It is a great honour for me to address this meeting at this critical time in the evolution of the new South Africa. Some critics now charge that our transition to constitutional democracy 25 years ago was a great mistake and that we should never have surrendered power. Others claim that we could have negotiated a better deal. Some think that we could have retained some or other minority veto.
The report of the Presidential Advisory Panel on Land Reform and Agriculture was presented to President Ramaphosa on 4 May 2019 and made available to the public in July. Even before this date, two panelists – Dan Kriek (president of AgriSA) and Nick Serfontein (well-known farmer) – decided to hand over a minority report to the President. It was made available to the public after the main report.
What are the key differences between the main report and the minority report? Why did these two respected panelists find it necessary to draft a minority report? The differences can be summarised in three groups: process issues, style and ideological issues and substantive issues.
The Final Report of the Presidential Advisory Panel on Land Reform and Agriculture, which was released to the public on 28 July, is already causing uncertainty and concern over the future of agriculture and property rights in South Africa. Two of the Panel’s 10 members, Dan Kriek, the President of Agri SA, and Nick Serfontein, a commercial farmer, have issued a minority report rejecting many of the Panel’s main recommendations.
The Panel was appointed by President Ramaphosa in September 2018 to “provide a unified policy perspective on land reform in respect of land restitution, land redistribution and land tenure reform”. It was also asked to report on the circumstances in which expropriation without compensation (EWC) should be applied and the procedures and institutions that should be involved in its implementation.
Thank you Mr Suhr, for your introduction and the perspective of KAS on our important conference. Former President De Klerk has set the scene further by his astute analysis and comments about the possible change of section 25 of the Constitution.
We have convened this Conference at a critical time in the history of our young democracy.
The ANC and Parliament have adopted resolutions calling for expropriation without compensation (EWC). By so doing they have posed a fundamental threat to investment, economic growth, agriculture, food security and to the national accord on which our new nonracial democracy was founded.
Observers must watch the right markers in order to determine whether South Africa is now on a reformist trajectory. One set of markers relates to the rule of law, corruption and accountable government. These are getting the bulk of analyst attention. But the second set are even more important and relate to policy reform in areas of empowerment, the labour market, property rights, and education.
The recent “Black Monday” protests have again highlighted how emotional the issues of farm attacks and farm murders are. There was both support for and criticism against the protests, the latter fuelled by some protesters making a political statement by waving the old South African flag.
Some historical background may be instructive. The Mandela government did a great deal to classify the phenomenon of farm attacks as a special category of crime, and to confront it. Among other initiatives, there was a national conference on the matter, a Rural Protection Plan, and establishing committees to implement the Plan. This was done in the early 2000s, in cooperation with the established commando system, which most farmers were part of.
Johann Rupert, Executive Chairman of Remgro and CEO of Richemont, said recently in London at a shareholders meeting that “radical economic transformation” was just a codeword for theft.
The ANC responded within hours with a blistering statement and a torrent of comments, straight from the socialist-Marxist economic textbook. They warned Rupert to remain silent because he is a “beneficiary of apartheid’s exclusionary policies” with “ill-begotten privilege”. The insinuation is that he opposes economic empowerment and change, and that he does not act in the interests of a democratic system.
Even though no comments have been forthcoming from other South African business leaders, it can be assumed that a substantial number of them agree with him on this point and say exactly the same in private conversations and in board meetings.
In a week that saw the media quarantined from delegates and delegates turn on factions within the ANC, Zuma’s frail proclamation at the closing of the Party’s 5th National Policy Conference, “there are no losers or winners at the conference, there is only the ANC”, rang hollow.
