said was a threatening increase of security inside and outside Parliament. Previously the president had for the first time deployed several hundred troops to help lock down Cape Town’s parliamentary precinct in anticipation of potential clashes between ANC and opposition supporters."

Things then quickly got out of control:

“You’re a constitutional delinquent,” EFF lawmaker Mbuyiseni Ndlozi said of Mr. Zuma, referring to a court finding last year that the president had violated the constitution when he refused to pay back public money that an official report found was used for unnecessary upgrades to his private home. Mr. Zuma has since paid back some of the funds. When EFF lawmakers, dressed in their customary red workers’ overalls and maids’ uniforms, refused to quiet down or leave the chamber, they began fighting with parliamentary orderlies. Some lawmakers used their red hard hats to hit the orderlies, while other legislators were dragged out of the chamber.

Soon after, South Africa’s other main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, walked out in protest over the increase in security. ANC lawmakers shouted after Mmusi Maimane, the DA’s first black leader, as he led his party’s MPs out of the chamber, calling him a racist and sellout. Around the same time, several DA members in the visitors’ gallery
reported that tear gas had been released into the gallery, which quickly
emptied.

According to the chairwoman of South Africa’s upper house, Thandi Modise, an initial investigation showed that the substance released was pepper spray and called the incident a “breach of security” that shouldn’t have happened. She didn’t say who was behind the incident.

Meanwhile, Zuma didn’t acknowledge the disruptions when he returned to the podium to continue his speech. Instead, he focused on the one issue which may soon plague South Africa for years to come: the stark economic divide between black and white South Africans, one of the issues that the EFF has seized on in recent years.

To appease the rising populist anger, and taking a page out of developed economies around the globe, Zuma then said that “today we are starting a new chapter of radical socioeconomic transformation., The president added that 22 years after the end of apartheid “white households earn at least five times more than black households.”

President Zuma’s focus on redistribution comes as his African National Congress party prepares to elect a new leader to succeed him in December and as he finds himself under growing pressure over corruption allegations. He also said that he planned to send back to Parliament a bill that will make it easier for authorities to redistribute land taken away from blacks during colonization, although white landowners will still receive market prices for any seized land.

Where have we seen this kind of land "redistribution" not too long ago? Oh yes, Zimbabwe.

It took Zimbabwe 15 years to admit its mistakes, and invite white farmers back. It now appears that South Africa will have to learn from the mistakes of its northern naighbor in due course.