South Africa needs its farmers

From South Africa come reports of increasing violence against white farmers as the government threatens to expropriate their land without compensation. This is a dangerous moment for South Africa and a crucial test for the new ANC administration of President Cyril Ramaphosa, whose reputation as a prudent and resourceful figure has aroused hope for progress after years of corruption and inept rule.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has suggested Australia might issue humanitarian visas to white farmers fleeing persecution in South Africa, prompting a denial from Pretoria of any such threat. Yesterday, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop refused to back Mr Dutton, stating humanitarian visas were “offered on merit”. Mr Ramaphosa has tried to dispel fears about expropriation, saying: “We will not allow land grabs, we will not allow land invasion — because it is illegal.”

Yet he warns of a social “implosion” if the redistribution is not sped up. This is reckless at a time when attacks by armed black gangs on white-owned farms involving murder, torture and rape are on the rise. Official figures do not distinguish by race and the victims undoubtedly include black farm workers. But leftist commentary refuses to acknowledge the possibility that a once-dominant white minority can end up persecuted. Many blacks are murdered amid unacceptably high levels of violence in South Africa. But this does not alter the fact that inflammatory rhetoric about expropriation heightens the risk of worsening violence and dispossession targeted at white-owned farms.

South Africa’s parliament has taken the first step towards expropriation in response to pressure from the radical Economic Freedom Fighters party, whose leader, Julius Malema, used to head the ANC Youth League. In a sign of his rabble-rousing, he remarked “We are cutting the throat of whiteness”, calling for the removal of the mayor of Port Elizabeth because he is white. And Mr Ramaphosa has encouraged the populist idea that land reform is a panacea for South Africa’s ills, describing the dispossession of black tenure as its “original sin”.

The ANC promised that prosperity for the black majority would be unlocked after apartheid. Instead, it has presided over kleptocracy. As the party that could once do no wrong prepares to go to the polls next year, it is tempted to focus popular resentment on the white minority. What South Africa desperately needs, however, is good governance, economic reform, investment and jobs. Confiscation of property sends the wrong signal. Does South Africa really want to replicate the botched and violent farm seizures of Zimbabwe, which crippled an efficient agricultural sector? Now that Robert Mugabe is gone, Zimbabwe has had to offer 99-year leases to white farmers in the hope they will revive production.

Land reform will remain a priority in South Africa; more than 70 per cent of arable land is owned by whites, who make up less than 9 per cent of the population. But it is unrealistic to expect rapid change. Post-apartheid, most blacks offered restitution for past dispossession of land opted for cash. Transactions faithful to the “willing buyer, willing seller” policy have been slow to effect change. The expertise of established white farmers is not easily replaced, as Zimbabwe’s experience shows. It’s not too late for South Africa to pull back from the brink.