As Zimbabwe goes, so goes South Africa?
Whatever the reasons, it’s dangerous for governments to confiscate the land of citizens without compensation, as the leading party of South Africa is now poised to do.
Their reasons reflect the complex history of South Africa, a place where black people (historically around 75% to 80% of the population) were forbidden to own land in most of the country for a long time. When apartheid ended in 1994, which is now almost 25 years ago, the policy changed:
Since the end of apartheid in 1994, the ANC [African National Congress, the ruling party] has followed a “willing-seller, willing-buyer” model under which the government buys white-owned farms for redistribution to blacks. Progress has been slow…
Based on a survey of title deeds, the government says blacks own four percent of private land, and only eight percent of farmland has been transferred to black hands, well short of a target of 30 percent that was meant to have been reached in 2014.
AgriSA, a farm industry group, says 27 percent of farmland is in black hands. Its figure includes state land and plots tilled by black subsistence farmers in the old homelands.
That 1994 policy was equitable because both buyer and seller had to acquiesce, and the owners of the land were compensated. But “progress” has been too slow for many people in South Africa, and the ANC—which had until now refused to change the policy—is running scared and fears it might lose power. So it has caved on the issue.
More:
The 17 million people who reside in the former [black] homelands, a third of the population, are mostly subsistence farmers working tiny plots on communal land.
Critics of ANC land policy say that instead of seizing farmland from whites, such households should be given title deeds, turning millions into property owners. Reformers in the ANC have signaled their support for such a policy.
Seems like a better way to go about it than seizing people’s land.
The big question is whether the country will turn into Zimbabwe:
Analysts say South Africa is unlikely to follow the route of Zimbabwe, where the chaotic and violent seizure of white-owned farms under former president Robert Mugabe triggered economic collapse.
Ramaphosa has repeatedly said the policy will be implemented in a way that does not threaten food security or economic growth. ANC officials have said unused land will be the main target.
Governments say a lot of things. But once you go down this path it can have ripple effects that “analysts” don’t always foresee. For example, why would anyone invest in South Africa if it’s seen as risky? The South African currency fell after the announcement, and the bond market weakened.
Also, when you read the words of leaders of the more radical party, the [EFF], it is not reassuring, either about the financial future of South Africa or about the situation not escalating in a Zimbabwe-type direction:
There have been concerns among South Africa’s white minority that the motion will encourage attacks on farmers, and the EFF’s leader Julius Malema has previously been convicted of hate speech for singing anti-white songs like “Shoot the Boer [Farmer]”…
“In this process, white people ought to accept the crime of apartheid and colonisation and how these crimes impacted on black people,” Mr Ndlozi said. Whites could “show remorse by ceding land they inherited through anti-black racist dispossession”, he suggested, adding: “Justice leads to reconciliation.”
“Justice”—for example, the “justice” in the US known as affirmative action—does not always lead to reconciliation. The people who own the South African farms now have certainly benefited from what happened in the past—the exclusion of black people from land ownership in most of the country, among other rights that were denied—but the present-day farmers were for the most part not the perpetrators of apartheid and they are the legal owners of their land. What’s more, they have skills in developing and tending that land:
“If you take away those role players and replace them with people that have no knowledge, have no experience, we are going to produce a lot less,” South African farmer Jannie Myburgh told RT’s Paula Slier. “And if we produce less food, the food prices will go up, and that will harm the people that are on the bottom of the food chain.”
The history of South Africa is tremendously complex, with many ethnic groups involved. Learning about it is slow going, but suffice to say that the problems there defy easy answers.
Lots of discord has been going on for quite some time in South Africa over these issues:
Ever since the Dutch colonialist Jan van Riebeeck first set his clogs on the shores of southern Africa in 1652, the issue of land ownership has been a cause of conflict — a stark, tense thread running throughout the tapestry of South Africa’s history.
Van Riebeeck, an employee of the VOC (Dutch East India Company), was sent to the Cape to establish a refreshment station for passing VOC ships.
