| Volume 3, No. 21, 3 November 2004 | |
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Land reform, the market and the constitution By Blade Nzimande, General Secretary A central pillar of the SACP’s Red October Campaign is the mobilisation of farm-workers and the rural poor in support of our ANC-led alliance’s election manifesto commitment to “speed up land reform, with 30% of agricultural land redistributed by 2014”. This coming Saturday, 6 November 2004 is our National Day of Action, under the slogan: “Mawubuye Umhlaba”. We are calling upon the millions of workers and the landless poor to join us on this day, as we table our demands to white commercial agriculture for accelerated land reform and a national land summit. Over the last few weeks we have convened more than a hundred meetings, forums and tribunals to listen and act on some of the problems facing the rural poor of our country. We have protested together with families facing farm evictions, violent attacks from farmers, as well as compiling a comprehensive report on, amongst other things, the failure of the police and justice system in many rural areas to take action on violence against farmworkers. Our campaign has struck a chord with the mass of our people on the ground! This underlines that the motive forces for land and agrarian transformation in favour of the people are the workers and the poor. In the course of the campaign we have been seeking answers to several important questions, including:
Although our campaign has only been underway for a few weeks, it is already evident that the answer to all of the above questions is basically: No. Minister of Finance, cde Trevor Manuel’s announcement of adjusted expenditure estimates for land restitution is one (but still limited) concession that not nearly enough has been allocated to this critical transformation programme. How we move forward to achieve our strategic objectives is, of course, a matter for ongoing debate, including popular debate in the course of rural mobilisation. The SACP does not claim to have all the answers ready made in our pockets. There are, however, forces in our society (like the Democratic Alliance and AgriSA – the union representing the interests of agribusiness in South Africa) that are trying to stifle debate before it has even begun. In particular, they are trying to suggest that the SACP’s interrogation of the willing-seller, willing-buyer policy is “unconstitutional”. They are seeking to outlaw any approach to land reform that is not narrowly market-driven, and they are trying to imply that the only alternative to a willing-seller, willing buyer approach is an illegal land-grab. What the Constitution actually says For whatever reason, there is a frequent assumption in South Africa that the property clause in the Bill of Rights is an impediment to major land reform. It is an assumption that leads to frequent lamentation in some left quarters, and to celebration on the right. So let’s remind ourselves what the property clause (Clause 25) in our Bill of Rights actually says. The first sub-clause (25.1), affirms that “no one may be deprived of property except in terms of law of general application, and no law may permit arbitrary deprivation of property.” This is quite correct, and the SACP fully supports this principled and law-based approach to property. The second sub-clause then allows for the expropriation of property, but it sets clear conditions for such expropriation. It must be:
Sub-clause 3 then elaborates on the criteria required to establish what is appropriate compensation. It calls for “an equitable balance between public interest and the interests of those affected, having regard to all relevant circumstances”. Five “relevant circumstances” are then listed as guiding principles and only ONE of them refers to the “market value of the property”. The other principles are the “current use of the property”, “the history of the acquisition and use of the property”; “the extent of direct state investment and subsidy in the acquisition and beneficial capital improvement of the property”; and “the purpose of the expropriation.” It is to these other four principles that we should increasingly pay attention, particularly given the fact that the history of South Africa, is essentially a history of land dispossession. In our view not enough attention has been paid to these principles, thus the tendency to elevate the “willing buyer willing seller principle” as the primary method through which to drive land reform in our country. All of these principles are very relevant to compensation in the South African context. The 44,000 white-owned commercial farms in our country have all been acquired by one or another form of historic dispossession. They have all benefited from generous state subsidies and other assistance paid for by tax-payers, over a prolonged period. Many of them remain heavily indebted to the Land Bank and other financial institutions. There is also much un- and under-utilised agricultural land, and there is absentee landlordism. The Bill of Rights is enjoining us to take ALL of these factors into account (and not just market price) in calculating compensation for expropriated farms. The next sub-clause, 25.4 is careful to specify that the “public interest” referred to in the previous sub-clause “includes the nation’s commitment to land reform, and to reforms to bring about equitable access to all South Africa’s natural resources.” A brief review of the property clause suggests that it may well be a narrow “willing-seller, willing-buyer” approach