South Africa - Day 16

Read the article below and answer the questions on the handout.

Land grab proposal stokes fears for white South African farmers

Muddled first impression for ‘pro-business’ new president Cyril Ramaphosa

South Africa’s new president is vowing to institute land reform in a “responsible” manner, but has been unable to stop rising concern from the country’s minority white farmers and international investors that his government is being pressured to carry out a more radical, racially-based land grab that could undo the region’s largest and most important economy.

One of the first things newly-elected President Ramaphosa has to deal with is the land reform plans that are already underway. 

Supporters say the move is needed to address a gap in landownership between the white minority and the black majority that remains from South Africa’s apartheid era.

“We cannot have a situation where we allow land grabs, because that is not government,” Mr. Ramaphosa told Parliament.

But he pledged to increase the pace of land reform. “If we do not do so,” he warned, “this problem that has stayed with us as a nation for hundreds of years … will blow up in our hands.”

Some of his political allies want to go much further and much faster.

AfriForum, a lobby group that bills itself as a guardian of minority and Afrikaner rights, warned that the proposed constitutional amendment on land expropriation could unleash chaos and said it planned an international campaign to warn foreign governments and investors about the threat to property rights.

Mr. Ramaphosa remains under pressure from more extremist political elements to pick up the pace. White South Africans have about 72 percent of individually owned farms in South Africa. The black majority, which was largely concentrated in rural reserves and segregated urban townships under apartheid, owns just 4 percent, according to an audit cited by Mr. Ramaphosa.

Muddled message

South Africa this week found itself in an angry diplomatic dispute after Australian Immigration Minister Peter Dutton told reporters that South Africa’s white farmers may “need help from a civilized country like ours” if massive land seizures are made legal.

“That threat does not exist,” the South African Foreign Ministry said in a response. “There is no reason for any government in the world to suspect that a section of South Africans is under danger from their own democratically elected government.”

A survey last year by the Institute of Race Relations, a South African think tank, found that just 1 percent of South African people thought land reform would expand the economy. The overwhelming number expressed fears that it would send the national unemployment rate — currently about 25 percent — even higher.

When the survey group Kantar TNS asked black South Africans how they would choose if offered 250 acres of rural land or a job in town, 82 percent chose the job.