The Dutch settlement was immediately at odds with locals: the pastoral Khoikhoi, and later the foraging San.
Through impositions of Western-style bureaucracy by the Dutch and a series of wars, the Europeans gained control of large swathes of fertile Cape land.
The arrival of the British in 1795, followed 25 years later by the first of the 1820 Settlers, only worsened the situation as the 4000 mainly artisanal British workers were granted land for farms in the Eastern Cape.
That’s how it started, and then:
The most severe insult yet came with the passing of the Natives Land Act in 1913, which restricted black property ownership to just 7 per cent of the land of South Africa.
Although this amount was later increased to 13 per cent, the land black people were allowed to own was restricted to rural “native reserves”.
But the real question is: what now? The country is a powder keg, and the specter of Zimbabwe looms as a dire warning:
Within 24 hours of President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe’s announcement of a similar policy in 1997, the local currency was devalued more than 50% beginning a hyper-inflation of the nation’s currency.
Initially, the land expropriation program was a victory for ordinary citizens, Zimbabweans would pay dearly for it through eight years of economic decline that led to job losses. Zimbabwean economist, Eddie Cross estimated that the country lost $20 billion dollars in export revenues, food aid imports and economic growth.
Now, the Zimbabwean government is going back to correct its mistake. The government has established a compensation committee under its land acquisition act to allow for dispossessed white, former commercial farmers to be compensated for land seized 18 years ago, according to Quartz.
You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. The only question is how best to go forward. South Africa is in trouble, and has been for a long, long time.
Anyone interested in the disturbing developments in SA, hardly covered in our media, should watch the film by Lauren Southern entitled Farmlands, currently available on Youtube (for how much longer, considering the hostility of Silicon Valley to true freedom of expression, no-one can predict).
But the real question is: what now?
Easy answer: South Africa will become another standard African country.
Once whites lost the power in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, it took 3-4 decades to become the usual African country. Once jews got the power in Israel, it took 3-4 decades to be a country with western living standards. It has taken 3-4 decades to South-Africa to reach the point when it has clearly become another African country.
The pattern is crystal clear: once some ethnic group gets the power in some land, it takes 3-4 decades until the state of the country “synchronizes” with the usual one for that ethnic group. For better, or for worse. And it’s quite fast, to be honest. So check demographic forecast, then add 3-4 decades, and you’ll have quite an accurate timeline.
PD A blog about the decline of Johannesbourg, and most of the articles were published 10 years ago: http://deathofjohannesburg.blogspot.com
Yann:
That’s not what I meant by “what now”?
That was short for the following: whatever the injustices of the past, people who make a country’s decisions need to go forward when making decisions about the future—what will the leaders of South Africa decide, and how will it be implemented. And what should they decide?
I know a man who moved to the US 20 years ago from South Africa. He goes to visit once in a while but will never move back. Violence drove him out and now he doubts if he will even go back for a visit. He is now a citizen and loves this country and what it stands for.
IMO SA is less than Xnumber of generations from following the Zimbabwe example. I give it no more than 5 years. Understandably, the hatred of the blacks in SA is deep, and that hatred will lead will lead to a bloodbath if the whites stick around expecting the blacks to come to their senses. The whites should fold their cards and walk swiftly to the airport.
I used to think of the Dutch as easy-going. South Africa changed my mind on that.
Once whites lost the power in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, it took 3-4 decades to become the usual African country. Once jews got the power in Israel, it took 3-4 decades to be a country with western living standards. It has taken 3-4 decades to South-Africa to reach the point when it has clearly become another African country.
Rhodesia in 1973 had per capita product levels which were < 1/2 those of South Africa, about 25% lower than Namibia, about 1/3 higher than those of Cote d'Ivoire, and about 2.4x that of Kenya. It did well in comparison with other African countries, but was nowhere near occidental levels of affluence. More like Latin America.
