tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/1913-land-act-78210/articles1913 Land Act – The Conversation2024-03-21T14:40:20Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2261352024-03-21T14:40:20Z2024-03-21T14:40:20ZThis is how President Ramaphosa got to the 25% figure of progress in land reform in South Africa<p>Nearly three decades into democracy, land reform remains central to South Africa’s transformation policies and agricultural policy. </p>
<p>We have over the years pointed out that the <a href="https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/37171/chapter/323739043?login=true">progress on land reform has been incorrectly reported</a>. It’s been consistently understated.</p>
<p>We have argued that, if the statistics are treated carefully, the progress has been much better than politicians and activists often claim.</p>
<p>We were encouraged earlier this year when South African president Cyril Ramaphosa <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5d28EqZ-t8">acknowledged</a> in his <a href="https://www.parliament.gov.za/state-nation-address-president-cyril-ramaphosa-8-february-2024">State of the Nation address</a> that there had been better progress in land reform. The commonly cited argument is that land reform has been a failure and that only 8%-10% of farmland has been returned to black South Africans since apartheid ended in 1994.</p>
<p>Ramaphosa stated that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Through redistribution, around 25% of farmland in our country is now owned by black South Africans, bringing us closer to achieving our target of 30% by 2030.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This figure is based on an update of <a href="https://theconversation.com/land-reform-in-south-africa-5-myths-about-farming-debunked-195045">our work</a> at the Bureau of Economics Research and the Department of Agricultural Economics at Stellenbosch University.</p>
<p>Below we provide a detailed explanation of how we arrived at this figure. We also highlight policies the government can use to fast track the land reform programme to ensure that black farmers become central to a growing, and inclusive agricultural sector.</p>
<h2>Land reform data</h2>
<p>In reviewing the progress with land reform we should be mindful that the land reform programme consist of three elements (refer to <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/saconstitution-web-eng.pdf">Section 25 of the constitution</a>: redistribution, restitution and tenure reform.</p>
<p>Substantive progress has only been made in the land redistribution space and through the process of land restitution managed by the <a href="https://nationalgovernment.co.za/units/view/62/commission-on-restitution-of-land-rights">Land Claims Commission</a>.</p>
<p>The progress of land reform can only be tracked where we have surveyed land, and land with title deeds registered. Even then it is tricky as the title deeds do not record the “race” of the registered owner.</p>
<p>To understand the progress with land reform it is important to start from the correct base. How much farm land is in question here? </p>
<p>In 1994, total farm land with title deeds (thus outside what the apartheid government set aside for black people) covered <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-a-land-reform-agency-could-break-south-africas-land-redistribution-deadlock-165450">77.58 million hectares of the total surface area of South Africa of 122 million hectares</a>. It is assumed, merely by the fact that black ownership of farm land in South Africa was not possible before 1991, that all <a href="https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/37171/chapter/323739043">77.58 million hectares were owned by white farmers when land reform was initiated in 1994</a>.</p>
<p>Let us now unpack the progress with land reform based on the various data sources.</p>
<h2>Land restitution</h2>
<p>The land restitution process involves the restoration of land rights to black communities who lost their (registered and legally owned) farm land as a result of various forms of dispossession introduced by the apartheid-era governments after 1913.</p>
<p>Through the process of land claims, the Land Claims Commission has transferred 4 million hectares back to communities who previously were dispossessed (Source: various annual reports of the Land Claims Commission). </p>
<p>What’s missing from this calculation is the fact that communities have also been able to elect to receive financial compensation instead of obtaining the formal rights to the land.</p>
<p>Over the years a total of R22 billion (about US$1.1 billion) was paid out in financial compensation (Source: various annual reports of the Land Claims Commission). The commission never reported the number of hectares for which financial compensation was paid out for. It took some work by us to get the number of hectares of farmland involved in financial compensation from the commission, and it has now been confirmed that a total of 2.68 million hectares have been restored in this way.</p>
<p>That means that, in total, the restitution programme managed to restore the land rights of black communities equivalent to 6.68 million hectares.</p>
<h2>Land redistribution</h2>
<p>For the first 10 years of the land reform programme the government applied a market assisted programme of land redistribution based on the <a href="https://repository.up.ac.za/bitstream/handle/2263/2537/Kirsten_Approaches(1999).pdf?sequence=1">willing-buyer-willing-seller principle</a>. Government grants assisted the purchase of the land by groups or individual beneficiaries. </p>
