South Africa's new president wants to redistribute land from white farmers

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Ramaphosa is pretty exposed due the role he played in the Marikana killings so I would not be surprised if he's somewhat serious about this - he needs a way to appeal to restive youth in the townships and to guard against the EFF.

Anyways, the idea that this is "racist" is pretty inane - due to the way it's framed, it sounds that way and that's intentional but, in practice, land reform is a very typical proposal in extremely unequal societies where agrarian life still matters and evidence shows that it tends to be a productive proposal that raises yields, at least insofar as tenancy matters.

Confiscating land and breaking up farms that practice industrial agriculture and that are capital-intensive is very stupid, of course, and I have no faith in the ANC - of course, I have no faith in the DA either, which is a joke. That said, any reasonable party on the left would attempt to do sweeping land reform in South Africa.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

I am tempted to call this horse dung because of what we know about Ramaphosa and because of what the non-insane SA press has been reporting about his arrival in power.

Yes. He is, I think it's fair to say, not exactly on the radical wing of the ANC. This BBC profile of him isn't bad.

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The ANC also has a long history of talking a good game over the land issue and then, curiously, doing very little about it. Zuma was particularly notable in this respect.

In rhetorical terms, the ANC wants to "kill the boer, kill the farmer". In practice, the ANC is filled with corrupt Afrikaners from the National Party and is on friendly terms with powerful Afrikaners. Ignoramuses notice the rhetoric and clutch their pearls - people who know about South Africa knows that the rhetoric is an intentional strategy to remind Black South Africans "who really stands for them" and the struggles against Apartheid, which is all the ANC has to offer at this point.

The idea that South Africa is reverse racist or is a terrible place to be white is so inane that it's a gutbuster. The fear of Blacks ruling over the whites is so intense that I see that Europeans and Americans fall victim to strange Stormfront-esque characterizations of South Africa that have no basis in reality. Yes, South Africa is dysfunctional and a dumpster fire but it's ultimately a stable country and the ANC is more akin to the PRI or the INC than any of the comparisons that are usually made.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

The number of farmers murdered each year is a politicized statistic - racists would like you to believe that anyone murdered on a farm is a white farm-owner. In practice, the compiled statistics show that x people were murdered on farms, including small non-commercial farms. The murder rate, thus, is totally blown out of proportion because racists, who have agendas, want you to believe that it makes sense to assume that anyone murdered on a farm is a farmer, which is absurd considering that a person on a farm in a given moment is likely to be a Black farmhand. We have no idea what the landowner murder rate is - we'll never know because statistics are not compiled on this.

The "shoot the farmer" rhetoric is, just that, rhetoric. I'm sure that the EFF, which is basically national Bolshevism for Black South Africans, actually believes in it but they're a marginal party. The ANC uses it to remind Black South Africans about the struggle against Apartheid, which is a an obvious electoral tactic in a country where the opposition is littered with race-baiting and incompetent politicians who are decidedly unappealing.

For the record, white people live in communities shown below:






This is where Black South Africans tend to live:




It has been 25 years since the end of Apartheid and white South Africans continue to prosper, while prospects for Black South Africans, though markedly improved, remain pretty grim. The ANC has been in control of South Africa for 25 years. I don't see a "War on Whites" here, sorry.