that is out of step with the intentions and spirit of the Bill of Rights! The SACP believes that the present policy needs to be reviewed and alternative or additional approaches to acquiring land must be pursued. Obviously, some of these alternative policies will have to be adequately provided for in legislation. The SACP believes in neither a market-driven process nor in a lawless land-grab. These are NOT the only alternatives available. Sustainable land reform It is absolutely important to ensure that we approach land reform within the context of our progressive Constitution and Bill of Rights. However, we must ensure that our approach to land is not just legal, but that it also has a sustainable and progressive ECONOMIC logic, buttressed by mass organisation and mobilisation. Land restitution based on a legitimate historical claim is of great importance. However, resettling a community on their traditional land, but without adequate infrastructure or financing, and without adequate agricultural extension programmes, may unintentionally leave the community worse off than before. A similar practical problem relates to the willing-seller, willing-buyer approach to land reform. Willing sellers and willing (or sufficiently wealthy) buyers seldom occur in a coherent block of land. The market is typically random. The brief history of this approach in our country has seen a patch-work of isolated farms coming into the land reform programme. This has two negative consequences:
In short, relying on the market mechanism for land reform will produce a scattered patch-work of new farms that is much more likely to result in economic failure. It is a formula that is particularly discriminatory of the millions of rural poor in our country. The SACP wants to see land reform policies that are constitutional and legal, of course. But we also require policies that are informed by an integrated approach that addresses infrastructural needs, agricultural inputs, marketing and financing, and the consolidation of food security, the building of skills, and the general fostering of sustainable communities. This suggests that a law-governed and economically coherent expropriation policy needs to be one key element for the success of land reform. As we proceed with our Red October campaign, learning from the rural poor themselves, we intend to deepen and refine these perspectives. |
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| Zimbabwe – let’s keep focused (SACP discussion paper) | ||
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The Zimbabwean crisis and our alliance The deepening all-round crisis in Zimbabwe is having a devastating impact on the lives of millions of Zimbabwean workers, peasants, the youth and middle strata professionals of all kinds - teachers, nurses, police officers. The crisis has also spilled over into our country, with an estimated 3 million Zimbabwean economic refugees now living in South Africa. Faced with this crisis, it should be admitted that we in the ANC-led alliance have not always found it easy to effectively position ourselves. Of course, Zimbabweans themselves must find their own solutions, but no-one doubts that South Africans – whether in government or in civil society – also have an important role to play. So why our difficulty? In the first place, we in the South African liberation movement have a long, common history with the ruling party in Harare. In the late 1960s and through the 70s, the ANC’s alliance was rather more with ZAPU than with the now dominant ZANU component of the present ruling party. But, after Zimbabwean independence in 1980, ZANU PF played an absolutely critical role in standing up to apartheid destabilisation throughout our region. Zimbabweans paid a high price for their principled position in the fight, for instance, against Pretoria’s Renamo contras in Mozambique. The Zimbabwean CIO was instrumental in uncovering apartheid hit squad networks directed against ANC operatives, saving many lives. This history should never be forgotten. It should also be remembered that, in the immediate post-independence period, the Zimbabwean liberation movement led the country on a significant social redistribution programme, with notable gains in education and health-care. However, it is also incontrovertible that much of the present crisis is centred on ZANU PF itself, including internal stagnation, social distance from its historic mass base, factionalism, and serious policy mistakes. For the first decade of independence, the ruling party accommodated a capitalist growth path in the industrial and dominant commercial agriculture sectors, encouraging some capitalist indigenisation, while pursuing progressive welfarist redistributive policies for the majority: the so-called “two economies” approach which essentially left the mainstream capitalist economy untouched. There were successes, as noted above, but by the mid-1990s the redistributive social programmes could no longer be sustained fiscally within the constraints of a dominant and largely untransformed capitalist economy. With a burgeoning debt, Zimbabwe was increasingly vulnerable to an externally enforced structural adjustment programme. All of the leading ZANU PF cadres we have spoken to readily admit that their mid-1990s implementation of a structural adjustment programme was a disaster. Soaring food prices and mass retrenchments in the late 1990s resulted in a deepening divide between the party and the trade union movement. Social hardships also produced a groundswell of civil society protests in townships