To get by in modern society, people need accurate information. Without it they have as good as no chance of understanding their environment, identifying the challenges they face and coming up with workable responses to them.
Unfortunately, governments have realised this too. And all too often, giving information is something that they are keen to avoid. Governing is a hard business, and levelling with a frustrated public is often even harder, especially where past performance has left a rather large credibility gap. It’s probably easier then, for such authorities to be creative in how they communicate. Deal with the issues with ‘spin’, throw in the odd ‘alternative fact’, turn on a little ‘gaslighting’, indulge in a bit of ‘truthiness’.
This comes to mind in the public discourse around the recently unveiled Expropriation Bill.
As the government has sought to expand its discretion to deprive those under its authority of their assets – its drive for expropriation without compensation – it is well aware that this is likely to prompt significant resistance. South Africans of all stripes are believers in private property. So, it needs to frame its actions appropriately.
Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure Patricia De Lille – under whose purview the Bill falls – recently published an article in City Press that set out the government’s perspective. Or, perhaps more accurately, its perspectives. And then some.
The minister devoted much of her article to the need for land reform. Indeed, she opens her contribution with the evocative words, ‘Land spells life’.
Her point is … what?
Arguing the centrality of land to all prosperity (it is ‘the original source of all material wealth’), she then describes the sad history of land dispossession (truncated, but generally correct) before going on to deal with ‘the elephant in the room’. This is the so-called ‘willing buyer-willing seller’ principle, which is not mentioned in the Constitution. Her point is… what? That, well, something else – presumably increased state power? – is needed.
She then segues into an exposition of the Expropriation Bill. Nothing to worry about here, she assures us. It is in line with the Constitution as it exists now. Compensation will be ‘just and equitable’. ‘The Bill,’ she writes, ‘makes provision for when the expropriating authority has attempted to reach an agreement with the owner or holder of a right in property for the acquisition thereof on reasonable terms without success.’ She does not get into exactly what it prescribes.
This is all perfectly in line with worldwide practice (I must confess I didn’t know that in Ireland it is called ‘compulsory purchase’).
She continues: ‘The above history here and around the world is confirmation that all aspects of economic life are influenced by the land’. This is a point she has not really demonstrated, but okay…
Then the really good bits. This is all about land reform – or so it seems from what follows. ‘Land ownership is important to provide and ensure security to land tenure.’ She points to the recent initiative to make available some 700 000 hectares of land for redistribution purposes (she puts the number at 7 million).
Doom-mongers
Finally, she wags a finger at the doom-mongers. Foreign investors (she doesn’t mention domestic ones) understand what is happening and that this will be great for the country. It will help deal with poverty, inequality and unemployment. The Bill brings ‘certainty’, which is so important ‘as we rebuild our economy and invest in our communities’.
Plus, the president has made it clear that no land grabs will be tolerated. It will bring an end to the land deprivation that has afflicted millions.
‘Land redistribution will be done through modalities that enhance the property rights of all,’ she concludes, ‘within the parameters of the law and with full recourse to redress by all parties affected. Let us work together to find meaningful solutions to land reform, and for unlocking the economic potential denied to the majority of our people.’
Okay…
The casual reader might take away from her missive the idea that the Expropriation Bill is the keystone of a solution for land reform, and an essential building block for societal prosperity and individual empowerment. It is no such thing, and she makes nothing beyond a highly superficial argument that it might be.
Little disagreement
It is noteworthy that land ownership features so prominently in her account. South Africans are attached to the idea of private property ownership. There would be little disagreement with the minister when she writes: ‘The possession of land connotes security and a better life; a permanent possession that can be passed on for generations.’
President Cyril Ramaphosa has said much the same thing. In August 2018, he said in Parliament: ‘Our people who’ve had title deeds become so proud that finally in the end they own something that they can show and demonstrate in their hands.’
But as she (and the President) must know, this is not the policy of the government in which she serves. Quite the contrary; going back around a decade, policy has been to deny ownership – or title, choose your word – to beneficiaries of its redistribution efforts. Not only that, but the government fought a bitter court battle to renege on a commitment to an elderly black man who had built a successful farming enterprise on the state-owned farm he was working. This was, of course, David Rakgase.
The judgment in the case last year – which ordered the state to sell him the farm after years of delay – is worth quoting:
‘There is no explanation why, when the well-motivated occasion for conversion of a right presented itself, it was shied away from and the elderly Applicant was presented with a much lesser right, being a long-term lease, the end of which he will not see in his lifetime. The argument on behalf of the Minister that the Applicant has security of tenure and that there are no imminent eviction prospects on his horizon smacks of callousness and cynicism, particularly given our country’s historical deficiencies in dealing with land reform.’
