The antagonists’ arguments, opinions and viewpoints against changing Section 25 (2)(b) of the South African Constitution (3)

Full title: The antagonists’ arguments, opinions and viewpoints against changing Section 25 (2)(b) of the South African Constitution to make land redistribution without compensation possible. Part 1: The dysfunctional political and socioeconomic system of the ANC regime (3)
Gabriel P Louw
iD orcid.org/0000-0002-6190-8093
Research Associate, Focus Area Social Transformation, Faculty of Humanities, Potchefstroom Campus of the North-West University, South Africa (Author and Researcher: Health, History and Politics).
Corresponding Author:
Prof. Dr. GP Louw; MA (UNISA), PhD (PUCHE), DPhil (PUCHE), PhD (NWU)
Email: profgplouw@gmail.com
Keywords: antagonists, opponents, compensation, contamination, crookery, custom, expropriation, land grabbing, land ownership, opposition, poverty, radicalism, redistribution, wealth.
Ensovoort, volume 40 (2019), number 2: 1
 

1. Background

1.1 Introduction

The EFF can’t tell you with a straight face how exactly the expropriation of land without compensation would work. It is time someone pointed out to it that, with 8% of the vote, it will not be able to implement it without the ANC’s say-so.
Everyone is in such euphoria over the long overdue airing of the land question that we have suspended our reasoning about how disastrous this policy could be.
Let’s be frank: the ANC is stringing along the EFF and those who believe it on the land question, lulling them into thinking that it is on the same page. The ANC cannot afford to hand over the land question on a platter to the EFF as an election tool. It has to take some credit for an impending land revolution – except that such a revolution is not near!
The ANC is bluffing.^1:18

February² agrees that Julius Malema, as a master manipulator of the media, is, like all populists, well-schooled in offering very simple solutions for very complex challenges and problems, ultimately leaving a bomb that can explode at any moment. Add to this the senseless utterances of Malema’s sidekick Floyd Shivambu, and land ownership is turning into a time bomb.^2-7
February² describes Malema as a dangerous rabble-rouser with his radical opinions of land ownership and reform. His reference to Malema’s naïve remark on farming, finance, citizenship and land ownership reveals Malema’s political foolishness and short-sightedness. February says that Malema’s message to his followers is in essence^2:16: “You are here in large numbers because you are jobless. But if you had land you would be at home tilling your land” [Own translation].
The EFF’s Gauteng chairwoman, Mandisa Mashego⁸, has shown where she learned her flawed understanding of the economics and politics applicable to land management and ownership when she said on the eNCA TV show Let’s Have it Out, that the EFF–style expropriation without compensation is equal to that of the so-called Singaporean model of expropriation without compensation (which is actually done only in terms of market prices).⁸ The English proverb: A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing, seems quite applicable to many of the EFF leaders when it comes to serious politics.^2-8

1.2 The land narrative in South Africa    

When Joshua conquered the entire Levant as Israeli territory, they “loot[ed] all the cattle, ravaging all the cities and killing all the inhabitants in the area”.⁹ A repeat in South Africa is unlikely, as indicated by the political journalist and commentator Onkgopotse Tabane¹. He also does not see the “godly higher hand” and “a loud voice coming from heaven” that guided Moses and Joshua in their tremendous religiously, politically, economically, ethically and socially deviant land grabbing. Indeed, Tabane¹ posits that the final outcome in South Africa after the 2019 election will be the opposite. Tabane¹ believes that the whole Ramaphosa exercise of land expropriation will ultimately be toothless. He feels that the ANC elite is been playing a well-planned mind-game with the poor and landless Blacks. For Tabane¹ the ANC regime is just continuing on the path of failing to empower the poor Black masses, as has been the case since 1994 with its ineffective implementation of Section 25 (2)(b) of the Constitution. The opinion is that the ANC party and its regime’s actions, like the testing of the public opinions with the submissions on the land issue, is only part of a manipulated and planned process of political window-dressing. It is seen as nothing else than a 2019 election trick to counter the EFF’s craziness and to optimize the DA’s passivity on the land issue, which the ANC themselves know they are also unable to solve, even if they remain in power for the next 24 years.^1,9-11
In short: the argument of a strong faction of political analysts, which includes many prominent Black political thinkers, politicians, journalists and commentators, is that many of the smooth talkers in parliament will not make any change to Section 25(2)(b) or any other part of the Constitution. Tabane writes^1:18: “The parliamentary process will not result in a constitutional change that will give the state any more power to expropriate land than was agreed to by Ramaphosa’s ANC at Codesa.” Section 25 as it stands at present is more than enough to bring effective land redistribution and, as said, the ANC’s process of land redistribution has failed to bring real change under its land reform minister Gugile Nkwinti over the last nine years.^1,12
The simple questions in the minds of critics are therefore: What will more political and judicial power bring the ANC? Is it just more planned corruption and political delinquency, state capture and self-enrichment by the ANC elite? Is a masked corrupt Chinese deal with farmland in the making, like the doomed Zuma-Putin-Mahlobo nuclear deal that nearly wrecked South African security? Will South Africa become a subordinate Chinese province in extreme poverty with the Marxist suppression of the masses? What is really behind the ANC’s planned land expropriation without compensation?
The antagonists feel that South Africa has been knocking at the door of the Chinese state since 1994 under the corrupted ANC regime and its elite who is more than willing and ready to put its sovereignty on a silver platter for the taking. Land expropriation without compensation is only a small part of the ANC’s deception. Is this a far-fetched thought? No. Three Indians showed this with their crooked enslavement of some of the ANC elite.^13-15 Mthombothi focuses partly on above questions when he says^12:15:

The amendment wants to go further than current laws allow. If we are to right what President Cyril Ramaphosa calls an original sin, where do we start? Do we have full knowledge or understanding of the original lie of the land, as it were? And at the end of the process, will every black person be entitled to a piece of land or plot gratis? The Khoisan people will vehemently dispute the prevailing idea that Black people are the original owners of the land.
There are just too many imponderables.

Also, Archbishop Thabo Makgoba¹⁶ points out the bewilderment in the minds of many of the ANC elites on the land expropriation matter when he writes^16:21: “I have not heard anyone spell out an overarching vision which takes all the complex practical and emotional factors into account. Nor have I heard a satisfactory answer to the fundamental question: expropriation to do what?”
Mthombothi is very specific when he writes about Ramaphosa^17:19:

President Cyril Ramaphosa, having been blindsided by the ANC, have thought he could muddle through it. He’s now a convert who thinks he, like a magician, can grab private property without compensation and grow the economy at the same time.
He’ll squeeze water from a stone. It also remains to be seen how a scheme that targets taking land from one race group while leaving others untouched can pass constitutional muster.

Thabo Mbeki is also clear on this anomaly in the current ANC’s politics on land ownership with their prominent targeting of Whites and its immense long-term impact on the race relations of the country. Tabane writes^18:6:

Amid the insults now emanating from the ANC [because Mbeki has blown the lid of the disorganized and unprincipled approach of the ANC on the land question], Mbeki underlines that it is sad that in the name of populism the ANC is willing to depart from its century-long commitment to non-racialism.

Makgoba¹⁶ elaborates further, putting into perspective another side of the lack of insight chief leaders of political parties, like Ramaphosa and Malema, have on the complexity of land expropriation^16:21:

I do not think land reform will work if it is driven only from Tshwane or Cape Town, or only by business. We should decentralise the process by allowing people to work out local solutions backed by laws and policy provided by the government.
A fully developed policy of redistribution needs both to take into account that there is more demand for urban land than for rural land, including clear proposals for education and practical help for those who want to work the land. It should not be a political tool but a tool for real transformation, to address inequality of opportunity and unemployment.

1.3 Research intentions

The research aim of this article is to evaluate and describe how the antagonists see the dysfunctional political and socioeconomic system of ANC regime that supports and promotes land grabbing. Opposing this dysfunctional system is central to the antagonists’ arguments, opinions and viewpoints on the amendment of Section 25 (2)(b) of the South African Constitution make land redistribution without compensation legal.
This article forms the first part of an article in two parts titled: The antagonists’ arguments, opinions and viewpoints against changing Section 25 (2)(b) of the South African Constitution to make land redistribution without compensation possible: Part One. The next article, titled: The antagonists’ arguments, opinions and viewpoints against changing Section 25 (2)(b) of the South African Constitution to make land redistribution without compensation possible: Part Two, reflects further on how the antagonists see the dysfunctional political and socioeconomic system of the ANC regime that supports and promotes land grabbing.

2. Method

The research was done by means of a literature review. This method has the aim of building a viewpoint from the available evidence as the research develops. This approach is used in modern political-historical research where there is a lack of an established body of research on the topic, in this case ownership of South African land for the period 1652 to 2018 in South Africa. The sources include articles from 2017 to 2018, books for the period 2000 to 2018 and newspapers for the period 2017 to 2018. These sources were consulted to evaluate and to describe the current arguments, opinions and viewpoints of the antagonists in favour of keeping Section 25(2)(b) of the Constitution as is and therefore the continuation of the present land redistribution policy with compensation in place since 1994.
The research findings are presented in narrative form.

3. Discussion

A study of the antagonists’ arguments, opinions and viewpoints reveals a broad range of elements and role players that affect the political and socioeconomic system of the ANC regime. All these elements and role players either support and promote the intended land grabbing of White land by the ANC regime for transfer to poor and landless Blacks, or see land grabbing as an important part of a greater international political and socioeconomic process of the ANC regime as it benefits the party’s revolutionary and Marxist-socialist policy. Literature on the antagonists’ arguments, opinions and viewpoints on land expropriation reflect a variety of determinants that they believe directly and indirectly promote and steer the matter. They point out actions, politics and mindsets that they feel characterize the ANC regime and its elite. Examples include their so-called support for the corrupt business and political ideologies of BRICS and the Russian and Chinese Marxist imperialism; their tendency to be anti-West; anti-capitalist and anti-White; the presence of psychopathological politics; the tendency towards anarchy in their political practices; and revenge for Apartheid. These determinants and many others form part of the antagonists’ objections to the amendment of Section 25 and the land expropriation without compensation that accompanies it. Only a comprehensive study of the primary and secondary determinants can present the case of the antagonists so that it can be evaluated justly.
The primary aim of this article (Part One) and the next one (Part Two) is therefore to reflect in detail on the various elements and role players the antagonists perceive. It is only with such a comprehensive presentation that we can conjure a picture of the antagonists’ civil right to uphold the Constitution in its present form and of their legitimate efforts to oppose land grabbing.
The various elements and role players that enter the argument of the antagonists are presented below in six subdivisions. In the next article (Part Two) this presentation of the various elements and role players continue with another six subdivisions.