and rural villages. These all resulted in an opposition electoral project that emerged in 2000 and that continues to be grouped around the MDC. President Mugabe himself has also spoken several times recently about the grave dangers of corruption, factionalism and the abuse of state office by leading cadres from within the ruling party. He himself has raised concerns about illegal land-grabbing by some of his own senior officials in the recent “land reform” programme. Opposition politicians in Zimbabwe argue that these critiques are themselves selective and factional. South African comrades may argue that this is, or is not, the case - but either way it is obvious that there are major problems inside of the ruling party. From an ANC-led alliance perspective, then, ZANU PF presents a complex challenge. The complexities have not been helped by a wider domestic setting in which certain opposition parties (notably the DA) have run a thinly disguised racist campaign. They have sought to use the Zimbabwean crisis as an example of what happens when “THEY” (a black majority) take over. This is complemented by a nauseating barrage of white voices sermonising on Zimbabwe on radio phone-in programmes, and in this case the racism is even less disguised. Various opposition forces in our society also eavesdrop on every internal ANC and alliance debate looking for signs of difference. Differences get played up by these would-be (and uninvited) mid-wives of an “MDC” project in South Africa. They don’t give a hoot about Zimbabwean peasants, or about South Africa trade unionists – but they need our alliance to break so that they can have a shot at an electoral breakthrough for themselves. At a popular level within our country and movement, there has often been a knee-jerk back-lash against these currents: “If Tony Leon insults Robert Mugabe, then Robert Mugabe must be a super-hero.” All of this has muddied the waters a great deal in South Africa. We should, of course, not allow any of this to deflect us from a sober, thoughtful and comradely intra-Alliance analysis and discussion of Zimbabwe. But it is possible that we have not always succeeded in doing this. Nor have we given ourselves time to debate the Zimbabwean situation fully in the alliance and reach a common approach. Yet another complicating factor has been the role played by external forces, notably the UK government. Although there have been signs of a certain toning down of rhetoric from these quarters, earlier loose talk about a “regime change” agenda from the Blair government was certainly not helpful. We only have to look at Iraq to understand that long-distance, externally-imposed regime changes are inevitably a disaster for the local people and the region in which they are located. It is against this general background that last week’s heavy-handed expulsion of a COSATU fact-finding delegation to Zimbabwe occurred. The expulsion, defying a Zimbabwean court order, resulted in various reverberations back here in SA. All of this has once more underlined the need for our Alliance to discuss and harmonise perspectives on Zimbabwe. It is essential we develop complementary analyses, strategies and programmes of action to ensure that we assist as best as possible a resolution of the crisis in our neighbouring country. This paper is intended as an SACP contribution to this discussion. The SA Government approach to the Zimbabwean crisis We believe that the following are the main features of the South African government approach to the Zimbabwe crisis:
Given our unqualified agreement on 1 above, the SACP believes that this 3-step process is absolutely essential if elections as envisaged under 2 are to be realised. We believe that all progressive South African formations, and especially our alliance forces, should be very firm, constructive and focused in supporting attempts to realise this 3-step process. The SADC protocols The SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections, which were agreed upon in Mauritius in August this year, have now added a very important additional reference point. These are the basic principles to which SADC governments (including the Zimbabwean government) have solemnly committed themselves. In warmly welcoming these protocols, we need to guard against two potential dangers:
But are free and fair elections in Zimbabwe actually a realistic short-term prospect? The 2000 launch of MDC to contest (successfully) a constitutional referendum, and then (nearly successfully) parliamentary elections in 2000, and subsequent presidential elections in 2002, has resulted in a Zimbabwean political reality that is very (perhaps excessively) focused on ELECTIONS. (It should be noted that this electoral focus is now considerably at variance with the popular mood within Zimbabwe, if the comprehensive polling conducted by Professor Chavunduka is anything to go by. According to his recent polliing the great majority of ordinary Zimbabweans, across the political divide, are thoroughly weary of and apprehensive about any forthcoming elections.) On the side of the MDC, the very rapid rise to electoral prominence has meant that social movement, trade union and other energies have been considerably focused on an electoral project, on winning elections, on contesting in court the results of elections, and on preparing the ground for different elections. Leading MDC MPs are styled as “shadow ministers”, and there has been a palpable sense that everything will change at the “next elections”. In a sense the strategy has been regime change through the ballot