Israel's per capita output has matched that of the occidental undercard countries (e.g. Italy and Spain) since the 1950s.
I have an internet friend in South Africa, living on a farm that has been in her family for 350 years. They are not leaving. There might be another Boer War. The British had a hard time defeating the Boers. Do you think the ANC can do so ? I suspect a lot of the people leaving SA are English with families going back to the 19th century.
It may be time to read Michener’s book, “The Covenant” again.
Rhodesia in 1973 had per capita product levels which were < 1/2 those of South Africa, about 25% lower than Namibia
Talking about per capita GDP in Rhodesia 1973 (or in South-Africa, for what matters) makes no sense. There were two completely separated societies in one country: blacks and whites. Per capita stats were created in a more homogeneous western world, because it’s a stat that uses the average as a good enough approximation for the mode. That’s not the case in former Rhodesia or South-Africa.
Something similar is happening with US, by the way. You check homicide rate, and it’s closer to Pakistan or Zimbabwe than to Finland or UK. Does that means that American society is a mildly violent and mildly third-world one? Or does that mean that is it a very heterogeneous one ranging from civilized areas to violent and third-world ones?
More like Latin America.
The only parts of Latin America that could have been compared to white Rhodesia are some areas in Chile and 60s-70s Argentina, and that’s it. Comparing Rhodesia to Latin America is just ludicrous.
Israel’s per capita output has matched that of the occidental undercard countries (e.g. Italy and Spain) since the 1950s.
You know that there were hunger in Spain and Italy in the 40s and 50s, don’t you? And I mean, LITERALLY, hunger. Matching 50s Spain or Italy is not exactly reaching western living standards.
Initially, the land expropriation program was a victory for ordinary citizens..
I have read several memoirs written by white Zimbabweans- at least one by a farmer. From the beginning, production crashed. Mostly people just squatting on lands. The black farm hands usually left with the white owners, so knowledge about producing those particular tracts of land also left. It didn’t take long for “nationalization” of white farm land to turn into land grabs by government honchos.Land reform in Zimbabwe
South Africa will go down the tubes.
Memory land. In 5th grade, a black South African spoke to a school assembly about Apartheid. It went over our heads, I fear. I know it went over my head- a bright 5th grader- as I asked some lame question about production, probably agricultural. (As there was a black kid in my class- still my friend decades later- I had an intuitive realization of mistreatment of blacks, but the South African’s talk went over my head.)
The following data is for Zimbabwe.
GDP per capita, PPP (constant 2011 international $)
1990 $2606
1998 $2761
2003 $1917
2008 $1215
2013 $1930
2017 $1900
Net per capita Agricultural Production Index Number (2004-2006 = 100)
1980-1989 130
1990-1999 108
2000-2004 109
2005-2009 93
2010-2014 89
2015-2016 79
http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QI
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.K
Something similar is happening with US, by the way. You check homicide rate, and it’s closer to Pakistan or Zimbabwe than to Finland or UK. Does that means that American society is a mildly violent and mildly third-world one? Or does that mean that is it a very heterogeneous one ranging from civilized areas to violent and third-world ones?
If the black underclass is excluded, America has lower levels of violence and crime than Europe. Even Europe before the Muslim flood.
Neo, the lack of preview isn’t as much a problem as I feared, because there are 5 minutes of edit. If 5 minutes of editing aren’t sufficient, simply delete the whole comment and start over.
Correction on World Bank link:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD
Talking about per capita GDP in Rhodesia 1973 (or in South-Africa, for what matters) makes no sense.
It makes perfect sense. You are making comparisons of the secular trend in output and the issue of the human capital the country has available to it. Both countries had a poor income distribution. So do Latin American countries, in regard to which this metric is a subject of discussion as a matter of routine.
You check homicide rate, and it’s closer to Pakistan or Zimbabwe than to Finland or UK. Does that means that American society is a mildly violent and mildly third-world one?
No, it means we have a more heterogeneous population than Finland or the U.K.