3.1. The Malema-Ramaphosa element

This section reflects on the role of the empowerment of the radicals in the ANC and the EFF with land grabbing as a central matter. The section divides into the following subsections: 1) The danger of Malemania and Ramamania, 2) The foolishness and similarity of Malemania and Ramamania and 3) The rise of a new ANC.

3.1.1. The danger of Malemania and Ramamania

It is a mistake to argue that the views of Malema and Ramaphosa (described in the media as Malemania and Ramamania) on land expropriation without compensation is mere propaganda. Notwithstanding the sound arguments of various seasoned political analysists^1,10,12,17 that the present talk of land grabbing will ultimately be toothless, there is evidence to the contrary that the demands from Blacks for more legal ownership of South African land will increase after 2019. It won’t matter if Malema or Ramaphosa are still active in politics. The demand for land can become a driverless vehicle, speeding uncontrolled on a busy highway, taking out other cars and many lives, creating massive damage. Prominent in this whole argument is firstly a mass of poor and landless Blacks, hanging on to any kind of promise or solution for their poverty. These are often people who lack a basic understanding of politics, economics and risk-taking.^12,17,19-29
The EFF’s ideology (now seemingly also part of the post-2019 ANC’s political ideology) includes a push for classical Marxist land ownership for South Africa, with the state as the sole owner of land, property and financial institutes. This radical inclination stands in total opposition to the intentions of some of the antagonists and propagandists who support a just land redistribution outcome, leaving all the players (Whites and Black) with sufficient land and an economy still reasonably stable.^12,17,19-29
The EFF has a very small number of parliamentary seats, but they are exceptionally vocal. The reality is that Malema’s message of land grabbing is influencing the minds of many of the landless and poor Blacks. Malema’s openly hostile rhetoric on Whites as “illegal” citizen of South Africa and his support for radical land grabbing are red lights. The impact of the radicals, who are sometimes criminals or rogues in the EFF, ANC and PAC, must be seen as dangerous political markers with the potential to radically change the South African political, economic, social and judicial models. The political system seems to be restructuring very fast. The Whites, be they land owners or not, seem to be the target as “culprits”.^12,17,19-29
Regarding the growing radicalism on land expropriation without compensation and the political delinquency reflected by some of its prominent role players, Bruce¹⁰ reflects as follows^{10: 14}: “Over at the EFF, its leader, Julius Malema, insists that not only will White people lose their land, but all Black people too. He wants to nationalize all the land…”

3.1.2. The foolishness and similarity of Malemania and Ramamania

The former leader of the DA, Tony Leon⁸, writes that the EFF’s Mandisa Mashego equates the EFF’s land expropriation with the well-established Singaporean expropriation of land. However, Mashego deliberately refuses to acknowledge that the Singapore Academy of Law Journal already stated clearly in 2010 (eight years before the Ramaphosa-land grabbing initiative) that in the event of a forced Singapore expropriation, there would be compensation and that the compensation for land will be based on open market value. In practice, the Singaporean regulations are far clearer and it has more specific safeguards for land ownership than the current system in South Africa, even with the unchanged Section 25(2)(b) of the Constitution. The lack of insight on the side of the EFF, ANC and PAC quickly emerges when they start arguing with seasoned opponents. Leon⁸ describes this kind of primitive reasoning of those in favour of radical land reform excellently^{8: 20}: “If you ask what is 2+2 and your opponent says 5, you can still have a discussion: but if he answers 87 [the alleged percentage of White land ownership], you are on different planets. So this proved in our debate about land in South Africa. We were Venus and Mars”.
The EFF and the ANC’s increasingly racist rhetoric on the land matter is a serious point of concern.¹⁷ Mthombothi emphasizes^{17: 19}: “It’s the sort of bigotry that comes straight out of Hendrik Verwoerd’s playbook, and to which, we had hoped, the new dispensation had dealt a fatal blow”. It seems as if the opposite happened with the EFF, and it is now also prominent in the ANC’s political psyche: the ANC is just preaching racism.
Bruce³⁰ tries to give us some positive reassurance of the average individual and political goodwill of South Africans outside the extreme racial context of the ANC and the EFF.³⁰ He writes^{30: 2}: “I suspect very few people know how much trouble [financially and debt-ridden] South Africa is in. It’s not that we’re approaching a racial civil war. I think South Africans are far too sensible for that. They don’t want their country destroyed. They want a [justified, not stolen] stake in something with a future.”
But, objectively seen, Bruce’s guideline, although undoubtedly coming from a very wise man, is truly at this stage that of a very “lone voice in our political desert and wilderness”.³⁰
The most important question still remains for the antagonists: who will curb the ongoing irresponsible war-mongering and the destructive and dangerous incitement of politicians like Julius Malema and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma (and now also Cyril Ramaphosa) after the 2019 election, even if land grabbing from Whites is successfully implemented? It is common cause that the EFF thugs (and ANC radicals) are seeking new targets for their ongoing aggression against Whites. The only positive assurance in the face of “anti-Whites” like Malema and Dlamini-Zuma, is that the EFF seems unlikely to obtain more than 6% of the votes, leaving them politically castrated. It also seems as if Dlamini-Zuma is falling into disrepute among the broader base of ANC voters. They make false claims about the extent of their support.^17,28,31

3.1.3. The rise of a new ANC

One of the most prominent current dangers for the antagonists is that the ANC has failed to discipline its radicals. The ANC itself remains a dangerous component in politics: the fact that predictions indicate that the ANC can obtain 60% or more of the votes in the 2019 election, which would give them a free hand, could make the practice of law and order more and more difficult. Thabo Mbeki¹⁸ recently voiced public concern on the bad racial intentions of the ANC in 2018, even suggesting that the current ANC has become a failed political entity.¹⁸
Mthombothi³¹ emphasizes that the ANC has become drunk from the “alcohol of corruption”. Indeed, corruption is the ANC’s lifeline and further power for them after the 2019 election spells doom for the country in the same way as the EFF’s intentions on land and citizens’ rights, argue also the antagonists. Mothombothi writes^{31: 3}:

Having jettisoned non-racialism and with the paucity of its performance in power, what exactly does the ANC stand for now? What is its culture? By culture I mean its guiding principles, customs and social behaviours. Corruption seems to tower above all else. I’d therefore argue that corruption has become its abiding culture. It’s endemic, it’s systemic, it’s ingrained. In fact, corruption is the glue that holds the ANC together. To the ANC, corruption is like a drink to a drunkard who’s at an advanced stage of alcoholism. He has to keep drinking, or he dies.

Mthombothi¹² shows how the current ideas on land redistribution has resulted in resistance from White land owners (as individuals and as farmers’ associations) to the contravention of their land rights.¹²
Current media debates reveal that there is a possibility that dramatic outcomes, different from those postulated by Tabane¹, February², Mthombothi¹⁷ and Bruce¹⁰, can follow with the ANC’s revisiting of Section 25(2)(b) of the Constitution. It is argued that if these radical factions win, the outcome can and will change the South African political, racial and socioeconomic scene adversely forever.^{4,10,12.19-24,26,28-35}

3.2. Political scenarios after 2019

Two clearly opposing possible outcomes await us after the 2019 election. Number one: A possibly moderate profile varying from a social-capitalist, but democratic state in which everyone will benefit financially, with an inflow of foreign capital and an improved governing style, leading to development and improvement of the country’s infrastructure, curbing of joblessness and poverty. This setup will to a great extent be an undisturbed continuation of the present status of a free market of land ownership as vested in hands of Whites or other persons (Blacks/Whites) who want to and/or have agreed to buy land at market-related prices. Number two: it reflects a hard-core communist state under autocratic/fascist rule, saturated with corruption, theft and political murders; a country ravaged by total poverty and lawlessness, leaving not only the present White land owners and White rich landless and penniless, but also the masses of other South Africans in the same devastating boat of poverty and distress. ^{4,10,12.19-24,26,28-35}
When considering this, it is important to take into account the present pressure for a better land ownership model, which includes creating a comprehensive Black land ownership and a farming community. One should consider the legal claims by the majority of Blacks on land and the injustice locked into the South African political-historical setup, mostly responsible for the Blacks’ dire personal and group circumstances. But, most of all: it must be addressed in an orderly, accepted and representative way, outside our overwhelming contaminated politics. At the moment the arguments from the different sides are so emotional that it makes a reasonable and rational solution impossible.^{4,10,12.19-24,26,28-35}

3.3. White initiatives to uplift the poor and landless Blacks

The various White initiatives to uplift poor Blacks are described in the following two sub-divisions, namely 1) the White farming sector’s initiatives and 2) White financial and business sector’s initiatives.