<p>These initiatives resulted in the transfer of 7.55 million hectares of farm land to black South Africans (Source: Various annual reports by Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development to parliament). This is probably where the stubbornness of the 10% figure came from. People have focused only on the one dimension of the land reform programme.</p>
<p>One element of redistributive land reform that is usually ignored is the private acquisition of farmland by Black South Africans outside the formal government assisted processes. Here individuals have used their own resources or financial arrangements with commercial banks or the <a href="https://landbank.co.za/Pages/Home.aspx">Land Bank</a> through which they fund the purchase farm land. </p>
<p>The only way you can find the exact number of these deals is to comb through every land transaction and, based on the surnames of the seller and buyer, confirm that the land was transferred from White to Black.</p>
<p>The Bureau of Economic Research at Stellenbosch University estimated that since 1994 a total of 1.9 million hectares of farm land were acquired by black South Africans without the assistance of the state. This might even be an undercount because some surnames such as Van Wyk, Van Rooyen, and even Schoeman do not necessary belong to white South Africans, and then there are many transactions to proprietary limited companies that are majority black owned but with typical names that would resemble an Afrikaans name such as Sandrift Boerdery. These are not picked-up in these searches.</p>
<h2>Government acquisition</h2>
<p>Our final source of the data is the farmland acquired by the state. The first is via the Proactive Land Acquisition Strategy (<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-government-has-been-buying-land-and-leasing-it-to-black-farmers-why-its-gone-wrong-and-how-to-fix-it-211938#:%7E:text=By%20June%202023%2C%20the%20state,to%20the%20leasing%20of%20land.">PLAS</a>) that was introduced in 2006 after dissatisfaction with the earlier land reform efforts.</p>
<p>By August 2023, the state had acquired 2.54 million hectares of productive farmland through the programme and lease it out to beneficiaries. The <a href="https://www.gtac.gov.za/pepa/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/ALHA-Spending-Review-Report.pdf">State Land Holding Account Entity</a> is the custodian of this land.</p>
<p>Most of the roughly 2500 beneficiaries have a 30-year lease agreement with the state.</p>
<p>In addition, state owned enterprises and provincial governments have also acquired farmland which is now used for non-agricultural purposes. A total of 630 000 hectares have been acquired over the last 30 years.</p>
<h2>Getting to 25%</h2>
<p>If we now add all the numbers together:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Restitution: 6.68 million ha</p></li>
<li><p>Government Land redistribution: 7.55 million ha</p></li>
<li><p>Private transactions: 1.9 million ha</p></li>
<li><p>Proactive Land Acquisition Strategy programme: 2.54 million ha</p></li>
<li><p>Government acquisition for non-agricultural use: 0.63 million ha</p></li>
</ul>
<p>This gives a total of 19.3 million ha or 24.9% of the total of all freehold farmland in South Africa. The correct way to word the statement on the progress of with land reform since 1994 is therefore as follows:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Almost 25% of all farm land previously owned by white land owners have been restored, redistributed to black South Africans or moved away to state ownership.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This does not say anything about the financial and commercial viability of the land that was transferred and doesn’t speak to the fast tracking of the land reform programme to bring about a just, equitable and inclusive commercial agricultural sector. Here we need more specific policy interventions.</p>
<h2>Policy considerations</h2>
<p>There are vast tracts of land within the government books that could be transferred to black South Africans for the benefit of agricultural progress and land reform success. The government should consider the following steps:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Establishing a <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-a-land-reform-agency-could-break-south-africas-land-redistribution-deadlock-165450">Land Reform and Agricultural Development Agency</a>. It would primarily be responsible for land registration and transfer under the redistribution programme. It could operate under the <a href="https://landbank.co.za/About-Us/Key%20Policies/1.%20Land%20Bank%20Act.pdf">Land Bank Act</a>, effectively execute the government policy, and deal with beneficiary selection.</p></li>
<li><p>The government’s <a href="https://www.greenagri.org.za/blog/blended-finance-scheme/">Blended Finance programme</a>, in collaboration with the <a href="https://www.gcis.gov.za/sites/default/files/docs/resourcecentre/newsletters/issues.pdf">development finance institutions</a> and other financial institutions, should provide financial support to the selected beneficiaries.</p></li>
