We at CIHA often publish posts discussing land rights and this week we offer Dr. Willy Mafuta’s take on Donald Trump’s uninformed and problematic tweet on race and land issues in South Africa. We thank Dr. Mafuta (Drake University, Iowa USA), a visiting scholar at Seth Mokitimi Methodist Seminary in South Africa, for his contribution and welcome your comments!
By Dr. Willy L Mafuta, Ph.D, Th.D
President Trump is known for mastering the art of diversion whenever his administration or himself is under fire. In these moments, he feeds meat to his conservative base even if it means embracing rightwing conspiracy theories that divide the country along the lines of identity politics. Trump tweets and retweets falsities and far right ideologies without any concern for how they may impact the American people at large, let alone the world.
Who could forget the time he retweeted an anti-Muslim video from the fringe group Britain First, only to be rebuked by the British parliament and Prime Minister, Theresa May. Fans of American football and those of us who consider themselves American patriots remember well how Trump used the NFL to divide us on the falsity that it is unpatriotic not to stand during the national anthem, knowing well that making this kind of inflammatory claim only serves his base. What about Trump’s inability to unequivocally distinguish between Nazi sympathizers and those who protested against them, while making the erroneous assumption of moral equivalency that “there are good people of both sides”? Time and time again, Trump turns to racial contentions to score political points, feed his conservative base, and further divide America and the world.
For these reasons, it came as no surprise that on August 22, 2018, in a tweet, Trump falsely claimed that there were “land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers” in South Africa. He therefore instructed his Secretary of State to “closely study” the situation. Trump got the narrative of “mass killings of white farmers in South Africa” from the conservative American Fox News channel. Prior to this broadcast and many months earlier, South African right-wing minority groups, such as AfriForum and Suidlanders, lobbied conservative American media and politicians to advance the false narrative that white farmers were being killed in great number and having their land seized in South Africa. Trump capitalized on this to divert the country from his legal woes and the Russia investigation.
The facts are that, according to AgriSA, the number of killings of farmers in South Africa was at a twenty-year low in the fiscal year 2017-2018. Moreover, although land expropriations without compensation have been a major issue in the South African parliament, no legislative initiative at this point has been voted into law, suggesting that no land has been seized under any legislative provision.
One would think that President Trump would be better informed and refrain from propagating falsity on land expropriation in South Africa before tweeting about it. What Trump clearly does not get is that land ownership in South Africa, especially between the minority white and the majority black communities, is a continuing issue of enormous contention from the time of the missionaries, merchants, and Western elites who first set foot in South Africa. It does not require a tweet from an ill-informed American president to bring this to the forefront of South African political discourse.
The good news is that with tact and fortitude, the current South African government is dealing with the issue and there has been pressure from all sides to settle the predicament once and for all. Recently, while addressing the Parliament, President Cyril Ramaphosa assured the country that land redistribution should be orderly and that the country does not have to fear imposed sanctions from the international community, such as was the case in Zimbabwe. Ramaphosa called on the country to “relax.” According to him, the ANC is working on a constitutional amendment that will establish processes to be included in land reform legislation.
No one disputes the fact that redistribution of land in South Africa is a moral imperative. South Africans cannot assure economic stability and its people cannot “relax” while white South Africans who comprise only 8% of the population still own over 70% of the land, more than twenty years into its democracy. However, this redistribution needs to be done with tact and a deontological framework that heals the wounds of an unjust past, promotes fair and equitable legislation, identifies the victims, and empowers the powerless, while at the same time maintaining the social cohesion of the country.
With those ideals in place, South Africans don’t need a polarizing President of another country to stir racial division from 9 thousand miles away for the sake of his political survival in his own country. South Africans from all walks of life should stand in one accord and show the world, as they did in 1994 during the first democratic election, that they could transcend racial divisions when it comes to land redistribution and advance the common good for the greatest number of South Africans. It is only then, in my view, that they can “relax.” And for this, they certainly don’t need Trump’s help.