3.3.1. The White farming sector’s initiatives

The negative picture painted of the White farming sector as land-grabbing and racist colonists is not entirely accurate.^36-38 Many individual farmers and farmers’ organizations have been involved in uplifting farm workers and rural communities since 1994. A good example (although extraordinary) is that of farmers David and Elaine Potter of the Nieuwe Sion Farm between Paarl and Franschoek, who built a R30 million village of 4ha named Lumière, consisting of 22 houses and a crèche, aftercare and entertainment centre for their staff. The cottages and the village became the property of the workers with the title deeds of the 22 cottages being transferred to them.³⁶
There are various other good examples of upliftment by individual farmers and the organized White farming sector to establish commercial Black famers and to help poor Black farmers. One White farmers’ entity, the SA Varkvleis Produsent–organisasie (Savpo) had much success with training support and a financial development contribution of R5.8 million to incoming Black producing farmers in 2016 and 2017 in the North West province, KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng and the Western and Eastern Cape provinces.^37,38
Katoen SA supplied financial and other support in the period 2016 to 2017, including training through mentorship to 700 cotton farmers in Nkomazi, Mpumalanga, while they also organized financial support for 718 Black farmers to the value of R19.7 million by means of 18 cooperation projects.³⁷
The SA Suikervereniging has helped 6 523 Black farmers in 2016 to 2017 with R124.8 million.³⁷
From the wine industry’s side, Vinpro made a contribution of R2 million to 232 projects by 2017, including 9 588 Black farmers.³⁷
Grain SA, the country’s biggest organization for grain producers, contributed R19.7 million to 718 Black farmers for 2016–2017. It is further involved with 3 800 small grain farmers countrywide in an assistance programme with the government.^{36, 37}
Other White farming entities involved in training and giving financial support to Black farmers is the Wolkwekersvereniging with a contribution of R19.6 million to 330 Black communities and more than 10 000 Black farmers for the period 2016–2017. There was also a support programme for another 108 307 Black beneficiaries in 2016–2017, which includes 55 000 new Black farmers. ^{36, 37}
Agri SA, for instance, is already engaged in upliftment projects with various Black farmers. In 2017 the body paid the guardianship of 22 Black farmers and the veterinary costs of these farmers. The body is also directly responsible for financing the four development farms for Blacks.^36,37

3.3.1.1. Agri SA’s initiative

Agri SA under its president, Dan Kriek, has shown a willingness to work with the government to develop a collaborative approach to land restitution and reform right from the start. Agri SA and its affiliates are already very active with constructive contact with the ANC, for instance with their acceptance of the Expropriation Bill (which was unsuccessful before parliament in 2016) and a comprehensive plan that focused on agriculture, land reform and the rural development for Black farmers.^39,40
Agri SA feels that the populist and emotional concepts tied to land ownership by the ANC will only endanger the country’s food security. They make it clear that the present demand for more land ownership by “African Blacks” and the annexation of the farming sector by the Ramaphosa regime is a direct result of how the ANC bungled the approved land reform scheme since 1994. Agri SA feels that the intended land grabbing will not solve the matter of enlarging the contingent of commercial Black farmers without a proper development plan: one with a focus on financing and training. The government’s present hostile and aggressive approach will only create more problems around land ownership and endanger the immediate food security of South Africa.^39,40 Omri van Zyl, the CEO of Agri SA, puts it as follows^{39: 9}:

The government can expropriate land without paying for it, but what then?
There’s no follow-on financial solution, or sustainable agric financing for the farmers they put on this land, as we have seen with the land reform projects which have failed.
A recent Agri SA land audit shows much of South Africa high-potential land is in government hands.
Government is sitting on multiple millions of hectares of agricultural land which has not been collateralized and is not productive.
If the aim is to chase after the goals of the National Development Plan and Operation Phakisa, then the lowest hanging fruit is obviously to look at government land and give title to farmers on that land.
The moment you do that, those farmers can go to the bank and collateralize it so they can borrow money to develop their farms.
There’s a massive amount of capital that can flow into that land.

On their part Agri SA believes that some kind of agricultural development agency based on a public-private partnership to provide capital for developing farmers must first be established. Their aim is to create a vehicle that offers a form of subsidized capital to circumvent the security of tenure issue. In light of the ANC’s constant failure to implement proper land reform since 1994, Agri SA is of the opinion that properly incentivized private sector involvement will speed up transformation very quickly and with great success without endangering the country’s food security.³⁹
Van Zyl⁴¹ believes that there is very little difference between the government’s empowerment plan for Black farmers and that of Agri SA. He writes^{41: 4-5}:

The White farmer community agrees that South Africa must have a much greater contingent of Black commercial farmers and not subsistence farming which is sentimental only and laden with aggressive and hostile politics. At the end these peasants will have to be feed from the country’s national account which is in reality tax-payers’ money. They feel their advice, inputs and various other contributions were so far totally ignored by the government on the creating of a community of Black commercial farmers. Much more they cannot do. Not even the fact that Pieter Mulder served as an adjunct-minister of agriculture under Zuma brings any bettering.

The efforts of White farmers are sincere and comprehensive. The government’s efforts to side-line them seem to be based on pure racism and Marxism.^41,42

3.3.2. The initiatives of the White financial and business sectors

As with the White farming community, the ANC often also criticizes the South African financial and business sector for apathy towards the problems of the poor and landless Blacks. Prominent is the ANC’s criticism on the financial and business sector’s public stance on its intended land reform policy. These negativities of the ANC are contradicted by the evidence offered by their opponents.

3.3.2.1. The willingness of the business and financial sectors

The public declaration of the South African Top 100 Companies on 8 April 2018 shows the business sector’s willingness to get involved in a constructive way in erasing Black poverty, unemployment and inequality, as well as to initiate and finance various kinds of training and job appointments to get Blacks active in the labour market. What these companies clearly oppose is any government policy and initiative of land grabbing where the market-related compensation for land is absent. They are not in any way against the justified transference of land to the poor and landless Blacks and the promotion of commercial or small-scale Black farmers. Indeed, as in all well-planned and functioning business communities, they welcome a strong component of commercial Black farmers, especially in light of the decrease in the numbers of the Afrikaner and White populations, which could affect the country’s food security. They also underwrite sound and healthy business principles, which indicates that dramatic land reform means the impoverishment of the existing land owners, the damaging of the food chain and affordable food delivery to the masses, of which most are poor, as well as the creation of political, social and economic disorder, which would not only flatten the whole governmental setup of the country, but also the government’s international standing and trustworthiness. The business sector does not view land reform as money well spent.^{37, 39-42}
The opponents of the ANC emphasize that the business sector seems to doubt if the ANC elite and its current leadership have a basic understanding to run a country by creating well-planned new enterprises, jobs, income and taxes by means of the constructive support of the private sector instead of the liberation thinking of taking from the rich to keep the poor alive. The calls of radicals in the ANC and EFF to nationalize the banking and other financial and business institutions, the mining industry, even the houses and assets of individual citizens and the assets of foreigners in South Africa, is a dangerous political inclination that will cause anarchy.^37,39-42
The South African business sector has always been willing and able to bring financial improvement to the poor and landless Blacks without the ANC’s misplaced policy of land redistribution without compensation. The first constructive effort needed before the ANC can hope to better their business and financial record, is that they fix their relationship with the business sector and assure the business sector of their sincerity as a partner of integrity.^{39, 43-45}
Barron³⁹ quotes Soko in this regard^39:9: “There need to be ‘honest, courageous, uncomfortable conversations’ between the government and business about what is causing the trust deficit and how it should be addressed”.
The constant failure of the ANC regime to deliver on promises and contracts after “ honest, courageous, uncomfortable conversations” with the business sector is evident from for instance the ANC’s New Growth Path, which articulates the Green Economy Accord that was signed by the government with great fanfare in 2011 with the organized labour and business sectors. The government has failed to make an inch of progress to advance a green economy.^39,43-45
South Africa’s so-called 14-Point Plan and List of Structural Reforms, which Ramaphosa promised will increase the economic growth rate and bring more jobs, failed from day one in terms of the principles formulated by the business sector because these plans and lists lack action plans that detail targets or timeliness. Even the Treasury’s list of five reforms, estimated to raise the country’s potential growth rate from 1.5% to 4%, provides, as the 14-point list, little detail on what exactly these measures entail or when they will be implemented, making it a risky undertaking for the private sector to put private money into the endeavour. Moreover, for the opponents all these governmental “wonderful” lists and their promises still failed to stop South Africa from falling down the cliff into recession in September 2018.⁴⁶
For the business and financial sector, political and business integrity must be a central principle in the ANC’s intended theoretical frameworks for land redistribution or poverty alleviation. The business sector finds Ramaphosa’s recent bragging that “if a referendum was held in 1994 on land redistribution the outcome would be a massive vote collection for land grabbing”, to be lacking evidence. The political views on capital ownership lack the business and political sense associated with democracy and capitalism. It spells doom for the private sector’s assets in which private citizens’ money is prominent.^42,45
Soko’s³⁹ view is that it is^39:9: “…time for the South African business sector to open its wallet to support the ANC regime if last mentioned mends its delinquent ways”. Private initiatives have far more success and profitable outcomes than the intended job creation through land reform of the ANC can ever bring. In March 2018, Ramaphosa gained the support of the business section by launching the Youth Employment Service (YES). YES intends to link Black empowerment points to corporations that take young interns into one-year work opportunities with a salary. This has already brought into placement 40 000 interns (the intention is a placement of one million). The intent is to later expand the goodwill of the business sector to higher education entities.^47,48
The formal business sector, as a primary generator of capital, economy and jobs, stands central: it is indeed the only sector that can steer the South African economy to functionality again.^49,50

3.3.2.2. The increase in distrust

As with most antagonists (opponents) of drastic land expropriation, the South African private domestic business community’s distrust is caused by the ANC regime’s doubtful intentions and actions and the ANC’s intention to start RET (Radical Economic Transformation) and RST (Radical Social Transformation). This justified distrust is the primary reason why the formal business side does not promote domestic investments. This is clearly not an anti-ANC lobby per se, but plain a safeguard against losses of public moneys through the ANC’s irresponsible political, social and economic adventures.^{47, 48}
The business sector’s level of distrust is quite clear from the R71 billion that is being invested elsewhere, such as in Ghana. This kind of money that is flowing around in the private sector is why Malema so badly wants to nationalize private banks and the other financial institutions. The recent massive looting of the VBS Mutual Bank and the earlier capturing at Transnet under its former CEO Siyabonga Gama are excellent examples of the many losses citizens have suffered to ANC “infrastructure development” and “upliftment”.^{46-48, 51-53}
The business sector is concerned about the lack of understanding and insight in the ANC after 24 years of rule. They have done little that has been constructive and they still adhere to the belief that taking White capital will free the country from poverty. They have not helped Black citizens like the Afrikaners helped themselves on their own in the 1930s. The little penetration of Black business people into mining, for instance, occurred with the help of White-led companies and the BBBEE model. There are Black mines and other enterprises that have been and are successful, among others those of Cyril Ramaphosa and Tokyo Sexwale. There have also been Black enterprises that have failed, and in those cases it had nothing to do with a lack of support from the White business sector.^54-57 Opponents of the ANC rightfully point out that the ANC has had enough power in the last 24 years to change the situation. Corruption is killing the positivity the business sector had about South Africa’s future. The antagonists eagerly want to support a future South African regime free from political evils and they want to lift the country’s economy out of the international rating agencies’ red listings.⁵⁸
The former AngloGold CEO, Srinivasan Venkatakrishnan⁵⁸, a prominent business leader who was involved in the Minerals Council SA and who was also a director of Business Leadership SA (BLSA)—a person well-known for his hard work behind the scenes to raise business voices against corruption in the post-1994 government—assures South Africa of a certain future if business speaks up when he says^{58: 2}:

Corruption is like cancer. If you don’t catch it early on it spreads very, very quickly. You need to nip it in the bud. That corruption was happening here and was endemic across certain parts [is true].
Business is an important voice and it was lost in the wilderness before, and historically it sat on the side-lines, worrying about how speaking up would impact its business. We had to do introspection and see where we were at fault, make corrections and then move forward. This was all important for us. It was an absolutely critical moment where potentially SA was about to jump over a cliff and it had to be pulled back.⁵⁸

On the question of whether Zuma’s corruption had been caught early enough and if the country’s economy and integrity can be mended, Venkatakrishnan says^58:2: “Honestly, no, but better late than never. It should never happen in the first place. Here, it was probably caught a bit later but before it was too late. It can be reversed. It won’t be a walk in the park, but if there’s a will and co-operation of people saying, ‘not another time. We’ve nearly lost the country once and we won’t make that mistake again.”

3.3.2.3. The prominence of the banking sector

The banking sector seems to be regarded as an easy cow to milk by the likes of Black First Land First, SACP, Cosatu, EFF and the ANCYL. Jacob Zuma accused the banking sector in public of “thwarting the growth of Black business and as contributors to inequality.” The ANC regime’s radical liberation politics and ideology of taking from the one to give to others without generating anything constructive for the state’s coffer led to early resistance and counter-actions from the private financial and business sector. The sector put limitations on possible abuses of banks and other financial institutes, which created fertile grounds for ANC radicals to attack them.⁵⁹
The CEO of First Rand Group, Johan Burger⁵⁹, tried hard to teach ANC radicals about the realities of economics and finance and the basic principles of responsible financial management of other people’s assets.^59,60 Burger posits^59:10:

To the extent that the economy grows, to the extent that there’s capacity for people to take on debt, we will extend credit. It’s our business to extend credit.
To the extent that the economy struggles we will find it difficult to extend credit.
It’s not about whom we extend credit to. If there is no demand and no affordability, we cannot extend credit. This is not about small business or large business or about black entrepreneurs or white entrepreneurs. It’s just a fact of economic life.
At the end of the day, it’s about affordability. If the affordability is not there you can’t expect us to extend credit into that environment.
It needs to be understood that we’re dealing with other people’s money. We’re dealing with savers’ money. We have an enormous fiduciary duty to make sure that we extend credit in a responsible manner.

Banks rightfully oppose land grabbing in any form because they deal with other people’s money, as the CEO of First Rand Group⁶¹ clearly states. Expropriation without compensation can bring not only bankruptcy to banks, but also to their investing individuals. The direct impact of the intended land grabbing by the Ramaphosa regime is already affecting the banking system. Professor André Louw⁶¹, an agricultural economist of the University of Pretoria, reports that farmers are already experiencing the sudden cancellation of purchase contracts because of the intensifying uncertainty around land ownership. According to the statistics of the Bank Association of South Africa (BASA), banks’ exposure to bonds amount to more than R1 600 billion: Of this amount more or less R133 billion is for agricultural land and R1 068 billion for residential property only. [Their exposure to agricultural debts is around R80 billion, the cooperative banks carrying R9.3 billion and the Agricultural Bank R38 billion (of which 90% is to White farmers whose land is now under possible ANC and state capture)]. Land expropriation without compensation or semi-compensation will endanger the whole South African banking system.^60,61
Pierre Venter,⁶¹ the manager for human settlements at BASA, gives us insight into the chaos that land grabbing has meant for bank systems when he writes^{61: 1}: “Many banking crises worldwide started when property prices dropped and this negatively impacted on the trust of markets” [Own translation]. In South Africa this devastating phenomenon is beginning to manifest as markets are exasperated by for example the rhetoric of Olly Mlamleli, the ANC mayor of Mangaung, when he said that^{60: 4}: “…the ANC is looking forward to redistribute grabbed farms and plots around Bloemfontein”.

3.3.2.4. ANC’s democratic and capitalist economics

It is an open question for the antagonists whether the ANC really understands the model of democratic and capitalist economics as compared to so-called “liberation” economics. In the view of the ANC’s opponents this “grabbing instinct” is the main reason why the ANC has failed as a responsible and creative regime since 1994 and why the formal business sector is shying away from them. It is far less risky to invest in Kenya, Nigeria and other African countries. The South African scene is dominated by a racial rhetoric that seeks retribution for past injustices.^59,62,63
Bruce⁶⁴ confirms^{64: 16}:

The lesson in all of this for President Cyril Ramaphosa to learn and hold on to – is that the private sector can help (indeed it wants, still, to help) but the state has to be cautious with its money. Assuming Ramaphosa makes no (more) unnecessary gaffes on land expropriation without compensation, ensures that land invasions are resisted and begins to spell out and sell his vision of how an orderly process of expropriation might trigger an economic recovery, the private sector will probably stick to him.

However, if the Wall Street Journal publishes an editorial comparing Ramaphosa to Robert Mugabe and South Africa to Venezuela, Ramaphosa and the ANC must be in trouble. Impressions are sticky and hard to shift once they take hold, writes Bruce^{64: 16}: “If Ramaphosa and the ANC could negotiate the death of Apartheid, why are they so foolishly besotted with poor economic thinking and doing like extreme land-reform, asks the business-sector.”
The question is whether the private business sector would still want to help Ramaphosa and his government in the future.

3.4. Basic questions of immediate interest around land ownership

When reading and listening to the rhetoric on land expropriation, certain questions arise. In some ways these questions have become forces that have to be addressed.^{4,10,12,19,20-24,26,28,29,32-35,65,66}
In short these questions on rightful land ownerships in South Africa and the legal integrity of land grabbing are the following:

1.     Which of the many arguments, opinions and viewpoints are truly grounded in reality and facts? Which are emotional, naïve and even bizarre or outright political falsities and myths?
2.     Who are the people with all these many contrary views, opinions and arguments and what are their agendas?
3.     What are the direct and indirect interests of the many parties to land reform?
4.     What does lawful land ownership really when referring to the claim of the individual     citizen?
5.     Why this serious infighting between South Africans about a changed Constitution based on a single Section?
6.     What is really meant with the concept “land hunger by the masse” and “poor and land     landless Blacks”:
   1. Is it rural land for farming that Tabane and others are referring to, or is it urban land for housing settlements, situated near industrial and business hubs?
   2. Is the issue of urban land for housing not really the main issue?
7. In general, are persons like Tabane, Mothombothi and Bruce false prophets with their     promises of a prosperous and basically unchanged South Africa in the waiting?:
   1. Are these political writers and commentators visionaries who can really and truly read the South African future?
   2. Are they correct to think that the Ramaphosa regime will be successful in steering the landless and poor Blacks and the many extreme political militant propagandists in their demands for land in a constructive, non-violent direction?

The evidence for both sides in answer to the above questions is overwheliming.^{4,10,12,19,20-24,26,28,29,32-35,65,66}

3.5. The harsh reality of land reform in 2019

The current push in parliament to change the South African Constitution’s property clause [Section 25(2)(b)] to give the state the right to expropriate land without compensation is eliciting strong opposing arguments. Some of the crucial questions include:

•     Is the view that Ramaphosa’s focus on land expropriation is purely political     accurate?
•     Is it true that the desire for land is purely based on retribution and hate for Whites?
•     Is it true that the ANC wants White land because those farms are successful?
•     Is land expropriation up front because the ANC is still at heart a terrorist organization?
•     Are the calls for land expropriation all unfounded?

The following sub-division presents the arguments of those who oppose land expropriation.

3.6. The dysfunctional political and socioeconomic system of the ANC regime

For the antagonists opposing land expropriation without compensation, the current debate is intertwined with the dysfunctional political and socioeconomic system of South Africa in which the ANC stands central. It is crucial to take a look at the causes of the current state of affairs and the aims of the ANC if one wants to consider what went wrong since 1994 in the South African political setup.
The sections below provide a comprehensive overview of the direct and indirect elements, determinants and role players that brought us here, including political histories, economics, politics, the judiciary, etc.