box. On the side of ZANU PF the electoral rise of the MDC has led to an ever-narrowing laager mentality. Conspiracies are seen (or constructed) everywhere. The hastily launched land reform programme was less about land reform, and more about seeking to consolidate the ZANU PF apparatus and its electoral base. The unleashing of youth militias and other violence is also very much based on electoral calculations, with heightened violence occurring around by-elections, etc. Anti-democratic steps – tightening up on media laws, outlawing newspapers, the prosecution of the MDC leadership – are all also driven essentially by electoral calculations. ZANU PF is less and less a liberation movement confidently fostering a progressive hegemony in its own country and in the region, and more and more a repressive machine focused narrowly on holding on to power. The trajectory of the MDC and the trajectory of ZANU PF over the last few years have tended to reproduce each other. The 2002 presidential election, which our own South African alliance had fervently hoped would lay the basis for a resolution of the crisis (regardless of the winner), has itself become fuel to the fire. For all of these reasons, the SACP believes that while pushing firmly for democratic elections in Zimbabwe, we must be sober in our expectations. There is very little to suggest that ZANU PF, in particular, is seriously and confidently preparing to lay the foundations for a democratic process. Almost all of the indicators (including the expulsion of Cosatu) are pointing in the opposite direction for the moment. In these conditions, the worst possible option we could take as the Alliance in South Africa would be a “pragmatic” acceptance of ZANU PF’s unilaterally-declared March 2005 election date, and a “pragmatic” making the best of a bad deal in the hope that somehow, after a flawed election, a victorious ZANU PF would be more magnanimous and a reduced MDC would be more realistic. In a way, this would be to re-play the illusions of the 2002 presidential election. Such an election would not lay the basis for any sustainable resolution of the crisis. It would nullify the progress made within SADC on democratisation principles, and it would also contribute to an ongoing stagnation of progressive analysis and debate on Zimbabwe in our own country. ZANU PF In the view of the SACP, the crisis in Zimbabwe is considerably rooted in the social reality of the class force dominant in the leadership echelons of the ruling party. This class force is a bureaucratic capitalist class reliant on its monopoly of the state machinery for its own social reproduction. This class force, dominant in ZANU PF ruling circles, is unable to provide a coherent and hegemonic strategic leadership capable of beginning to address Zimbabwe’s political, moral, economic and social crisis. Indeed, in many respects, it thrives (at least over the short-term) in conditions of crisis, using its access to state power for land grabs, and currency and other speculative activities. It is also able to use state power as an insulation against the terrible impact the crisis is having on most other strata. But, unlike other fractions of the bourgeoisie, it is also incapable of surrendering direct control over state power. This double-bind, an inability to constructively and strategically use political leadership on the one hand, and an inability to cede some bureaucratic dominance, on the other, lies at the heart of the present blockage. There are, from time to time, signs that there are more far-sighted groupings within ZANU-PF leadership, who are prepared, for instance, to explore the possibility of some kind of patriotic power-sharing deal with the MDC. But, at least for the moment, these elements are easily outflanked within the leadership dynamics of the ruling party – it is hard to sell the idea of ceding some power, when that means that some in the ruling party will have to do the ceding. Having said this, the SACP believes that there is no solution to the Zimbabwe crisis, at least within any foreseeable future, without ZANU-PF…(or, for that matter, without the MDC). This means that there needs to be ongoing honest, robust engagement with ZANU-PF from the side of South Africa, and particularly by those forces most capable of exerting a positive influence. Challenges that arise include:
The role of the SA government and the Alliance Progressive South African formations need to premise their engagement on the basic principle that Zimbabweans have the prime responsibility for finding their own solutions. There are also no easy solutions. However, we do have a responsibility to Zimbabwe, and we do have a responsibility to our own national democratic struggle. Our solidarity towards Zimbabwe needs to be multi-pronged. Government to government, party to party, and people to people engagements are all part of what is required. We also have a responsibility for the estimated 3 million Zimbabweans living in our country, many as a direct result of the present crisis. In developing our solidarity, we must guard against expecting our government to behave like a trade union movement…or COSATU to behave like a government. We must also ensure that we do not allow tactical differences within our Alliance, for instance, to cloud and confuse us, and to become the main issue to the detriment of pursuing a converging strategic objective in Zimbabwe. The crisis is not in differences of tactic within our Alliance. The crisis is in Zimbabwe. We should agree:
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