</ul><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/226135/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Wandile Sihlobo is the Chief Economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa (Agbiz) and a member of the Presidential Economic Advisory Council (PEAC).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Johann Kirsten does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Almost 25% of all farmland previously owned by white landowners has been restored, redistributed to black South Africans, or moved away to state ownership.Johann Kirsten, Director of the Bureau for Economic Research, Stellenbosch UniversityWandile Sihlobo, Senior Fellow, Department of Agricultural Economics, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1569652021-03-12T11:20:33Z2021-03-12T11:20:33ZSouth Africa’s Goodwill Zwelithini: the Zulu king without a kingdom<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/389238/original/file-20210312-13-dsezxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">King Goodwill Zwelithini in 2019.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Khaya Ngwenya/Gallo Images via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>King Goodwill Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu, who has <a href="https://www.enca.com/news/king-goodwill-zwelithini-dies">died at the age of 72</a>, was the longest reigning of all Zulu kings on record. This was the 50th year of his incumbency. </p>
<p>His reign spanned turbulent decades in South Africa. He assumed the throne at the height of apartheid, and went on to rule through the country’s violent and turbulent decades, a period which included contestation of the role of the Zulu monarchy. This spilled over into post-apartheid South Africa when the country’s new constitution recognised traditional leaders along with its democratically elected representatives. </p>
<p>Chapter 12 – a single page – of the 1996 constitution of the democratic Republic of South Africa recognises traditional leaders, <a href="https://www.gov.za/documents/constitution-republic-south-africa-1996-chapter-12-traditional-leaders">laws and customs in general terms</a>. Subsequently, through specific and continually contested legislation, attempts were made to concretise such authority, despite discriminatory consequences for millions of South African citizens who were made <a href="https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Gerhard-Mar%C3%A9/dp/1869144562">subjects of this parallel system</a>. </p>
<p>Kings and other traditional leaders have continued to <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-11-04-bantustan-bills-trample-on-the-rights-of-rural-people/">demand lucrative recognition</a> under this chapter.</p>
<p>Goodwill bore ideological power of value to himself and to others. Core was the repeated reminder that without a “predestined” king there would be no Zulu nation. </p>
<p>But kingship is an historical creation, wherever it is found. </p>
<p>So whom did his rule benefit? And at whose expense? Why, during apartheid and beyond, did politicians and economic interests rush to show support for this “king of goodwill”, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/King-Goodwill-Authorised-Zwelithini-Kabhekuzulu/dp/0799421448">as his authorised biographers punned</a>? Why was his actual, and not just symbolic, landlordship ensured, at the last minute, under apartheid by the <a href="https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Gerhard-Mar%C3%A9/dp/1869144562">Ingonyama Trust</a>, which placed all kwaZulu land under King Zwelithini as the only trustee? And why was this confirmed in the democratic period?</p>
<p>It is because such undemocratic centralised power is too big a temptation for those who seek to benefit. Access to – and manipulation of – such power explains the cynically justified acceptance over half a century of his political influence and ideological authority by politicians and capitalists. It enabled human and material exploitation through association, control over people as workers, justification for exclusion, votes from a specific group, and, more recently, access to what lies beneath the land on which the subjects live.</p>
<h2>The history</h2>
<p>Kingship and nation are inextricably linked. In this case it most commonly starts with <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/shaka-zulu">Shaka</a>, the warlord who defeated other clans, and became the original father of a Zulu nation, people of <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301199553_Zulu_Identities_Being_Zulu_Past_and_Present">legendary courage and prowess in war</a>. </p>
<p>The Zulus themselves had to be made subservient. In the 19th century this was initially through military defeat of Zulu armies and the kings who held them together. Defeats were inflicted by the <em>trekboere</em> – settlers who left the Cape to escape British rule, reaching KwaZulu Natal (Natal and
Zululand) in the late 1830s – and then British colonial authority. </p>
<p>In the newly formed state, the Union of South Africa, from 1910, policy was less clear: white rule, yes, but what of the black majority? </p>
<p>Under the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/natives-land-act-1913">1913 Land Act</a> the country was divided into African residential occupancy areas and white controlled areas which housed big industry, including mines, and farming. Initially 87% of the land was designated to white control and the remainder was set aside as reserves for African people.</p>
<p>The idea was to ensure spatial separation in reserves, but economic integration through migrant labour. Migrant labour provided individual workers without their families the right to periodic employment in white controlled areas and farmlands. </p>
<p>But it was apartheid, and its policy of “separate development” <a href="https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190921767.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780190921767-e-11">from 1951</a>, that step by step defined an essentially different approach to the inhabitants of these erstwhile reserves (“bantustans”). Determining who was going to be in charge became important. Ethnic nations would govern themselves, but under whom?</p>
