Julius Malema, the enfant terrible of South African
politics, feels he’s got President Cyril Ramaphosa just where he wants him.
Since his expulsion from the ruling African National
Congress (ANC) five years ago, Malema, 37, and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF)
have targeted setting the national agenda before next year’s elections.
The party has been key in pushing the ANC into a forceful
stance in support of expropriation of land without compensation and free
university education. Now it’s demanding that the ANC fulfill a pledge it made
eight months ago to nationalise the central bank.
Ramaphosa last month announced plans to amend the Constitution
to allow the state to take land without paying for it to address skewed
ownership patterns that date back to apartheid and colonial rule. The prospect
of property rights being eroded has spooked investors, who the president is
trying to persuade to pour $100bn (about R1.5 trn) into the country to spur
growth.
“The EFF is in charge – the ANC is following us,” Malema,
whose 25 lawmakers dressed in red miner and maid outfits regularly spark
uproars in Parliament, said in an interview. “Through their land announcement,
they had to look for something that changed the narrative. That’s why they came
out as desperately like they did.”
Land redistribution
ANC Chairman Gwede Mantashe has suggested that land
ownership should be limited to 12 000 hectares per farm owner and white farmers
who hold more than that should cede the rest to the state for redistribution.
That approach, which is supported by a populist faction in
the ANC, doesn’t tie with Ramaphosa’s reassurances that a policy change won’t
damage production, as happened in neighbouring Zimbabwe, where land grabs that
started in 2000 triggered an economic collapse.
The ANC’s U-turn on property rights comes after its support
fell to a record low of 54.5% in a 2016 municipal vote when it lost control of
three of the biggest cities, including the economic hub of Johannesburg, to
opposition coalitions.
The EFF won 8.2% support and the main opposition Democratic
Alliance 27%.
Wagging the dog
Since then, on the policy front, it’s become a case of the
tail wagging the dog, according to Tinyiko Maluleke, a political analyst based
at the University of Pretoria.
“So small is the EFF, it’s the tail in this case, it’s able
to wag the big dog,” he said by phone.
“The EFF always takes the opportunity when there are issues
like this to call the ANC’s bluff, to say ‘if you have all these radical
decisions to take at your conferences, we are going to help you implement
them.’”
The ANC denies following the EFF’s lead on land, saying it
came up with the idea of amending the constitution to ensure that the
government could effectively manage redistribution while taking account of both
investors and those who hunger to farm.
Fractious debate
“If you occupy illegally the land without changing the Constitution, you are shooting yourself in the head,” Jessie Duarte, the ruling
party’s deputy secretary-general, said in an interview. “We are not responding
to Malema. We discussed this, and we thought we need to do things properly.”
The fractious nature of the debate suggests South Africa has
dispensed with the politics of negotiation that prevailed during the era of
Nelson Mandela and led to the end of white-minority rule, according to Ralph
Mathekga, an independent political analyst.
“This creates a very tense policy implementation
environment, where political parties are exchanging ultimatums on policy, and
shifting away from a consensus approach toward an either ‘my way or the
highway’ approach to politics,” he said.
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