Economic apartheid still dividing a nation
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In 1994, the African National Congress swept to power on a tide of national and international euphoria and pledged to redistribute 30 per cent of all land seized during the apartheid era. Almost a decade later, only two per cent of land has been returned to its black owners.
All is not well in South Africa's fledgling democracy. Promises of land redistribution and social equality are pale imitations of the hopes and dreams of 1994. Today, social movements and grassroots activists in South Africa claim the ANC is more interested in appeasing Western investors with so-called market reforms and liberalisation.
Economic exclusion Land rights activist, Andile Mngxitama, believes the answer lies in the claim that racial exclusion has given way to economic exclusion. The LPM evolved from the land struggles of the apartheid era and represents a growing number of rural communities that remain landless and disenfranchised by the clamour to implement neo-liberal economic policies to attract foreign direct investment (FDI). Having lived through the horrors of apartheid, Andile is no stranger to social upheaval but now questions what the sacrifice was for given the lack of social transformation of the last ten years. "Discussing the last decade is difficult," he says. "For many it has been a lost decade, a decade in which we could have done so much more but chose not to. History does not provide many opportunities. We had Mandela and most of the world on our side. We had the chance to say to the world that we have to completely and publicly transform our society because you know what we've been going through." According to Andile, the lack of action, whether intentional or not, left the door open for neo-liberal influences to overtake South African society; "I believe that the South African government has put us in a much more difficult position, by not introducing social change earlier, especially concerning land reform." Another hundred years to wait? It would be easy to assume that in the new, democratic South Africa, addressing the inequalities created by decades of apartheid rule would be at the top of the ANC agenda, but Andile tells a different story. "I don't believe, anywhere in the world that it is acceptable, morally or politically, that 55,000 white settler farmers own 80% of the land. In 1994, the government pledged to redistribute 50 per cent of the land. As it stands, only two per cent has been redistributed, so it will take at least 100 years to just reclaim 50 per cent of our own land."
As a network of grassroots organisations, the LPM is at the centre of issues facing the poorest sections of South African society. "The ANC supports the landowner, not the worker," says Andile. "Take the criminal justice system which the ANC has allowed to become controlled by the big landowners. They are able to evict, abuse and even murder without fear of punishment because they control the system. "They even control some of the aggressive arms of the state, like the army. In a situation like this it doesn't matter how many policies you make or how loud you shout - the ability of the landowner to undermine, manipulate and work around the system is just too great." Who's better off now apartheid's gone? He continues, smiling at the ridiculousness of the situation, "I'm sure the white elites are wondering why they ever bothered fighting against us because they live even better now than they did before apartheid ended. They no longer have to bring tanks into the township to keep us quiet because we now have our own government. Today we vote and they still have the same privileges." Despite the lack of change of the last ten years, Andile remains optimistic for the future of South Africa. "The LPM is young, and it is growing. We have had the good fortune to learn from the mistakes of groups that have gone before us. Now, we have to join together, and look at all areas of life in our country that have been commodified. Our water, our electricity, even our healthcare are being taken away from us, but this will only lead to a maturity of understanding within our movement." John Coventry is a researcher at War on Want |
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