Also worth noting from his case was the government’s exposition of its redistribution policy. This proceeded from the ‘principle that black farming households and communities may obtain 30-year leases, renewable for a further 20 years, before the state will consider transferring ownership to them’. (Note the word ‘consider’ – no guarantees…)
Neither policy nor practice
Minister de Lille is correct that land ownership is ‘important to provide and ensure security to land tenure’. True, but providing this is neither policy nor practice. The minister refers to the recent redistribution initiative. Whatever its intention, it has generated some damning attention for having advertised farms that are occupied and productive. One of these is reportedly the farm belonging to Mr Rakgase – which the government was ordered to sell to him. This is a reality of living at the mercy of the South African state.
The Expropriation Bill, meanwhile, will do nothing to advance land reform, and the implication in the minister’s article is that compensation requirements are to blame. Willing buyer-willing seller. The elephant in the room, she says.
Try a red herring. Compensation requirements have never been shown to have been a major hurdle to land reform (and even less, constitutional property protections). Obtaining land is only one part of a successful land reform system, and not the most important one. The 2017 Report of the High Level Panel on the Assessment of Key Legislation and the Acceleration of Fundamental Change argued that property rights protections were not the main problem, and that ‘other constraints, including increasing evidence of corruption by officials, the diversion of the land reform budget to elites, lack of political will, and lack of training and capacity have proved more serious stumbling blocks to land reform.’
(On Section 25 of the Constitution, the late Dr Hans Binswanger-Mkhize, a prominent agricultural economist, commented: ‘This constitutional and policy framework is one of the most favourable in the world for successfully and rapidly implementing land reform.’)
Not up to the task
Land reform will continue to perform poorly as long as the bureaucracy that manages it is not up to the task. Expanding the powers of the state to seize private property will do little of value. In fact, a dysfunctional state with enhanced powers pretty much makes abuses inevitable.
Which is why the Expropriation Bill represents a grave danger, and not the elephant-in-the-room slayer (red herring catcher?) that the minister suggests. It makes the process simpler – for the state. So, after having failed to reach agreement, the ‘expropriating authority’ issues a notice of intention to expropriate. Representations on this must be considered, but needn’t be responded to. This is followed by a notice of expropriation, which stipulates on which dates the property and the right to possess it pass to the state. This may be weeks or even days after the notice is issued (the Bill only requires that this ‘must not be earlier than the date of service’ of the notice).
Yes, the Bill makes it possible to challenge this in court, but this comes with steep costs, and might have to be done after the property has been taken.
This is not happening in a vacuum. The Bill puts these powers in the hands of a state that has not shone as an exemplar of efficiency or probity. Think municipalities. The same system that is expelling black farmers to free up land for redistribution would have these powers.
And that’s under current conditions. The Bill may be pitched at the current constitutional arrangements, but the ANC has made it clear that these must go. It’s anyone’s guess what this will mean for this legislation as it grinds its way forward. Remember that just before the pandemic struck, the ANC indicated it wanted to amend the proposed amendment – to place decisions firmly in the hands of the executive, to the exclusion of the courts.
In other words, rather than a realistic and sober assessment of government’s intentions, we have a loosely constructed narrative that promotes this pending legislation through some tendentious, half-represented facts, an appeal to history, and a shameless invocation of aspirations that are in direct contradiction to government policy. The appearance of information buried in a mass of misdirection.
The minister calls for ‘meaningful solutions’. It’s difficult to imagine how this is possible when information is treated in such a cavalier manner. ‘Spin’. ‘Alternative facts’. ‘Gaslighting’. ‘Truthiness’.
‘Lying and bullshitting’
And maybe that narrative is really the point, without much concern for what produces it. I can’t help being morbidly attracted to the words of Harry Frankfurt, professor emeritus of philosophy at Princeton University in the United States, and author of an appropriately named book, On Bullshit:
‘The distinction between lying and bullshitting is fairly clear. The liar asserts something which he himself believes to be false. He deliberately misrepresents what he takes to be the truth. The bullshitter, on the other hand, is not constrained by any consideration of what may or may not be true. In making his assertion, he is indifferent to whether what he is says is true or false. His goal is not to report facts. It is, rather, to shape the beliefs and attitudes of his listeners in a certain way.’
This may serve the interests of those in power. Whether South Africa’s public will be taken in remains to be seen.
[Picture: Mariana Anatoneag from Pixabay]
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