3.6.1. The ANC’s drowning of the 1994 democracy

According to those who oppose land reform, the undermining of the South African democracy started in 1994 with the ANC taking power. Fascist thinking quickly formed a foundation for ANC action. It is illustrated by their present direct attack on the Constitution and their intended land expropriation without compensation. This makes the ANC a troubled regime and a direct danger to the civil and democratic rights of South Africans in the eyes of the antagonists. Their disregard for White rights to land ownership and their plans to specifically harm Whites financially, show how they are drowning democracy. The antagonists refer to five clear political outcomes when they make this argument: 1) the decline of the democracy, 2) the use of populism, 3) the still fragile South African democracy, 4) the uncertain economy in a fragile democracy, and 5) land grabbing as a fascist act.^{4,10,12,19,20-24,26,28,29,32-35,65,66}

3.6.1.1. The ongoing decline of the democracy

The antagonists see the land grabbing from Whites by the ANC regime as part of a dangerous democratic decline in South Africa. In the book State Capture in Africa by Melanie Meirotti and Grant Masterson, published by the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa, Johannesburg, South Africa is identified with various other African countries to be under attack for state capture in various forms by private groups and individuals (as happened with the “Zupta” state capture). In this context the agendas and strategies of the political leaders are often masked and their personal needs are sold as that of the population (land expropriation without compensation is also being sold as something on behalf of the population who wants it urgently).^{4,10,12,19,20-24,26,28,29,32-35,65-67}
John L Stremlau⁶⁷, a visiting professor of international relations at the University of the Witwatersrand, describes the modus operandi of state capture when he writes^67:11: “Dictators can do this at will. Those who are elected democratically face obstacles. They must subvert democratic norms and hollow out state institutions, all the while obscuring their real purposes, often exploiting populist fears and resentments.”
For the antagonists, land grabbing is one of the outcomes of how South African state institutions have been hollowed out from 1994, implying the subversion of democracy. Evidence is plentiful that many remnants of this delinquent model are still functioning inside the Ramaphosa regime. The Zuma-orientated ANC NEC still strongly reflects in the ANC government of 2019. ^{4,10,12,19,20-24,26,28,29,32-35,65-67}
To stay in power, the ANC is gathering as many as possible votes from the masses, primarily by the exploiting populist fears and resentments.⁶⁷ Land grabbing has also become a vehicle for secondary wrongdoings, like channelling riches to the ANC elite. They offer reasons such as Black empowerment, but in truth Luthuli house is steering the process as state capture has become entrenched in the post-Zuma regime. The way in which Ramaphosa addressed the nation “officially” only as president of the ANC with respect to the ANC’s decision on land expropriation and his disregard for parliament’s authority with his announcement of a policy on land expropriation decided on and approved by Luthuli house, reminded of an authoritarian regime and a fascist leadership.^{4,10,12,19,20-24,26,28,29,32-35,65-67} The antagonists no longer feel as if they have any say in the matter.

3.6.1.2. The use of populism

Derby⁶⁸ shows that populism is still a tantalising and easy option to use to mesmerize certain segments of society. As result of the failure of the ANC regime over two decades, its leadership is jumping on the revolutionary bandwagon of land to win votes.⁶⁸
Derby warns^{68: 2}: “Never believe a politician whose mission is draining the swamp”. This echoed for the antagonists’ one of the many reasons why the ANC, driven by their opportunistic and corrupted ANC leaders, has failed the country and why our democracy is in a process of drowning.
The former KwaZulu-Natal premier and a member of the ANC’s National Working Committee, Senzo Mchunu, clearly indicates the power Luthuli house has to override parliament in official decision-making and the execution of decrees regarding the land reform issue.⁶⁹ Prominent is the public downplaying of the parliamentary Motlanthe Report by Ramaphosa himself as well as by the ANC NEC. Mchunu⁶⁹ declared^{69: 4}: “Comrade Kgalema has expressed a view, it shouldn’t be confused as the ANC having come to a conclusion”.
The un-parliamentarian and authoritarian ANC conclusion that led to the “official” implementation of land expropriation by the 80 members of the ANC NEC is seen by the antagonists as the final decision on land expropriation. But for the antagonists this is also a warning of how undemocratically the ANC will be ruling in future.⁶⁹
The opponents note, with good reason, that the ANC, as the present ruling party that is losing its majority, can stay in power unconstitutionally by means of traditional dictatorial or authoritarian rule (well-known in post-colonial Africa). The present forcing of land grabbing reminds of these practices.^{67, 70-72}

3.6.1.3. The still fragile South African democracy

Land expropriation could be the tip of the iceberg of retribution and revenge. Those who oppose it are all too aware that democracy is not a given, it is sustainable only in certain conditions.⁶⁷ Stremlau^{67: 11} writes: “But no democracy is ever secure, even the US. That case study points to historic and current examples of how oligarchs masked as patriots and democrats, can exploit the fears and resentments of key constituencies to win elections, disarm democratic protections, and diver public resources to the privileged few.”
There are just too many old comrades in the “renewed” ANC. They parade as the saviours and rescuers of the poorest Blacks, fronting the White problem as reason for all ills. Mchunu’s⁶⁹ following naïve remark reveals a lot about the word manipulation of the ANC leadership as they cover up their real intentions^{69: 4}: “We are cautioning against unnecessary and inflammatory statements that are not conductive to peace. The land debate must move without any political populism of any kind.”
The good intentions of the ANC leaders are contradicted daily by their actions. The ANC elite reflects a lack of understanding of the concept of keeping peace and the enormous difference between expropriation with compensation and without compensation, as well as the difference between justice and injustice, reconciliation and revenge.⁶⁹
The ANC may win the 2019 election (the sixth post-1994 general election) by jeopardising the country, but chances are good that they may lose soon after 2019 because of the bankruptcy of the country. This is basically because they lack sensible domestic policies, besides radicalism, to generate work opportunities and to create money to erase poverty and inequality: something that land grabbing cannot bring to the table. It only can aggravate the already chaotic situation.^73,74

3.6.1.4. Uncertain economy of a fragile democracy

The antagonists believe that other constructive approaches and solutions are needed for South Africa’s many ills and crises. Bruce says^73:22: “That leaves only one other route – sensible domestic policies that, even in the face of external events, can serve as a floor from which to build viable defences of our own.”
Prominent here is cutting government debt (it quadrupled in Zuma’s time to $80 billion) by cutting public sector jobs, selling off the SAA, SABC, Transnet and Eskom and training the masses. There is a clear choice and message for the ANC regime^73:22: “…cut government’s debt and make money and stop exploiting through land grabbing and over-taxing the hard-working citizens of South Africa to make-up for your governmental impotence.”
If the ANC wants to persuade people to invest in their government and the country, they must first have the necessary potential and integrity to convince investors that they will make profits without risks^73:22: “To prove it to them you put every piece of legislation you pass through just one stress test – will it attract or repel investors?”
The legislation on land expropriation will not pass this test. It not only repels investors, it is driving local and international investors’ away.⁷³

3.6.1.5. ANC’s intent to grab land

Those who oppose land expropriation feel that the policy stems from a fascist seed.^{75, 76} The question is what is fascism? The former US politician, Madeleine Albright⁷⁵, points out that it is in the first place difficult to define fascism^75:11: “First of all, I don’t think fascism is an ideology. I think it is a method, it’s a system…a means of seizing and holding power.”
Albright^75,76 brings us into the ANC elite’s state of mind: fascism and not so much communism is what drives the ANC elite. It tells us for the first time the reason why the ANC elite wants to seize power and how they hold power.^75,76
One should understand fascism to understand the possible course of politics in South Africa after 2018. Land expropriation without compensation is only the tip a massive iceberg. It is useful to reflect Albright’s description of fascist leaders and their fascist systems. Albright ^75:11 posits:

Fascism’s leaders have an “aptitude for spectacle”, a cult-like ability to establish emotional links to the mob and bring to the surface “deep and often ugly” feelings. Theirs is an intolerant, antidemocratic “doctrine of anger and fear”, marked by strong ethnic identification, as well as vilification and discrimination against non-members.
It often draws its energy from “a memory of humiliation” that percolates upwards from the general populace. The more painful the grounds for resentment, the easier it is for the fascist leader to build his following by “dangling prospects of renewal or vowing to take back what’s been stolen”.
It relies on intimidation and, often, violence. For it to succeed, the traditionally independent institutions of democracy, such as the police, the prosecutorial services, the judiciary, and civil service, all have to be brought under partisan control.

After reading the above, can anyone doubt who the ANC elite or what the ANC regime represents? Their opponents know very well that rooting out fascism is not easy: it is like cancer. Land grabbing is one of its most serious manifestations, the first of many other manifestations to come as the cancer penetrates the system. As long as the ANC is the ruler, land grabbing will thrive.

3.6.2. Land expropriation’s effects on the economy

Land grabbing is fully intertwined as a financial and economic generator within the South African economy. It does not matter to whom land belongs or who is producing what on it, it has intrinsic value. The income and the value of land of course depend on the sound political, socioeconomic and financial system of the country in which it functions. If it is functioning in an unstable political environment the income from and the value of land is mostly poor, leading to poverty, unemployment and inequality between urban and rural inhabitants. Land grabbing itself mostly generates distrust of the government, leading to a low foreign investment culture, seldom improving the situation of the poor and landless. If land grabbing is engineered in an already down-spiralling economy characterized by political instability, it can only spell economic and political disaster. It is in such an unfavourable socioeconomic and political environment that extreme land reform is planned in South Africa. Besides land grabbing as part of the ANC’s plan to improve the South African economy, they are planning various other schemes with which land expropriation is intertwined.^{4,10,12,19,20-24,26,28,29,32-35,65-67}
In this division the attention is on the following three subdivisions: 1) Ramaphosa’s Stimulus Package, 2) the devastating unemployment in South Africa, and 3) the constant decline politics and economics.

3.6.2.1. Ramaphosa’s “Stimulus package”

Antagonists see land grabbing as signs of a failed economy in which all kinds of escape routes from reality are being tried out by a government stripped of the ability make an economic turn-around. It is often started by regimes simultaneously with attempts at economic development and other so-called “bettering” of fiscal plans to distract negative attention from the grabbing process where mostly a certain prosperous group is harmed to benefit another less meritorious group. Other times it is used in an effort to offer some credibility to the particular regime’s continuously failing economic reforms and upliftment schemes to serve as a guarantee for the poor people and voters of a regime that has somewhere in the future a free assistance plan in place to help them.
At the moment is it old news that the Ramaphosa regime is in deep financial trouble, making drastic actions such as land grabbing, either as an attention distracter or, as Ramaphosa seemingly believes, a money generator, an unavoidable part of his many promises of dramatically reforming the South African economy. The present plans around land grabbing by Ramaphosa must be read together with his bigger stimulus plans as a supporting source of income or finance and voter recruiting. Ultimately this will do little good.^{4,10,12,19,20-24,26,28,29,32-35,65-67}
Firstly, it is important to look to Ramaphosa’s various economic plans together with land grabbing, like his Stimulus Package with which he promises to invigorate the economy. In the context of the current economic stagnation of South Africa, Derby⁷⁴ paints a very distressing picture, mentioning an economy bereft of any substantive investment over the past decade and a national psyche drenched in tales of corruption centred on the ruling party and the role of its former president. This failed governance of the ANC regime dented the confidence of consumer and business to levels last seen more than 30 years ago [during Apartheid]. Notwithstanding Ramaphosa’s various promises to the nation, especially to his electorate, there are negative realities that are overwhelming. In this failed economic state, land grabbing is undoubtedly becoming tempting, an excellent way to put some of the political and economic demands at rest, at least for the short term.⁷⁴
Derby⁷⁷ discusses the country’s present economic fiasco by looking at Ramaphosa’s much talked about Stimulus Package as presented during his economic address on Friday 21 September. He writes^{77: 2}:

Finally, some sobriety. That is my take from this Friday’s economic address by President Cyril Ramaphosa and his team. There were no grand announcements of billions flooding into the economy from friends in Asia, no promises of the creation of millions of jobs in whatever catalogue of time frames politicians dust off the shelf. And importantly, it also wasn’t the matter-of-fact economy diagnosis that former finance minister Malusi Gigaba once delivered that sent everyone into a mad panic
What emerged most for me from the Ramaphosa “stimulus” announcement was this cabinet, or at least those members of it that are in his corner, have a grip on the reality of the situation.