Homicide rates of all racial categories are in the United States worse than the Western European norm. There’s less of a disparity with other categories of violent crime and in re property crime you’re better off in the United States. Homicide rates in the United States are fairly similar to those in South America’s (predominantly white) Southern Cone and fairly similar to those of a selection of East European countries. They are a great deal better than Russia’s.
Mike K
If the black underclass is excluded, America has lower levels of violence and crime than Europe. Even Europe before the Muslim flood.
From the CDC: QuickStats: Age-Adjusted Rates for Homicides,* by Race/Ethnicity†— United States, 1999–2015
U.S. Non-Hispanic Whites in 2015: 2.6 murders per 100,000.
Europe for 2014-2016: 3.0 murders per 100,000.
Taking away mini-states like Andorra or Monaco, there are 17 European countries with a murder rate below 1 per 100,000, and 13 countries with a murder rate between 1 and 2 per 100,000.
The countries with the highest murder rates are former Soviet Bloc countries.
Hungary 2.07
Albania 2.7
Moldova 3.19
Estonia 3.19
Latvia 3.36
Belarus 3.58
Montenegro 4.46
Lithuania 5.25
Ukraine 6.34
Russia 10.82
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate#By_region
While the history of South Africa may be complex, what’s going on right now is very simple:
The communist-inspired ANC took over. They already had decades of racial resentment built up, but on top of that had the incentive to create a bogeyman that all dictatorships do.
The modern world is seeing a resurgence of communist aggression, with class and economic considerations replaced with race (and often, sex). These differences are skin-deep however, all the same dynamics are at play and the outcomes are the same.
I expect to see ethnic cleansing soon, and the progressives will dismiss it casually as a form of Karma.
“Mr Ndlozi said. Whites could “show remorse by ceding land they inherited through anti-black racist dispossession”
When the Dutch arrived in South Africa the indigenous people were the bushmen. The blacks arrived later coming down from the north. The Dutch didn’t dispossess the blacks.
Neo:
That’s not what I meant by “what now”?
That was short for the following: whatever the injustices of the past, people who make a country’s decisions need to go forward when making decisions about the future—what will the leaders of South Africa decide, and how will it be implemented. And what should they decide?
Mmm… yes and no.
That’s what I would call a problem of implicit constraints. What do I mean with that?
One element that characterizes western culture is the obsession with recording knowledge. Everything, good or bad, is recorded or investigated. However, that isn’t universal. Greatest genocides in Earth happened in Africa one thousand years ago, before white men arrived (half the continent was exterminated). Slavery? that was the extremely common in Africa before white men arrived and continued until the 70s (yeap, there were still slave markets a few decades ago). Indeed, slaves descend from the ones that lost the tribal wars. Had they won, they would have been the ones selling slaves instead of being enslaved. You don’t see that recorded or investigated in modern Africa. Modern Africa, it seems that the only history that worths is the one where you play the victim.
So… when you talk about injustices, you assume that investigating your history, injustices included, is the NORM. That’s an implicit constraint. It’s implicit, because you often don’t consider it in a conscious level, and it’s a constraint, because it’s a necessary context when two societies are trying to reconcile and move on with regard to their own injustices… though it’s not a feature that every culture fulfills.
One big problem with thoughts is that we don’t always define clearly the necessary context. Often it’s taken for granted, which is a mistake. When you hear about Middle East and the Geneva Convention, the implicit context is that we suppose that everybody think Geneva was right… what happens when your enemy sees that you don’t attack schools and hospitals, decides you’re stupid and places the rocket launchers in schools and hospitals?
The implicit necessary context for whatever the injustices of the past is that the knowledge of the past, no matter what happened, that knowledge must be cherished. What happens when that’s not true?
No, it means we have a more heterogeneous population than Finland or the U.K.
Exactly, and when you have populations that cluster in completely different groups, the average don’t describe neither of them.