<p>Enter a 23-year-old Goodwill Zwelithini. Through bizarre processes – described with naïve directness by his elder sister in the authorised biography – he was <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Buthelezi-Biography-Ben-Temkin/dp/0714682314">installed</a> on December 1 1971 into a Zulu Territorial Authority. This had been newly created in terms of the 1959 Promotion of Bantu (later Black) Self-Government Act. His relative, Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi, was <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Buthelezi-Biography-Ben-Temkin/dp/0714682314">already the chief executive officer</a>. </p>
<h2>Power battles</h2>
<p>Over the next few years, there were struggles for control. These involved, on the one hand, the apartheid state and some of the Zulu middle class, on the other, the KwaZulu Legislative Assembly under Buthelezi. </p>
<p>Buthelezi increasingly had backers, and “sides” were taken by national and international supporters. One example was the sugar industry and Progressive Party sponsoring a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3330064?seq=1">major event</a> in the 1980s to explore an integrated KwaZulu as an example of what South Africa could be.</p>
<p>Pretoria, and those who saw benefits in bantustan independence such as businesses wanting to operate outside the control of the apartheid government, desired an executive king as existed in Swaziland (now eSwatini). They found this in the person of the immature and malleable Goodwill. Buthelezi and most of the KwaZulu Legislative Assembly needed, for their purposes, kingship as a binding factor of the people over whom they governed, but certainly could not afford a contesting seat of authority.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/buthelezis-retirement-wont-end-ethnic-traditionalism-in-south-africa-102213">Buthelezi's retirement won't end ethnic 'traditionalism' in South Africa</a>
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<p>They were helped by the fact that Goodwill, under the bantustan constitution, had limited powers, and was simply assigned the role of a cultural figurehead. </p>
<p>“Independence” would have boosted apartheid policy nationally and internationally. KwaZulu, most prominent of the bantustans, would then have been a state equivalent to Swaziland and Lesotho. </p>
<p>But Buthelezi had national political ambitions, which demanded resistance against such fragmentation. To safeguard himself against the apartheid state removing him, he established a political base by <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Buthelezi-Biography-Ben-Temkin/dp/0714682314">launching Inkatha in 1975</a>. This provided him with a base from which to consolidate his popular power among Zulus. Goodwill’s kingship provided important leverage for the organisation.</p>
<p>After Inkatha’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Buthelezi-Biography-Ben-Temkin/dp/0714682314">break</a> with the African National Congress (ANC) from 1979, Goodwill served in an alignment against the largest trade union federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, as well as the United Democratic Front, a loose alliance mobilising against apartheid. The result was that the politics of Zulu kingship became deeply mired in a civil war over battles for popular support – for the time, as well as for the anticipated changes that were to come. These contestation grew <a href="https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/5763">during the transition from apartheid</a>. Both positions – the ANC camp and the Inkatha camp – needed the support of Zulus through the king.</p>
<h2>Power dynamics</h2>
<p>King Zwelithini could define kingship during his reign, but only while he had the support of whoever wielded wider power. From apartheid’s bantustan schemes, to support for the politics of Inkatha and Buthelezi, and then to the new ruling party, he claimed to be a bearer of traditional authority. </p>
<p>For example, association with the Zulu kingship was important for the authority of South Africa’s former president Jacob Zuma. His <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0259-94222018000200008&lng=en&nrm=iso">claim</a> to be “100% Zulu” brought him votes and legitimised his behaviour as he pillaged the republic. King Goodwill costs <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2019-03-07-zulu-king-goodwill-zwelithinis-budget-set-to-reach-r75m-in-202122-estimates-show/">millions of rands per year</a>, but provided value through votes, through the “brand” he provided the tourist industry, and access to the mineral wealth <a href="https://theecologist.org/2021/jan/28/remember-mama-ntshangase-and-organise">under the Ingonyama Trust land</a>. Battles continue over the trust.</p>
<p>But for Inkatha’s push-back against homelands (bantustans), the apartheid state might have succeeded in installing Goodwill into a King Sobhuza II equivalent (in other words an executive king) in kwaZulu. After all, the Swazi model of supreme monarchy was in the making by <a href="https://ozoutback.com.au/Swaziland/ndiphete_71/slides/1971090522.html">the end of 1971</a>, following its constitutional independence from <a href="https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1968/jul/05/swaziland-independence-bill">Britain in 1968</a>. </p>
