When Mark Solms, a wine producer in South Africa’s Franschhoek valley, voices fears about the state expropriating farmland, his complex views are informed by his own family’s history.
Mr Solms’ land near Cape Town ended up in the hands of his ancestors after being seized from its previous inhabitants by Dutch colonists in 1690. What is now part of the larger Solms-Delta estate, Mr Solms said, was “a symbol of taking of land and its consequences for the present day”.
Three centuries on, Mr Solms’ fellow and predominantly white landowners are now bracing for modern expropriation — as the ruling African National Congress debates a potential constitutional amendment to allow land to be taken by the government with no compensation for owners.
Some in business see the idea as an assault on property rights. Others view it as a last resort to rectify the economic exclusion of the black majority: unfinished business after the demise of colonialism and apartheid.
In one of the world’s most unequal societies, about three-quarters of farmland — ranging from vineyards to complex agribusiness — is owned by whites, who represent a 10th of the population. Many farmers say they purchased their land legally. But history hangs heavy over the debate.
Emotions run high. Cyril Ramaphosa, the business-minded president who inherited a commitment last year to end a “willing buyer, willing seller” policy in place since the ANC came to power 24 years ago, is seeking to calm them. “This is no land grab,” the president says.
While the ANC is talking loosely about changing the constitution’s property rights clause, it is yet to table an amendment. Mr Ramaphosa is cautious. He proposes strict limits, such as focusing any expropriation on unused tracts or derelict buildings, not on productive farmland.
Already emotive, the debate was recently stirred by a tweet from Donald Trump. The US president, who rarely shows interest in African issues, falsely claimed that South Africa is already witnessing “large-scale killings” of farmers and land seizures. Both are white-nationalist tropes. Afriforum, a fringe Afrikaner group, has cultivated US far-right allies and sought Mr Trump’s favour.
Mr Ramaphosa parried Mr Trump’s tirade. However, the ANC is also accused of playing politics over land at home. It faces a tough fight to keep a majority in elections next year. The party fears being outflanked by the breakaway Economic Freedom Fighters, radical leftists who advocate the state’s expropriation and ownership of all land.
“The change in tone is solely aimed at muting the EFF’s voice in this matter,” Khaya Sithole, a political analyst, said. “The ANC’s hope now is that they will be seen as leaders in this debate, rather than as reactionaries.”
Mr Solms, who works as a psychoanalyst as well as tending vines, said he was “immensely pessimistic” about where the ANC’s debate would lead. He is not opposed to changes of ownership but has been scarred by his own experience of working with the ANC government on a previous attempt at reform that failed.
In post-apartheid South Africa, the vines of the Solms-Delta became a testing ground for a reparation project to finance greater ownership for the estate’s workers — the descendants of inhabitants who are landless.
But the project is now infamous. State financial support to shore up the project in a tough, low-margin wine market went badly wrong owing to the bureaucratic failure, say Mr Solms and independent observers. The Solms-Delta estate is facing liquidation.
“It is an emotional fact that I wanted to leave something for my children” alongside making amends, Mr Solms said. Now he fears that the chance for land reform that leaves everyone better off — both owners and workers — is slipping away.
“The debate needs to happen,” said Sinelizwi Fakade, an established black farmer who provides training to smallholders in the Eastern Cape, a poverty-scarred region that is a long way from Franschhoek’s wine tourists and picnics. “You cannot have six or seven guys with mega farms surrounded by black communities whose only contribution is their labour,” he said. “If we as agriculture don’t radically change . . . we’re in trouble. The other side of the fence is getting very impatient.”
Activists say the expropriation debate is ignoring other problems such as traditional chiefs abusing land. Constitutional change “is fundamentally a red herring,” said Aninka Claassens, a land-reform researcher.
South Africa is not alone in its land dilemma. Zimbabwe’s disastrous land seizures in the 2000s leading to its agricultural collapse are raised as a spectre for South Africa.
Many farming groups accepted in a recent joint statement that “the system needs a complete redesign” and is failing to support black farmers — who face problems accessing financing in particular. But they also argue that expropriation threatens the sector’s finances. Around R150bn ($10bn) of bank loans is secured upon title to farms or farming capital.
“We need more black farmers on more black farms in an orderly and sustainable way,” said Dan Kriek, head of Agri SA, one body representing commercial farmers. “We cannot expropriate ourselves out of trouble, we need to develop ourselves out of trouble.”
