As I’ve argued before, United States Ambassador Lana Marks must be a difficult person for many South Africans to understand.
Her appointment by President Donald Trump (a man who inspires robust reactions) was greeted with howls of outrage as an insult to the country. Trump, as astute observers will recall, had provoked all manner of denunciations in 2018 with a Tweet about South Africa’s ‘land and farm seizures and expropriations’. He also described countries on the continent in expletive-laden terms.
Ambassador Marks would have been a natural lightning rod for this, and, when her appointment was announced, she was. She stood to be harangued for things she and President Trump did, and things they failed to do: Business Day ran a memorable editorial questioning whether she would be able to shift his views on Africa (although whether this is her role, as a representative of the United States and not of South Africa or the continent, is debatable).
Remarkably positive
Her demeanour since arriving has been remarkably positive – more so at any rate than a good deal of South Africa’s public mood. And so, in an interview with the Mail and Guardian, she comes across less as a diplomat than as an advocate for the country to which she has been posted.
Expropriation without Compensation (EWC) posed no threat at all. None, according to President Ramaphosa, and she has conveyed this message to her country. ‘I have personally advised all partners regarding this in the United States. There will be no confiscation whatsoever of private land … So now, having said that there will be no confiscation of any private land whatsoever, now is the time for major US investment in South Africa.’
Words that match the standards demanded of her by Business Day!
Ambassador Marks had warm words, too, for the President. ‘I am 100% satisfied in the way in which President [Cyril] Ramaphosa is handling everything — in a totally open and transparent manner. I am totally satisfied.’
There may be no reason to doubt that President Ramaphosa made these assurances – it is after all unlikely that he would state bluntly to the representative of a major investor that its assets may soon be up for grabs, though we’d still like you to invest – but there are innumerable reasons to doubt that they represent a real guarantee of property rights.
Counterintuitive
For if there is no intention ‘whatsoever’ to seize privately owned property, it seems rather counterintuitive that the ruling party and the government it leads have been prepared to accept the economic damage of ‘policy uncertainty’ to push EWC forward. Government’s own investment envoys have stressed that EWC has been a hindrance to their work. Yet onward it has gone.
Indeed, it has been enough of a priority that it has occasioned the first attempt to tamper with the Bill of Rights. At stake is Section 25, which was particularly carefully negotiated to strike a balance between securing people’s property and the acknowledged need for redress measures. Given that no one less than President Ramaphosa has said that, in certain instances, expropriation for no compensation is possible under the current ‘just and equitable’ formulation.
The proposed changes – not least the ANC’s intention to remove the courts from the process, and vest it in the ‘executive’ – suggest that the relationship between the state and citizens which Section 25 had tried to establish is on the way out. So, too, in any meaningful sense, is ‘just and equitable’.
As journalist and (one-time?)- Ramaphosa fan Peter Bruce said: ‘How does Ramaphosa make circumventing the courts, and the law, investment-neutral?’
Extraordinarily reckless
But perhaps this is all symbolic, a political flourish? So said more than a few commentators over the past two years. Even if that was a plausible explanation for the amount of political capital that has been put into this policy, it would still be extraordinarily reckless to rely on a presumed lack of intention by the incumbent president to act on it. He will not be in office forever.
Besides, the assurances that he has given the ambassador might be measured against what many in power have said – again, not least the President – on the subject. He and his associates have repeatedly pledged that EWC is policy, will become law and will be acted upon. ‘We are going to take land and when we take land we are going to take it without compensation,’ he said in March 2018.
Or, as he said in the Northern Cape at the ANC’s 108th anniversary celebrations in Kimberley earlier this year: ‘We said our land reform process, which includes a decision taken at the 54th conference of expropriating land, is what is going to happen – and it will also happen here in the Northern Cape.’
Major theme
President Ramaphosa has not been alone in this. EWC also emerges as a major theme in the report of the Presidential Advisory Panel on Land Reform and Agriculture. And the ANC in the Northern Cape has produced a list of properties, most of them productive, that it intends to seize when the law allows. Their announcement stands uncontradicted.
Besides all of this, the ambassador’s own government has expressed concerns about South Africa’s intention with regard to intellectual property – as much a matter of property rights as real estate.
No doubt, some commentators will see Ambassador Marks’s comments as a calming measure of sorts that the country needs, and an antidote to ‘fearmongering’ around EWC.
Yet concerns about the impending policy are based on the established direction of policy and the declared intentions of the country’s leadership. Promises that it will essentially leave private property intact should be viewed with scepticism.
Register your objection to the amendment of Section 25 of the Constitution by visiting our website and endorsing our submission: https://irr.org.za/campaigns/defend-your-property-rights.
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