<p>By the time of his death King Zwelithini was firmly established not as executive king, but certainly as powerful Ingonyama Trust landholder.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/156965/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gerhard Maré is author of Ethnic Continuities and a State of Exception: Goodwill Zwelithini, Mangosuthu Buthelezi and Jacob Zuma, published by UKZN Press in 2020.</span></em></p>The king retained his position because undemocratic centralised power is too big a temptation for those who seek to benefit.Gerhard Maré, Emeritus Professor of Political Sociology, University of KwaZulu-NatalLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1263582019-11-11T14:10:11Z2019-11-11T14:10:11ZParty’s woes signify historical dilemma of South Africa’s liberals<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300847/original/file-20191108-194675-amzxe3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Helen Zille's return to the top echelons of the Democratic Alliance has been slammed as an attempt to make the party white again.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Nic Bothma</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2019-10-20-helen-zille-wins-vote-top-da-job/">return of Helen Zille</a>, the former leader of South Africa’s official opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), to active politics as chair of the party’s federal executive led to many allegations that the party is dominated by a shadowy kitchen cabinet of <a href="https://citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/politics/2195945/maimane-was-an-ethically-upright-man-forced-to-leave-da-because-of-white-people-eff/">white people</a>.</p>
<p>Zille’s election to head the DA’s highest decision-making body in between national congresses was soon followed by the <a href="https://city-press.news24.com/News/double-whammy-for-da-as-maimane-and-trollip-resign-20191023">resignations</a> of Herman Mashaba, the DA mayor of Johannesburg; Mmusi Maimane, the party’s national leader; and Athol Trollip, its national chairman. Mashaba had charged that Zille’s return set the party on a <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/national/2019-10-21-joburg-mayor-herman-mashaba-resigns/">rightwing path</a>. </p>
<p>Yet, rather than focusing on personalities to understand the DA’s problems, it is better to return to the dilemmas of liberals in South Africa’s tragic history of the politicisation of race. This tendency persisted even after the country became a democracy in 1994. In essence, liberalism has always been reluctant to grant black people equality unless they achieve certain designated standards.</p>
<h2>Segregation frames the liberal dilemma</h2>
<p>Following the country’s formation in 1910 as a union of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/union-south-africa-1910">four territories </a> (historically, two British colonies and two Boer republics), it was accepted among white people, including those of more liberal persuasions, that people of different “races” should live separately to preserve white people’s <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">culture and languages</a>.</p>
<p>This was used to justify the grossly unequal division of land which resulted in the black majority being left with just 7% of the land. This was confirmed by the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/natives-land-act-1913">1913 Land Act</a>. </p>
<p>The assumption which went with this was that black people were destined to remain in rural areas, and that any movement (such as migration for work on white mines, factories or farms) would be temporary. </p>
<p>But, by the end of the 1920s, liberals were beginning to get uneasy. It was becoming increasingly clear that the fates of black people and white people were irrevocably entangled, economically and politically.</p>
<p>The fundamental dilemma for “liberal segregationists” was that they based their politics on the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/179767?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">Cape qualified franchise</a>. Its basic supposition was that black people (and only men) were worthy of the vote – only if they achieved a certain level of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/segregation-fallacy-and-other-papers-disfranchisement-cape-native">“civilisation”</a>. In practice, this meant ownership of property and or educational qualifications. </p>
<p>But this presented the problem that the few black people who acquired education showed that black people were equal to whites. If black equality was accepted, the white minority would be <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/segregation-fallacy-and-other-papers-disfranchisement-cape-native">“swamped”</a>. </p>
<p>Assuming power in 1948, the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/national-party-np">National Party</a> formalised apartheid. It sought to negate this danger by arguing that potential equality between people of different races was irrelevant. It argued that black people and white people were culturally different, cultural mixing would cause cultural conflict. </p>
<p>This led to a number of targeted policies. To avert the dangers of racial mixing, the flow of black people to urban areas should be averted, the entry of black people into the white polity should be blocked off completely, and black politics should be diverted to black <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/homelands">“homelands”</a>. These were ten mainly rural areas where black people were required to live, along ethnic group lines. </p>
