So ANC Youth League President, Julius Malema, is up to some idiotic tricks all over again and any moment soon you can expect a torrent of abuse from his followers or those who take him really seriously enough to listen to him.
Paddy Hartdegen writes a regular column for Property24.com
His latest rant – to the National Press Club in Pretoria – is that the ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ concept in land sales is nonsense and must be discontinued as a means for land reform.
Instead he wants to do what Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe has done: send in some thugs and just grab the land anyway.
Admittedly he didn’t say that the ANC would start occupying farms: instead he called on the ANC government to start expropriating land without paying any compensation – which amounts to the same thing.
Fortunately, I don’t think that anyone – barring a few blithering idiots – actually takes Malema seriously. I certainly don’t believe, for one minute, that the ANC would be foolhardy enough to follow his recommendations.
But his comments are likely to be picked up by those blithering idiots that follow him around that hang on his every word when he addresses packed rallies in different venues around the country.
And that is where the danger lies – because it’s just a short step between suggesting that land is expropriated for free and land being ‘grabbed’. And that’s what some of his followers might believe that he wants them to do.
I have no doubt that land reforms are needed in South Africa and I agree that the process, so far, has been painfully slow and appallingly unsuccessful.
There are two aspects to this: Firstly that the government itself is bogged down in its own inefficiencies and secondly, much of the land that has already been handed over has been turned into a catastrophe by the recipients of it.
There are hundreds of examples of failed farms in Mpumalanga, Limpopo, the Free State and North West provinces. There are also hundreds of farmers who have been told that they will be paid out for their farms as part of a land re-settlement and, after more than two years, are still awaiting payment from the government.
So while I accept that the land reform system as it currently stands is failing, I certainly cannot accept, for a second, that the willing buyer, willing seller concept is the cause.
Government inefficiency is the cause.
And Malema’s quite right in saying that the willing buyer, willing seller system isn’t working. But that’s because the farmers as willing sellers, aren’t being paid by the government as the willing buyer.
There is however, a much more interesting option that has been introduced by the Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform, Gugile Nkwinti in the Western Cape.
Earlier this year he agreed to a suggestion by a group of farmers in the Western Cape that rather than hand over land to the community, a co-operative or trust be formed so that each claimant can become a shareholder in an existing, profitable and productive farm.
The process means, in simple terms, that each claimant, as a shareholder, makes profits, benefit directly and, using the wealth generated (from profits and wages) are able to buy their own land and improve their own standard of living.
Nkwinti agreed to allow this venture to be undertaken on a pilot basis and, if it’s successful, then to include it as one of the land reform options that can be used by claimants.
This approach seems to make considerably more sense to me than Malema’s suggestion, which amounts to taking a productive farm, sub-dividing it until it is an unproductive one and then expect the people who own the land to turn it into a successful farming venture.
His notion is about as poor as his arithmetic. Here’s how his arithmetic worked at the meeting of the National Press Club. According to a report published in The Star today Malema said: “At the rate we are going now, it means we will only be able to expropriate 5% of the land every 20 years, meaning that it will take us 100 years to expropriate 20% of the land."
Correct arithmetic shows that it would take 80 years to do so because there would be 5% in the first 20 years, 10% in the second 20, or 40 years, 15% in third twenty or 60 years and 20% in the fourth 20 or 80%.
So how dear Julius reaches 20% in 100 years is beyond me – although if I remember correctly his school results showed that he wasn’t particularly talented as a student and, fortunately, I don’t think he’s particularly talented as a politician either.
Of course what is worrying is that some people evidently disagree with me and they follow him with a huge sense of passion and dedication. And it is these people who represent the real dangers.
I have some sense of faith that the intelligent members of the inner sanctums of the ANC disregard almost everything that Malema says. I also think that most moderate people recognise that he is trading on efforts to increase his popularity but is unlikely to emerge as a stalwart of anything at anytime in the future.
He’s just not made of the same stuff that great ANC Youth League members have been made from in the past – and history will judge him accordingly. However, I do fear that his sphere of influence on thousands of people is significant and that is where the danger lies.
I don’t think you can appeal to Malema to recognise this danger because, in my opinion anyway, he simply doesn’t have that sort of insight. So he will continue with his hate-speeches, continue calling people names, continue to call for others to be killed and suggest that the wiling buyer, willing selling be scrapped from our Constitution.
But sadly, some of his followers may take him seriously and do as he says. That’s deeply worrying for a country that is trying, so valiantly, to cope with extensive change in every level of its society.
And that’s the reason I wish Malema would shut-up and become the spent force that his own uttering’s prove he is.
*Hartdegen writes a regular column for Property24.com. The content of his columns constitutes his personal opinion and doesn’t pretend to be facts or advice. Contact him at via email.
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