South Africa faces one of its toughest years since the transition to democracy in the 1990s. The question of land was always going to be difficult to deal with. The Struggle was more about land and the country’s wealth, not just about black people getting the vote.
The governing ANC is failing to engage the public and the stakeholder groups on its resolution to expropriate land without compensation.
Factions within the ANC are caught at opposing ends of the fight against corruption and state capture. Ironically, the fight against corruption, state capture and impunity are issues that unite all South Africans, according to a Nation’s Voice survey by Ask Afrika, in association with the University of Pretoria.
In the 2000s, the ANC government promised its citizens and the international community that Zimbabwe-style land seizures would not occur in South Africa. A few years ago the government, with much fanfare, paid a record R1billion for land acquisition associated with the Mala-Mala Game Reserve in Mpumalanga.
That was not only in keeping the promise not to grab land without compensation, it was also the government suggesting to landowners that holding on to the land until the right time would be handsomely rewarded.
Months earlier, the ANC expelled ANC Youth League president Julius Malema, who had become a bogeyman to whites with his talk of nationalisation of key industries and the expropriation of land without compensation. Only after the ANC got its nose bloodied in the 2016 local government elections did talk of land expropriation without compensation start to emerge. Its 54th national conference finally took a resolution in that regard.
As Ramaphosa correctly pointed out, the land issue is everyone’s responsibility. However, it is not clear how the government intends to engage the public on the matter.
Concerns of Zimbabwe-style land reform are held not only by landowners and users; the dispossessed also have anxieties. The Mugabe-era land redistribution favoured mainly ruling party elites and their acolytes. Zimbabweans were left worse off.
Perhaps stuck in Zuma-era adversarial politics, opposition parties have not constructively engaged the ANC on the matter. Except for the EFF, opposition parties in the main are loudly critical of the ANC’s resolution.
To enable a viable solution, the government needs to engage all communities. This would enable a land reform programme that promotes economic growth, the empowerment of the poor and the return of dignity for the black majority. It is opportune for the programme to be decided on and implemented during Ramaphosa's presidency. He is the most unifying political figure in the country. He is also a landowner and would have a more favourable response to owners' genuine concerns.
Poor communication and public relations often gets in the ANC's way. On the day the party gave its former president, Jacob Zuma, just hours to resign as head of state, the Hawks raided the premises of Zuma’s Gupta friends and their associates. They arrested a few people connected to the family and issued a public announcement that Ajay Gupta would be arrested. Zuma’s son, Duduzane, was said to be on the run. The events must have rattled or infuriated Zuma and his ally, ANC secretary-general and Free State premier Ace Magashule.
To some observers, Ramaphosa and his allies were using the Hawks to remove Zuma just as Zimbabwe’s Zanu-PF used the army to remove Robert Mugabe. The message that was being sent to the public was that Ramaphosa was controlling the Hawks. There is no evidence to suggest that Ramaphosa ordered the raids. However, there is evidence that former police minister Fikile Mbalula often over-spoke and at times mis-spoke.
Whatever the facts, Mbalula’s posture and the Hawks’ awful timing left many citizens with the perception that the Hawks were under political command. Evidence of this was clear last week when social media erupted in criticism of Ramaphosa for the Hawks’s raid on celebrated investigative journalist Jacques Pauw. This perception might well prove devastating for the country, perhaps in the same way as similar perceptions were used to deflect Zuma’s fraud and corruption charges.
Former police minister Steve Tshwete supported the defunct directorate of special operations to the point of giving the unit its “Scorpions” moniker, and then-justice minister Penuell Maduna equally supported the Scorpions. Both men were known Mbeki allies.
When the Scorpions started investigating Zuma in 2000, his response was that people close to Mbeki were using the corruption-busting unit to block his path to the top office.
Zuma’s narrative won the day. He became ANC president and later the Scorpions were disbanded. Charges against him were dropped. He became head of state, and corruption became institutionalised.
Police Minister Bheki Cele must be careful not to repeat the mistakes of his predecessors, Mbalula and Tshwete. The country is in a similar position to where it was after the 1999 general elections.
This time Ramaphosa is the president and his deputy, David Mabuza, the former provincial leader. Zuma’s skeletons in KwaZulu-Natal started tumbling out of cupboards the following year. If the same were to happen and corruption allegations against Mabuza emerge in Mpumalanga, for example, the Hawks would have to investigate without having its intentions questioned.
The point of establishing the Hawks outside the SAPS was so that the government would comply with a court ruling ordering the independence of the elite unit. Having Cele, a politician, becoming the Hawks’s spokesperson or cheerleader challenges the much-needed perception of independence.The unit needs to revamp its communications capabilities. Ramaphosa undoubtedly has good spin doctors and public relations experts advising him. This shows in how he’s been able to rally citizens of all race groups and cultures around his vision of a New Dawn and the principle of service to the country. Government communications remained ineffective at most times during Zuma’s presidency. This had largely been due to the weakening of the GCIS agency as the strategic centre of government communications, and the decentralisation of the communication function across the ministries and departments.
Public engagement must return as one of the pillars of the government’s communication strategies. One of the findings of the Nation’s Voice survey was that citizens felt that the government was not engaging them adequately.
Ramaphosa can use the fight against corruption as a building block to achieve greater unity among citizens. The land reform question can be tackled more easily if there is less distrust between citizens, the government and landowners.
The president can further build on the goodwill he’s been getting from citizens. He can work towards lending a voice to the citizens in a more organised way than the listening sessions he conducts during his sporadic public walks.
While his grip on the governing party isn’t strong, the constitution gives him adequate power to be an agent for meaningful change.
Furthermore, we have seen that the constitution makes it difficult to remove a president willy-nilly. This means that if Ramaphosa can enjoy high rates of public support, it would be virtually impossible for his opponents to constitutionally oust him.
There would be benefits for the ANC if it rallies around Ramaphosa in the fight against corruption and when the party opens communication lines. The last time the party did that, it obtained just under 70% of the vote during the 2004 general election.
* Nkosi is founder of the Nation’s Voice initiative and former spokesperson for the Scorpions.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.