If you take 100 Dutch and 100 Japanese and calculate the average height “per capita”, that won’t describe neither of them. It could describe Japanese-Dutch, which you don’t have!
When you have heterogeneous (and clustered) populations, the average doesn’t have any descriptive value.
And that’s why average GDP per capita in Rhodesia or former South-Africa didn’t describe neither black or white societies.
“whatever the injustices of the past, people who make a country’s decisions need to go forward when making decisions about the future—what will the leaders of South Africa decide, and how will it be implemented. And what should they decide?” neo
I doubt it matters what the leadership decides. The determinate factor will be the cultural factors of hate and victimhood, which dominate. i.e. S. A.’s whites deserve what they’re going to get.
I too see another Zimbabwe in South Africa’s future. And afterwards, the majority will blame the whites then too. Far, far easier to blame the scapegoat than to look in the mirror.
Let me propose a worse case scenario…
SA will not become Zimbabwe…at least not right away…It will first become Rwanda…lots of blood in the streets. Those whites who fought the border wars & who have lived nowhere else will not just leave. They will fight & most of them will die. What’s left will become Zimbabwe.
Please Lord let me be wrong.
I’ve a fair amount of time in both countries and I have to point out that Rhodesia was an English colony but South Africa was settled by the Boers and later became an English colony. I know people in Zimbabwe who stayed and those who came to Perth when Mugabe won the war. I can’t begin to tell you about the differences between the two countries, but they are very different because of the Boer retain the pre enlightenment religious outlook of the early 18th century. They are analogous to the Puritan sellers of early New England or the pre revolutionary Roman Catholics who of Quebec. I do not pretend to understand the Boer mentality, but I know it well enough to understand it is fundamentally different than the relatively cosmopolitan English speaking world. In Zimbabwe I walk around relating freely to blacks whites and those of mixed race without any serious atmosphere of hostility. eg One Sunday in Bulawayo I was walking down a deserted city street when I spied three young black guys dressed ‘American’ style with baggy harts and baseball cals on sideways. I noticed there was no one else about and my American alarm bells stirred. As they approached me that sang out in unison “Good afternoon, Sir!” The only time I visited a Boer household in South Africa I was with some English speaking South Africans who were relatives of friends in Zimbabwe. The Boer family realised I only spoke English and the atmosphere became cold. It is reminiscent of the French Canadians refusing to answer people who address them in English. The Boer family and the people I was with carried on in Afrikaans. It would have ben worse if I was black, but it was clear I was non person. I don’t know what will happen to these people. They certainly can’t go back to the Netherlands. Poland would be a better bet. Ironically some of them can go and lease farms in Zimbabwe which has learned its lesson. Some may choose to stay and fight. I just don’t know. I have compassion for these people. They are on the sharp edge of cultural conflict and have no clear options. I have a friend who is a Rhodesian who is following events in South Africa and she thinks they will be killed.
Igude,
I understand your point of view regarding the Boers. While harsh, it is not completely un-warranted. However, the white population of South Africa is more English than it is Boer.
I have been in South Africa. I saw the average white population as being much more enlightened then you give them credit for.
Unfortunately, I also do not predict a bright future. The majority of the population is too politically immature for a stable representative democracy. The people will vote for the politician who promises them the most free stuff. Of course, this leads to unscrupulous scoundrels in power.
Human nature in SA at full exposure is about envy and getting even, combined with pure and simple racism. Complex history be damned.
When the Dutch arrived in South Africa the indigenous people were the bushmen. The blacks arrived later coming down from the north. The Dutch didn’t dispossess the blacks.
That is why “The Covenant” would be a useful read as it tells that story.
When the Dutch arrived in South Africa the indigenous people were the bushmen. The blacks arrived later coming down from the north. The Dutch didn’t dispossess the blacks.
The Khoi-San who were the ancestors of South Africa’s Coloured population were indigenous to the Western Cape. The Bantu had reached the rest of the country (Transvaal, Orange Free State, Natal, Eastern Cape) by the 17th c. IIRC, the Boer population didn’t migrate to the rest of the country until the 1st half of the 19th century.