<p>It was only the tiny <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/liberal-party-south-africa-lpsa">Liberal Party</a> which had by now fully accepted the political implications of racial equality, and argued for a universal franchise. The majority liberal response, elaborated by the DA’s forerunners (from the Progressive Party onwards), was to retain the notion of black people having to attain a certain level of “civilisation” to qualify for the vote.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/liberalism-in-south-africa-isnt-only-for-white-people-or-black-people-who-want-to-be-white-125236">Liberalism in South Africa isn't only for white people -- or black people who want to be white</a>
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<p>One reason was that any attempt to sell the idea of the universal franchise to the white electorate was doomed to failure. When universal franchise eventually arrived, in the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/south-africas-first-democratic-elections">election of 1994</a>, the then Democratic Party, albeit now advocating votes for all, secured a mere 2% of the vote. The National Party – fighting for “group rights” – swept up 20%.</p>
<p>Subsequently, in 1999, under Tony Leon, the DA, then known as the Democratic Party, adopted the ambiguously phrased <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/sundayindependent/das-history-of-identity-crises-1611459">“fight back”</a> campaign slogan. It argued that the governing ANC was embarking on implementing apartheid in reverse through affirmative action policies. It captured the major portion of the National Party’s white vote. Thus the party of apartheid was condemned to a deserved, albeit lingering death.</p>
<h2>Maimane’s burden</h2>
<p>Under Zille, the DA embarked on an electoral expansion programme, recognising that if it was going to grow and become a serious competitor for power, it would have to capture a sizeable portion of the overwhelming majority black vote. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300850/original/file-20191108-194661-x12khb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300850/original/file-20191108-194661-x12khb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300850/original/file-20191108-194661-x12khb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300850/original/file-20191108-194661-x12khb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300850/original/file-20191108-194661-x12khb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300850/original/file-20191108-194661-x12khb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300850/original/file-20191108-194661-x12khb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mmusi Maimane grew the DA’s support among the majority black voters.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Kim Ludbrook</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This realisation eventually led to the selection of Maimane as the DA’s national leader <a href="https://theconversation.com/first-black-leader-breathes-life-into-south-african-opposition-41275">in 2015</a>. He saw his task as rendering the DA’s liberalism more appealing to black voters by taking it in what he saw as a more inclusive direction. This would be through recognising <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/we-believe-race-is-a-proxy-for-disadvantage--mmusi">race as an indicator of disadvantage</a>. </p>
<p>It didn’t go down well with the DA’s established base, which saw it as an assault upon the party’s professedly nonracial values. It was therefore Maimane who, as leader, was to be blamed for the <a href="https://www.biznews.com/leadership/2019/05/09/elections2019-national-vote-da-ff">DA’s loss of votes</a>, for the first time since 1994, in the 2019 election.</p>
<p>The recent internal party inquest, headed by Leon, decided that it was imperative for Maimane to go, arguing that under his watch, in a bid to attract black voters, the DA <a href="https://www.news24.com/Analysis/analysis-leadership-and-race-da-review-panel-a-devastating-blow-for-mmusi-maimane-20191022">had strayed from its liberal principles</a>. </p>
<p>The DA should, therefore, return to its liberal foundations and confirm its attachment to policies which would effect redress of historical racial inequalities without using race as a proxy for disadvantage. Yet South Africa’s black voters are unlikely to dissociate disadvantage from the colour of their skin.</p>
<h2>Difficult choices</h2>
<p>It is unsurprising that this turn of events should lead to Maimane’s resignation. If the party wants to return to growth, then its analysis is almost certainly wrong. Stronger emphasis on a “non-racial liberalism” is unlikely to appeal to rightwing white voters. It is equally unlikely to appeal to black voters, who view forms of racial redress as the only sure route to greater racial equality. </p>
<p>Black aversion to the DA is likely to increase even more if the party replaces its former black leader with someone, however talented and principled, who is white. The DA is having to struggle with South Africa’s toxic history of black oppression. Yet it remains the case that that history has left it with the dilemma that liberals in South Africa have never been able to solve: how to deal with “the native question” if the natives in question doubt the capacity of liberalism to bring about substantive racial equality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126358/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roger Southall has received funding from the National Research Foundation</span></em></p>The Democratic Alliance’s problems can be traced back to the politicisation of race, which has persisted even after the dawn of democracy in 1994.Roger Southall, Professor of Sociology, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.