Lumkile Mondi⁷⁸, a senior lecturer in economics at Wits University, says that the Ramaphosa plan is simply a recovery package rather than a stimulus one. He concludes that South Africa has energy, water, transport healthcare and educational problems that need comprehensive fixing^{78: 8}: “We have a huge infrastructure deficit that requires trillions of Rands to get it going for a modern economy. We don’t have capital at all. The money the IDC and others have is not enough for us to address the infrastructure deficit in our country.”
The above reflection is in line with the view of Joffe⁷⁹, who also writes that Ramaphosa’s economic stimulus package is not a stimulus package at all, but the plain replay of a budget previously done^79:2:

There is no new public money going into the economy, and that’s no bad thing given that the government doesn’t have the money to spend. The R400bn of public money that will go into the new SA Infrastructure Fund is simply the infrastructure spending – minus that of the state-owned companies – that government already had on the budget for the next three years. And the R50bn that’s going into new priorities such as black commercial farmers, township and rural economies and bedding for public hospital patients is being shifted somehow from other budgets.

Bruce⁸⁰ describes it as a neither a negative nor a positive plan, but a fiscally neutral one, lacking any improvements to the chaotic economy of the country, while Khumalo⁸¹ says^{81: 10}: “…that to everyone he spoke see it as negative” and that it was merely a reprioritization of money already in the coffer, and indeed no more than a reversal of bad policy decisions and fixing some obvious missteps by Jacob Zuma”.
For Khumalo⁸¹ the best description of the different analyses by commentators is ^81:10: “…was once again the prophesying of an imminent Armageddon for the South African and its economy”. Khumalo⁸¹ him self, tactfully as a professional, describes it the best as follows^81:10: “In layman’s terms, the president, in his capacity as the head of the home, told his family: “Hello guys. We are broke. There is no more money coming. I am not getting a raise. I am not getting a bonus. And I cannot borrow any more money from the bank”.”
The SA Infrastructure Fund is already a mess, writes Joffe^79:2. It is unclear how the new fund will work and how it will be governed, but it seems to be intent only on re-collecting the billions rands already allocated to the government’s fragmented and ineffective infrastructure spending programme. It seems indeed a desperate last effort to steer the money budgeted more effectively and creatively, as well as a hopeful last effort to incorporate outside the fiscal other funds and skills to rehabilitate the economy. The private sector is interested in the recruitment of local private sector funding outside the fiscal, like the private sector’s pension funds and various other sources of private sector funding to improve the economy, but again, when considering the poor financial CV of the ANC regime and their poor relations with the South African private sector, the private sector will be hesitant in the coming three to five years if the ANC wins the 2019 election. The fact that national debt is nearing 60% of revenue (with the potential of growing) and the fiscal is also burdened with the immense liabilities of the SOES and financial collapse of more and more municipalities, makes Ramaphosa’s mission to turn around South Africa’s economy almost impossible. Recovery for South Africa, even under a new responsible and respected political party and government, is a long way off.^{74,77-79,82,84,85}
In the economic and financial chaos it is understandable why it is tempting for Ramaphosa and his men – in an effort to lessen the people’s political and growing economic pressure on him to erase in some way their immense poverty – to execute an extreme land grabbing programme as fast as possible.^{74,77-79,82-85}
Ramaphosa himself describes the outcome of the ANC’s political and economic actions as follows^{78: 8}: “The state is unable to raise borrowing. SA has a debt-to-GDP ratio of about 53%”.
South Africa’s debt-to-GDP leven is 53%, and the general view is that for emerging market nations, the healthy debt-to-GDP level is about 40%. It is not advisable to go beyond this as South Africa has done. Ramaphosa’s planned Stimulus Package seems to be a long term dream and an ideal that can only be reached under an able and competent regime, requirements that the ANC does not meet in the eyes of the antagonists.^{74,77-79,82,84,85}
Land expropriation with full compensation is totally outside the financial ability and reach of the ANC regime. However much the regime would have liked to do it (if it was politically correct), it lacks the capital to do so. In the current unstable South African economy, radical land expropriation is the only option.⁷⁴