Art Deco and Mike K:
I had also read that the indigenous Khoi and San were displaced first by the Bantus and then by the Europeans. If you go to the Wiki page (Wiki is certainly not an authority but they tend to be at least fairly accurate, usually with footnotes to references as well), it certainly indicates that the Bantu people came before the Europeans by quite a few centuries, but compared to the Khoi and San they were late arrivals.
Let’s not kid ourselves or indulge in false hope. Everybody knows that this will end in guns and blood. There’s a slight question of “when” but no question as to what.
Neo,
Art Deco’s facts on this mostly agree with my reading of several different sources on this. When I lived in Africa (Tanzania), I took it upon myself to educate myself a little about African history.
The only area in which he is wrong is that S.A.’s colored population is only a small percentage of Khoi-San. The ancestors of today’s South African black population were mostly Bantu, who made much better farm workers and miners than the Bushman.
Also, it is not exacty fair to say that the Bushmen were “displaced”. They were nomadic and didn’t lay claim to any land like the Europeans and the agrarian/pastoral Bantu did. Needless to say, South Africa was the site of a major clash of cultures.
Roy:
I was under the impression that “colored” was an eclectic bag of mixed-race people, including Indian immigrants, and that the native Khoi and San were a very small part of the group. And of course they were nomadic, but they were displaced from their usual roaming territory which was large, and ended up being nomads in a much smaller area.
Neo,
You are correct. I didn’t bring it up for fear of complicating the issue. Amongst the “coloreds” descendents of Indians are much more numerous than San.
And the “displacement”, was so incremental that it was not seen as such by either party.
The story of the San is a sad one. They were largely dismissed by most of the whites and the Bantu blacks as a sort of subhuman.
I was under the impression that “colored” was an eclectic bag of mixed-race people, including Indian immigrants, and that the native Khoi and San were a very small part of the group.
I think the Cape Malay were treated as ‘coloured’ under the old law. The East Indian population was based in Natal and arrived in South Africa later than the Cape Malay. They were their own classification, not a subset of the Coloured. As far as I’m aware, the Coloured population is for the most part a mix of Boer and Khoi-San.
Art Deco:
It was complicated, but the designation seems to have included Indians (or people of Indian descent mixed with other races) as well as many other groups and mixtures. A sort of grab-bag.
Here’s an academic paper on the Cape Coloured:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/44618878_Genome-wide_analysis_of_the_South_African_Coloured_population_in_the_Western_Cape
Interesting “alternative history” considerations always arise in these circumstances.
I suppose that at one point, someone in apartheid S.A., seeing the writing on the wall, might have been able negotiate one or two smallish Boer homelands if the proposition had been broached very early on: though given S.A’s pattern of economic development, and the Boer’s reliance on (and enjoyment of) black labor, I doubt that that could have been managed.
Obviously they were not going to get the old Cape which was taken from them by the English many generations before. Nor Natal. The former Orange Free State and Transvaal, were no longer frontier colonies of scattered Boer farmers, and had not been since before the English [Jameson] precipitated the second Boer War.
The “Dutch” were just too scattered, too economically integrated with and reliant upon a black population, to try and carve out culturally cohesive cantons; or economically viable, much less defensible mini-republics. I suppose there were valleys here or there where Boers predominated numerically, but – just guessing – (I’ll research it later) what would you get, an inland farming community the size of Monaco?
Furthermore, unrestricted access to the sea, even via a third rate port, would have been emphatically resisted by the world: as Boer success in a mini Boer only state, would be seen as philosophically disastrous and dangerous to the modern world order.
For better or worse their Nationalists tried to keep it all, and their descendants will now probably wind up keeping nothing but what they are allowed to have by permission, not by right.
Unless … someone has a nuke tucked away, and is willing to detonate it.