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Senekal has become the center of protests and global attention. Police statistics, Bloomberg says, show there were 21,325 murders in the 12 months through March, an average of 58 per day, with 49 murders on farms during the period. But President Cyril Ramaphosa has emphasized that there is no conspiracy to kill white farmers. What complicates the problem is the drive to expropriate land without compensation. “Farmer lobbyists have long complained that their members are disproportionately subjected to violent crimes and allege that there may be a political agenda behind the attacks. US President Donald Trump intervened in 2018, saying that he asked US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to study the seizures and expropriations of land and farms in South Africa, and the ‘large-scale killing farmers’ ”. In this article, first published in the IRR’s Daily Friend, one of South Africa’s leading political analysts, Michael Morris, assesses what the Senekal protests really tell us about South Africa. – Jackie Cameron
Going nowhere
By Michael Morris *
There is always the risk of placing too much importance on small details, of loading them with larger meanings that they may not be able to carry..
But the moment I saw the photograph of the ‘GAAN AUSTRALIA’ protester taken in Senekal on Friday by his colleague Gabriel Crouse, I felt like I was looking at something that expressed much more than a cursory glance suggested.
The man in the ‘SANCO say’s VOTE ANC’ T-shirt is a lonely, static figure among a lazy group that seems bored, disconnected, and disinterested.
The apostrophe lost in the He says on his shirt he competes for attention with his rudimentary cardboard sign, and evidence that its creator seems to have lost the courage or energy to clarify the message.
The lowercase ‘g’ in the first word matches the suggestion of hesitation in the unfinished interpretation of the rest, as the author ran out of ink or time or resolved to darken and thicken everything except S, T, and L.
Although the man throws his curiously emotionless message up for all to see, his shortcomings somehow rob him of not only threat, but conviction as well. The impression is only reinforced by the barbed wire in the lower right corner of the image, a seemingly unnecessary barrier against what is so obviously the very image of lassitude.
It is unknown what the protester had in mind, we assume, urging farmers (or are they just white farmers?) To pick up sticks and leave the country, but there is no escaping how this ANC sympathizer’s message gets through. to the heart of the biggest and debilitating contradiction in our current politics, as well as to the progressive weakness of its authors: the ANC itself.
Remarkable boast
Consider that less than 24 hours before the Senekal scene unfolded, President Cyril Ramaphosa made a remarkable show off in Parliament.
“Our agricultural sector has continued to grow,” he said, “with a bumper corn harvest and the expansion of many high-value crops.”
At first glance, this is encouraging: an unadorned recognition by the national leader of the success of a relatively small segment of South Africans who feed the country and help grow the economy, despite the odds (not least their vulnerability). to the crime and violence that cost Brendin Horner his life).
But how significant can this be when you consider that, just four days earlier, the Ramaphosa administration announced the publication of the new Expropriation Act with all the enthusiasm the president brought to his boasting of the country’s agricultural prowess?
The expropriation bill presents itself as the greatest threat not only to the success of South African agriculture and its ability to produce abundant crops, but to the entire economy.
The risk cannot be put more clearly than the recent warning from Janine Myburgh of the Cape Chamber of Commerce and Industry, who wrote: ‘Investors in a country do not put their money in a place where the basic protection of their money and property it is subject to the dogma of local political parties. Leaving disputes to the courts for them to be resolved does not hide the fact that the decision not to pay compensation, and indeed the decision to expropriate, will be up to the politicians ”.
Weak and deeply in debt
The prospect of a weak and deeply indebted state expanding its own powers to take assets that belong to others is the politics equivalent to that Senekal protester’s ‘Gaan Australia’ sentiment.
Two truths are clear. The first is that South Africa’s hopes of economic recovery hinge on farmers going nowhere, and the same is true of any other loyal, enterprising and law-abiding category of population.
The second is that, as long as it is resolved to threaten the property or tell the farmers that they are not welcome, the ANC is confident that its hopes of recovery will not go anywhere either and, as it inevitably follows, the same goes for its own destiny as an effective presence in South African politics.
Look at the image again and you will realize how expressive it really is.
- IRR media chief Michael Morris was a journalist for a newspaper from 1979 to 2017, covering, among other things, the international campaign against apartheid from London and, as a political correspondent in Cape Town, South Africa’s transition to the democracy. He has written three books, the latest is Apartheid, An Illustrated History, and he has a master’s degree in creative writing from UCT. Write a fortnightly column on Business Day. If you like what you just read, subscribe to the Daily Friend
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