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| Photo Marikana Massacre 2012. |
Once more Trump has acted like the lunatic he is and ambushed the president of South Africa Cyril Ramaphosa, stating that the country was undergoing a real genocide of whites. Many have commented on the effrontery of Trump to talk of a fictitious genocide of whites in South Africa, whilst his main ally Israel is carrying out one in real time every day on the news shows. Trump used images from the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country more than 4,500 kilometres away, to show that they were killing whites in South Africa. Trump also lied about the land question in the country, accusing the government of stealing the whites’ lands when the reality is that the whites continue to be the owners of the greatest part of the land in the country.
It is worth saying that Ramaphosa defended himself partially, and only partially as behind the new legislation on the matter there is the hidden failure of the peace process when it comes to resolving the land question. When the Apartheid regime was ended, the country was one of the most unequal on the planet and the whites were the owners of the greatest part of the agricultural lands. Around 60,000 whites were the owners of 86% of all the agricultural lands, some 82 million hectares.[1] The agrarian reform proposed by the ANC in its White Paper of 1997 was a market driven reform, i.e. the voluntary sale and purchase with some help from the government without the government being a buyer.[2] Blacks could also ask for the restitution of lands stolen by racist laws since 1913. A whole land bureaucracy was set up, not unlike what Colombia has, Land Claims Courts where all those who registered could make their case with three possible outcomes, the restitution of the land, the handover of alternative land or a financial compensation. In 1992, the ANC had put forward a document in which they argued for the expropriation of lands and other non-land market mechanisms. But by 1997 they had accepted neoliberal discourse and adopted the land market as the cornerstone of their policy.[3]
Initially the ANC government had proposed handing over 30% of the agricultural lands held by whites to blacks within five years. But they kept postponing it. By March 2011, they had handed over 6.27 million hectares, and of that 45% was not agrarian reform, properly speaking, but rather land restitution.[4] The government didn’t just fail regarding land, but on everything. Inequality rose since the fall of Apartheid. The Gini[5] rose following the end of Apartheid in 1994 and now is situated in 0,67 making it the most unequal country on the planet in terms of income, where just 3,500 people own 15% of all the wealth of the country.[6] There is also a high concentration of land:
Currently 72% of farms and agricultural holdings are owned by white individuals, who make up 7.3% of the population, while black Africans, constituting 81.4% of the population, own only 4% of the land.[7]The whites continue to be the owners of the land and the black middle class through Black Economic Empowerment programmes reached agreements with those whites and the companies in the agricultural sector to integrate themselves into the neoliberal economy, the so-called white capitalism and South Africa became a leading country in the agribusiness sector of the continent. In 2015, of the 10 largest agribusiness companies on the continent, eight were South African.[8]
Ramaphosa himself is an excellent example of the new South African businessmen, the former fighters against capitalism who now profit from the blood and sweat of those who were once the grassroots militants of the organisations they led. Between 1994 and 1998 he acquired a portfolio of more than 40 million Rand[9] (some 8 million dollars at the time) and ended up as an extremely wealthy man (some 700 million dollars) thanks to his controversial investments and acquisitions in the mining sector, as well as being the owner of the McDonalds franchise in the country. The former leader of the National Union of Mineworkers became a magnate in the sector. In 2012 the Police murdered 34 miners in the midst of a strike at Lonmin, one of the companies where he was a director, being the owner of 9.1% of the company. [10] And just like in the times of Apartheid the Farlam Commission, charged with investigating the Marikana Massacre, found nobody guilty. Nobody! Blood is washed from the hands of a black capitalist just as easy from those of a white capitalist.
When he took over the presidency of the country, there hadn’t been any great advances made regarding agrarian reform in the country. The failure to meet the promises of the transition and the political programme of the ANC cost them electoral support. So much so that they now govern the black masses with the support of a white party, the Democratic Alliance, a right-wing party that strongly opposes any expropriation of land without compensation and in practice is opposed to any great change in land policy.
It is in this context that Ramaphosa launched his new campaign and new land law. The ANC say they want to implement the Freedom Charter, but it is not so. Mandela himself had discounted that in his speech to Davos.[11] He didn’t explicitly refer to the document but he never again spoke of the nationalisation of resources such as mines and land. Ramaphosa’s law proposes various measures that already exist in almost all capitalist countries, the expropriation of property with compensation for public purposes or where there is a public interest i.e. the compulsory purchase or as they say in the USA, the heart of capitalism, eminent domain. These norms exist in almost the entire world. As is the case in many capitalist countries, it also includes elements to reduce the amount of compensation or not pay it.
It is another thing to believe that Ramaphosa aims to do what the ANC never wanted to since the first government. He does not want to fight with so-called white capitalism as he knows that so-called black capitalism is the same thing and one depends on the other. What Ramaphosa is about is a public relations manoeuvre to strengthen a weakened and discredited ANC. There will almost certainly be more such initiatives. But the ghosts of Marikana tell us that this traitor has no intention of doing anything for the black masses. Trump talks of a genocide that only exists in the sick mind of Elon Musk and of a land theft that Ramaphosa does not want. If he steals the whites’ lands, who will he sip cognac with then? White power is still in control of South Africa. It dominates the economy in alliance with the not so new black bourgeoisie, the black apparatchiks that control the scaffolding of the state, and the growing presence of foreign capital.
We all recognise Trump as the enemy and idiot that he is. The problem is that sometimes we acknowledge those he attacks as friends when in reality they are the same enemies, except some are more intelligent, cultured and refined. Ramaphosa when he was a trade union leader said:
There is no such thing as the liberal bourgeois. They are all the same. They use fascist methods to destroy workers’ lives.[12]
Workers’ blood is washed from the hands of all the capitalists, blacks, whites, Russians, Arabs or Yanks: Ramaphosa in Marikana or Trump everywhere. The whites in South Africa, the Elon Musks have no reason to fear their friend Ramaphosa, despite the stupidities from Trump.
References
[1] Lahiff, E. & Li, G. (2012) Land Redistribution in South Africa: A Critical Review. WB.p.3
[2] Ibíd, p.5
[3] Ibí., p.8
[4] Ibíd, p.9
[5] The Gini is a measure of inequality where 0 = absolute equality and 1 = absolute inequality.
[6] Valodia, I (2023) South Africa can’t crack the inequality curse. Why and what can be done.
[7] Actsa (19/02/2025) The Facts: Land Reform in South Africa.
[8] See ACB (2015) Africa an El Dorado for South Africa’s Agribusiness Giants.
[9] Bond, Patrick (2000) Elite Transition: From Apartheid to Neoliberalism in South Africa, London & South Africa, Pluto Press and UNP, End Note No. 7, Chapter 2 page 266.
[10] The documentary Miners Shot Down.
[11] See.
[12] Cited in Miners Shot Down.
⏩ Gearóid Ó Loingsigh is a political and human rights activist with extensive experience in Latin America.
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