3.6.2.2. Unemployment in South Africa

Ramaphosa’s further admission that the country’s growing devastating unemployment is an immense problem is another condemning failure of the ANC. The ANC regime promised and undertook constantly from 1994, before every election, to rectify the unemployment. This constant promise of the ANC regime to rectify unemployment was again manifested in the Ramaphosa Stimulus Package. This promise of Ramaphosa failed dolefully before it started.^{74,77-7982,84,85} When presenting his Stimulus Package, reflecting wistfully on “bettering” the record of the present high unemployment that sits above 27%, Ramaphosa says^{74: 1}: “Governments [as the ANC] are “… usually not very good at creating jobs…We do our little part’. Overall, we are not good at creating jobs. We should be at the top of our game when it comes to being an enabler and being a catalyst.”
With his admission of the ANC’s failure as a government with a specific mandate from its voters to offer them sufficient work opportunities and of their long term failure to run successful job creation programmes in over 24 years of rule, Ramaphosa offers insight into why land expropriation without compensation could be used as a vehicle to solve unemployment.
In this context of the present unemployment of the masses, it is important to mention that when Jacob Zuma came into office (with the support of Ramaphosa as vice-president), he promised to create 5 million jobs in 10 years (2 million per year). Of course, as with the most other ANC promises, this was not met, leading to a situation where the state ended up with a bloated and rather expensive public service instead (by offering jobs in state services to unemployed Blacks and in this way buying votes for the ANC through loyalists). Again, notwithstanding the failed unemployment record of the ANC (and the manifold empty promises), Ramaphosa is trying again to pull a rabbit out of his hat, knowing very well there is not a rabbit to grill for the poor and jobless Blacks. Another way must be found to offer the masses of poor and unemployed Blacks many fat rabbits to grill: land grabbing.⁷⁴ For the antagonists there is clearly one specific outcome at their costs: more land grabbing to solve the hunger of Ramaphosa’s millions of unemployed persons.
For the antagonists South Africa has basically been bankrupted by the ANC and there is no other way for Ramaphosa and his cronies to find the immense capital needed to erase unemployment in their own funding model other than a free hand with land grabbing in the hope to keep in short term the unemployed and landless poor Blacks silent.
The unemployment crisis is central to the ANC’s constant failure with serious political matters and their failure to make a constructive correction away from the foolish and useless so-called 2018 Stimulus Package Plan. They are masking a far more disastrous future situation of an unofficial unemployment percentage of far higher that the reflected official 27%. It has the potential, in combination the other negative political and economic determinants, to derail the political state with anarchy and revolution in the near future. This negative set-up needs further reference. Firstly, to think that the recent control taking of economic structures by the presidency will be a cure to the country’s ineffective economy is wishful thinking. Secondly, the Ramaphosa regime’s belief that they will bring unemployment to zero (0%) in 2030 is laughable. Even lowering the percentage will be to 14% in a decade or two is just not possible in an ANC regime.^{74,77,78,81,86}
These “fantasies” are part of the ANC’s political history, coming from 1994 with their: “we have a good story to tell”. The ANC’s political stories, like their political doings, lack trustworthiness for the antagonists. The ANC regime and its elite are in a mess.^{74,77,78,81,86}
Bruce⁸⁰ consolidates this present mess under the ANC regime well, especially the ANC elite’s constant excuses and proclaimed innocence of involvement in this mess that came with the 24 years of their reign^{80: 20}: “On a more mundane level, we all make choices all the time. Most of us. One creature that never has to make choices is the ANC. It always manages to combine everything it wants into one choice. Come the next election, I guarantee you it will dream up a new list of Five Priorities, whatever they are”.
The next election is in 2019, meaning more new fantasies and promises come from the ANC! Ramaphosa himself is doing exactly what Bruce⁸⁰ identifies as a failing politician^{80: 20}: “…to put a list on top of his priorities instead of putting a priority on top of his list”. The ANC has become well-known for propagating falsities before elections and what has happened in reality is that unemployment (as well as crime, murder, state capture) has gotten out of control in ten years.^{74,77,78,81,86}
Ann Bernstein⁸⁷, the executive director of the Centre for Development and Enterprise, reports that the country’s unemployment crisis is the worst in the world. She reports there are 37.8 million work-age adults, of whom 11.9 million are not economically active (mostly students and school learners), reflecting an unemployment of more than 32%. Of the remaining 25.9 million people, as many as 9.6 million cannot find any work, making it almost two out of every five adults (40%). In terms of the 37.8 million work-age adults, these so-called “not economically active adults” of 11.9 million and the 9.6 million failing to find work, represents nearly 52% of unemployed adults. Seen from another angle, Bernstein⁸⁷ shows that only 43% of adults work (while globally this number is 60%), meaning that 57% are out of work. The growing chaos into which the ANC regime has forced its people, is confirmed by the fact that between 2008 and 2018, the number of work-age adults has grown by 6.3 million, while only 1.9 million (30%) had been employed and 3.2 million stayed unemployed (thus more than 50%). The hard truth is that there is a daily increase of 900 unemployed people in the population. This has been the case for ten years, but Ramaphosa and his ANC elites are very quiet about this as they sit in their highly paid jobs.⁸⁷
Bernstein⁸⁷ delves deeper into the tragic realities created by the ANC since 1994 by reflecting that the position of young people is even worse. They have an unemployment rate of 50% and 400 000 fewer people were employed in 2018 than in 2008 (ten years earlier) despite that he number of young people increasing by 2 million between 2008 and 2018. She writes^{87: 21}: “The 9.6-million unemployed mean that there are more people looking for work in SA than there are people living in seven out of nine provinces, and, if you wanted to reduce the unemployment by half, you would need to create industries that employ 11 times more people than are currently working in the entire mining sector.”
The reasons she offers for unemployment is comprehensive, like the prescription of relatively high minimum wages by the government, the considerable legal protection from dismissal, the failure of job creation projects, most only benefitting a small group of jobseekers, constraints on private firms when employing people, a lack of SMEs and a lack of constructive governmental support to generate such entities, etc.⁸⁷
The writing of Sifiso Skenjana⁸⁸, an investment and economic research specialist, describes Bernstein’s⁸⁷ epitaph on South Africa further in an effort to give Ramaphosa a free diagnosis of the economic reasons for the looming death of the country. He writes that South Africa remains one of the most unequal societies globally in terms of income and wealth distribution. The bottom half of the local workforce receives a meagre 12% of all wages. In this context, he pinpoints that the Oxfam report^88:9, “Reward Work, Not Wealth” reflects that the cost of supporting the needs of one person monthly in South Africa is about R6 460-00, while the minimum wage from the 1st May 2018 is R3 500-00 (reflecting a shortage of R3 000). Using the World Bank’s measure of SA’s Gini-coefficient, it is the highest in the world at 0.63. [Income inequality on the Gini ranges from 0 (excellent) to 1 (worst)]. Skenjana⁸⁸ also shows that poverty levels are rising, quoting Stats SA’s recent report “Poverty Trends in South Africa”, which says that the poverty head count increased from 53.2% in 2011 to 55.5% in 2015. Taking into account that the down-spiral of the country is a constant feature (like the debt-to-GDP ratio accelerating from 32% in 1990/91 to 53% in 2017/18), there is no hope of a turn-around on any of these statistics, only a desperate hope to decrease some of this negative numbers.⁸⁸
The above comprehensive profile on South Africa’s economic chaos brings us back to the “Ramaphosa solution” in which poverty, inequality and unemployment are seen as the same things that can and must be tackled simultaneously to be nullified. In his solution land grabbing is one of the main means and the easiest solution to better the ANC’s poor financial profile. White land grabbing offers an open door to get entrance to exclusive capital, to not only generate free capital without cost to the state so that they can satisfy the poor and landless’ growing needs and demands, but also to assure cohesion inside the ANC’s voter contingent. But, as with most of the ANC’s solutions for politics and economics, these radical ANC politicians lack the ability to reason and tell how they are going to do the land grabbing, writes Bruce^{80: 20}. What these ANC politicians miss as a result of their lack of expertise, is that the causes of and the solution to unemployment, poverty and inequality differ immensely, making land grabbing as a solution to any one of these three problems, null and void. As a guideline for the Ramaphosa regime Bruce profers^{80: 20}: “Poverty is caused by the absence of money or assets. Inequality results from the presence of money. Poverty is the first priority to fix [and must thus be on top of the list as a priority]. Unemployment is often caused by employers being deterred from hiring people”. This means to bring down unemployment there must be less rigid and senseless official employment rules inside the country’s unstable politics. Bruce⁸⁰ writes further^{80: 20}: “…but then politics makes an appearance, because to lighten the load on employees, or to make it worthwhile to be an employer, requires, to an extent, disempowering the trade unions and we can’t have that [because Cosatu and its affiliates are alliances of the ANC]. At the end the ANC has become his own prison warden”.
This emphasis on the mismanagement of the current South Africa points to Albright’s identification of the presence of fascism in the ANC’s government system so that the partisans’ (like the trade unions) obtain part or full control of the traditionally independent institutions of democracy, making the economics and democracy of the country a failure on the one hand, while on the other hand the capital and assets of the moderate to rich persons look attractive for grabbing. When the unions and the partisans come from the majority of the population and they also formed the radical government of the day, outcomes such as the ANC elite’s decision to do land grabbing become an obvious and a natural reaction in an uncontrolled and disorderly society under an uncontrolled and disorderly regime.^75,76,80
The alliance with the workers and their primary (individual, citizen, worker and so-called false democratic) rights at the cost of the functional private business sector and individuals is closely linked to its economic failure. These distinctions are taking on a racist tone, with the minority group of Whites as the losers). In this context the ANC’s basic political and economic policies, thinking, planning and doing has become cemented in revolution and fascism via the unions. This explains the shying away of the private business sector and their fight to keep sustainable democracy and private capital out of reach of the ANC’s tentacles in South Africa. Prominent in this grabbing of Whites assets is Cosatu and its affiliates’ contaminated political roles and influences in the past inside the ANC alliance, together with their current continuation of foolish and outdated revolutionary political thinking and doing. It is many times more radical politically than the already politically and socioeconomically radical ANC. It is impossible for the ANC to end its relationship with the trade unions: they are instead forced to pamper their sacred partners because of the basic empowerment by the partisans of the ANC to stay in power after 2019.^85,89
Khumalo’s⁸⁹ question on the future of the labour unions is significant^89:13: “…one couldn’t help but wonder whether Cosatu, and the trade unions in general, still have relevance to the workers of SA”. This irrelevance was erased by the indestructibility of the ANC’s dependence on the unions’ ongoing massive power at the voting boxes. The arrogant ideas and demands of the secretary-general of Nafcor, Monga Phaladi⁸⁵, that billions in cash in the private sector must be made available to the public sector by means of a “social compact” is a good example of how the unions abuse their power.^85,89
Phaladi⁸⁵ seems to overlook the risk that private money would go down the drain, as happened with the state’s money when it was captured by the Zuptoids with this obligation he puts on the private business sector to service the needs of the unions by whatever means they think well. His suggestion^85:13: “From corporations’ side, it would be an extremely good gesture if the CEOs of the top 40 on the JSE donated their 2019 increases to a fund run by a council of eminent South Africans to support good causes that have an economic impact”, shows a lack of understanding of sound business principles. Phaladi⁸⁵ makes no reference to the ANC MPs and ANC ministers or of himself making the same kinds of contributions to his 2019-helpline. Or is this expected donation by the top 40 on the JSE in line with the ANC’s grab-and-run policy from its early revolutionary days that is echoed by their intended land expropriation?⁸⁵
The closed-door politics of the private business sector and their immense fighting by all means behind the curtains of the political hooligans in the ANC and EFF on the nationalization of private assets and capital has made it impossible since 1994 for the radicals in the ANC to put their hands on the private funds in the private business sector. The White farming sector has less of a defence against the land expropriation attack of the radicals in the ANC because of the open door that the Apartheid history created. This situation makes land ownership ideal as a first step towards their greater project of nationalization of White assets. At the same time land expropriation as a mean of nationalization offers direct free capital/assets with which the ANC regime can solve the Black unemployment, Black poverty and inequality. Thirdly, land expropriation can become a political powerbase for the ANC regime to obtain voters’ support from the poor and landless Blacks in the 2019 election.

3.6.2.3 Constant decline of politics and economics

On inspection is it clear that the dire economic situation of South Africa will only continue to worsen, unless the ANC regime of 2019 can reform itself and stabilise its governing system, policies, vision, mission and short- and long-term aims to assure greater confidence so that they can get private support and capital by creating and promoting of a healthier environment for the business sector. The Ramaphosa regime has thus far failed on all the business and political markers to do a positive turn-around. It is significant that the Zuma regime’s crooks have not yet been purged from the system. In one of South Africa’s partners in BRICS there has been a cleansing of corrupted state servants. Until June 2018, 144 executives, bureaucrats and political actors had been sentenced to more than 1 464 years in jail, while the Gupta’s and Zuma specific are still all free and respected burghers.⁹⁰
The antagonists believe that South Africa’s crisis of governance that started in 1994 has led to an economic crisis with time, bringing down democracy and its good rules. It is now at the point where it is making criminal behaviour in government possible. The ANC is turning to land-grabbing to distract the attention from the ANC regime’s manifold failures and unsolvable crises. They also offer the poor and landless false hope and financial solutions for the poverty, unemployment and inequality. Land expropriation without compensation from Whites is central to this false solutions.⁹⁰ Davies pinpoints the only solution to these manifold crises very well with his short remark^{90: 3}: “Until the politics are fixed, there is little vision for the economy”.
For the antagonist, the above proves that Ramaphosa and the ANC do not have the political ability and trustworthiness to be mandated rulers of South Africa. Nelson Mandela failed to turn Jacob Zuma and Cyril Ramaphosa into good political heirs. The antagonists have started to publically questioning the continuation of the present Ramaphosa-ANC regime after analysing the recent insignificant Ramaphosa economic Stimulus Package and Ramaphosa’s many ongoing commissions of inquiry through which it seems he is walking a political path without a destination.^{74,77,78,91,92}
Mthombothi⁹¹ rightfully describes the worrying aetiology of the many useless Ramaphosa commissions without a clear destinantion^91:17: “We now have these commissions coming out of our ears. It seems our president can’t help himself”. Mthombothi⁹¹elaborates further^91:17:
“The commissions could end up tripping over each other though. We have the all-compassing state capture commission under Raymond Zondo and the Nugent inquiry into the devastation at Sars. This week Ramaphosa obliged with another, one that will investigate poor decisions and possible corruption at the PIC that could cost the country billions.”
Bruce⁹² elaborates on Ramaphosa’s use of commissions to indicate how it relates to his failing leadership^92:16: “Now he is thinking about a parallel inquiry into the so-called “rogue unit” story at Sars, which led to the forced departures of some of its best managers”. (Note: these good managers departed not only under Zuma as president, but also under Ramaphosa as vice-president). Bruce⁹² pinpointed this leadership failure of Ramaphosa further with the reference^92:16: “Ramaphosa has an inspired way of “not doing anything”. For the antagonists the question is essential: if there is not quality and sound leadership in the ANC at present, how can there be quality and sound economics? In this context the antagonists feel that the hard facts already show that there is no quality and sound economics at the moment in South Africa under the ANC and that the country is in a constant down spiral of politics and economics. The question is pertinent for the antagonists: What are awaiting South Africans in general and the Whites under attack specific because of their land ownership?
Mthombothi⁹¹ further reveals the current comprehensive political instability of the Ramaphosa-ANC regime. In addition, the ANC regime under the stumbling leadership of Ramaphosa has to cope also with a low-level civil war in parts of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), specifically among the ANC members. Mthombothi⁹¹, in reference to the status of the ANC leadership of Ramaphosa in KZN, reflects^91:17: “[the] region where he is least popular is almost an understatement. He is reviled by some in his own party”. Mthombothi⁹¹ elaborates further^91:17:

People are being butchered almost daily in townships and even small rural villages up and down the province. The country averts its eyes. It doesn’t want to know. AS KwaZulu-Natal premier Willies Mchunu noted when tabling the report [the Moerane commission of Inquiry into political killings in KwaZulu-Natal] before the legislature last month, these killings are taking place at local government level. And they continue unabated. Another councillor was gunned down in Umlazi, outside Durban, on Thursday night. No big deal. It’s when high-profile politicians, such as Sindiso Magaqa, the former secretary-general of the ANC Youth League, are killed that the country takes note. Violence has almost become our way of life.
The problem for KZN is that the police and its intelligence services have been compromised. They have found to be complicit in most of the murders, killing for one faction or the other, or simply turning a blind eye.

Bruce⁹² also reflects on the growing insufficient governing of the total South Africa by the Ramaphosa-ANC regime.
For the antagonists, two questions become pertinent when they look at the way the ANC regime has cranked the South African economy lifeless; their current senseless actions like land-grabbing to solve unsolvable economic problems; and their focussed attack on the racial unity created by Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki. Firstly, are these fatalistic actions of Ramaphosa and the ANC elite culminating of their political obituaries written in anticipation?^74,77,78 Secondly, as it becomes more and more clear for the antagonists that the country is moving towards a total collapse fast due to the failure of the ANC as a democratic and effective regime, is there any sense to hang on to land ownership while their lives can be the first to be lost? The anarchy in the Black areas of KZN and the failure of the police and the intelligence services to safeguard even other Black lives in KZN is becoming a wake-up call for antagonists all over South Africa to think very, very deeply about their future in South Africa after 2019. Prominent, as said, is land ownership.⁹¹
What is prominent for the antagonists at this stage is that as the country’s economy becomes more lifeless, the more extreme land expropriation without compensation will be forced down on the Whites to draw every sent of their assets and to distract attention from messes of the politically ill ANC. Only a new political party can make a turn-around and even then it will take the new regime years to re-establish some form of stability and self-respect in the country’s psyche.

3.6.3. The ANC’s political and business models

The antagonists argue that the ANC regime’s business and political model with which to plan and to run large state enterprises with success from 1994 to 2019 is one enormous failure. This stems basically from the ANC party’s inability as a liberation organization to create and to add to the value of any existing enterprise under its jurisdiction (This inclination to fail is a world-wide phenomenon of most of liberation movements that came to power as governments). The ANC’s financial and managerial failures are aggravated by the corruption inherent to the system, which is reflected by the state capture on all the financial and political levels during its governance of South Africa.^93-97

3.6.3.1. State enterprises

Steenhuisen⁹⁸ points out when reflecting on the ANC’s various forms of financial delinquency, that in state-owned entities alone it has resulted in R161 -billion being wasted on bailouts, subsidies and capital injections since 2008, while at the South African Revenue Service, state-capture and mismanagement has gobbled up R140 billion in lost revenues. The known losses suffered are be more than R300 billion (22% of the national revenue budget for the period 2017/2018).⁹⁸
What is of further concern for the antagonists is the financial mismanagement inside the civil service. The total turn-over of the state enterprises under the supervision of the Department of Public Enterprises for 2017 to 2018 was R284 billion, but in total they incurred a loss of R1.6 billion. (The total assets of these state enterprises are more than R1100 billion, with 124 616 employees). Some of these enterprises current financial functioning is so poor and substandard that many experience difficulty to pay their employees’ monthly salaries, while creditors are often not paid. Many of these enterprises are under strain just to stay viable in the short term, while long-term sustainability is a question. What makes it very problematic to obtain a full profile of the financial status of civil enterprises in the past regarding their loss and corruption/fraud count is the absence of legal leverage to force them to indicate illegal spending. Corruption also goes unpunished.⁹⁹
Constant failures include the SABC, SAA, Denel, Transnet, Telkom, public education and healthcare, public universities, municipalities. Added to this there is the ANC regime’s inability to oversee and control private enterprises to safeguard the state and the public’s money as reflected by the fraud that characterized over a long period the VBS Mutual Bank, the African Bank and Steinhoff.^100,101
The mismanagement of the municipalities where the ANC is mostly in charge shows a chaotic history of stealing, corruption, poor service delivery, etc. Prominent is the lack of water delivery to residents or the unlawful actions and lack of respect for democracy. Regarding the delinquent behaviour and actions of many ANC-run municipalities that cut off water to living areas, Phephelaphi Dube¹⁰⁰, the director at the Centre for Constitutional Rights, said municipalities must in such a case provide alternative ways to provide residents with access to water. These kinds of delinquent behaviours are indeed juridical misdemeanours and should result in criminal prosecution, but there are never court cases.¹⁰⁰ A said Kagiso Mere¹⁰⁰ reports that the lack of water at his area forces him to take three hours off work every day to collect water for household use. The total chaos in which he must try to live every day, he describes in short but comprehensive^{100: 6}: “My boss understands, because he’s also affected. The municipality has endangered our lives. There is s**t everywhere. They were meant to provide us with services, but instead they build themselves nice homes with tar roads to the mayor’s guesthouse”.
At Koster in the North West province, the mismanagement of the ANC mayor and her cronies lead to a situation where she and ten of her councillors had to flee for their lives and hide in “a safe place” in Rustenburg in June 2018, reports Hosken^{100: 6}.
Municipal IQ economist Karen Heese¹⁰¹ reports that the situation for municipalities is very negative, specifically those situated in Limpopo, the Northern Cape and North West where the ANC is mostly in charge. It is mostly due to poor managerial capacity and substandard performances of officials and councillors representing the ANC. It started with a lack of provincial oversight of financial planning by the ANC regime. Only 40% of the municipalities have enough cash or cash equivalents to pay their creditors. It reflects the failure of the ANC regime’s local government business model. A critical analysis shows that only 7% of the country’s municipalities are classified as well functioning, 31% as reasonably functional, 31% as almost dysfunctional and 31% as dysfunctional or distressed.^100,101
In most of these clear failures it seems that the ANC elite are often the prominent culprits who engage in money capture and fraud or through associated crooked enterprises. These excellent examples of the ANC elite’s inabilities and lack of skills to manage the country on middle level, further aggravated by their practice of corruption as a daily custom in their work capacities and responsibilities, are in the view of the antagonists also now present in their land reform initiative to create a so-called immense contingent of Black farmers in the future and to erase Black poverty and landlessness. The lack of integrity and honesty with regard to financial and political matters in the government, together with widespread corruption, nepotism and fraud, as well as the well-planned execution of state capture by the top brass of the ANC regime between 1994 and 2019, and their attitude of “don’t care” for the poor and landless Blacks, is seen as ominous for any form of land redistribution from 2019 and onwards. There is no safety net for corruption and misuse. This emphasizes failure of the ANC due to its liberator’s heritage.^{43,44,93-97,102}

3.6.3.2. The Reserve and Land Banks under attack

With regard to business entities like the Reserve Bank and the Land Bank, these entities do their best to steer clear of direct conflicts with the ANC regime on the matter of land grabbing. The fact is that the Reserve Bank can with little effort be nationalized, seeing that only the Act on the Reserve Bank must be changed, which in practice can be done with a general majority decision in parliament. It will be more difficult for the ANC to attack the Reserve Bank’s mandate, seeing that is written into the Constitution and needs a 67% majority to activate change. Given how tempting this is for the ANC and EFF radicals, the Reserve Bank has warned the ANC regime that nationalization is an exercise of which the long-term consequences can be very expensive for the government.^103,104
The Land Bank survived years of corruption, looting and maladministration to make a wonderful comeback to become South Africa’s only professional and profit-making state-owned running institution. The irresponsible land grabbing hunger and talks of persons like Ramaphosa and Malema forced its CEO, Tshokolo Nchocho¹⁰³, to take a tactful stand by warning of the collapse of the Bank if the ANC fails to adhere to some economic sanity. The CEO pointed out the present ANC leadership’s failure to respect the constitution and their interest in using the Land Bank as another vehicle to promote land grabbing as well as state capture^{103: 9}: “…the noise and the uncertainty make our work difficult as development bankers using commercial solutions and commercial resources to address social needs such as employment and enterprise creation”; and: “It is deeply regrettable that this kind of work gets contaminated in the dust of political rhetoric”.
It is clear for Nchocho¹⁰³, as it is for the antagonists that in this dust of political rhetoric the ANC elite, including Ramaphosa, fails to sort out for themselves what they mean with an “explicit” policy on land expropriation. Even the previous finance minister, Nhlanhla Nene, who must know the results of land grabbing and nationalization well and must surely be well-informed on the matter after his intimate experience with the Guptas, seems to have, as the rest of the ANC’s radicals, limited insight on the matter if the following remark of Nchocho¹⁰³ is true^103:9: “Finance minister Nhlanhla Nene has now instructed the Land Bank to provide him with a risk assessment on what expropriation without compensation could mean for the bank”. For a seasoned senior minister, trusted with the keys of the money coffer of the country, to ask such a basic question, is seen by the antagonists as an indication that the nationalization of the Land Bank in the near future has become a reality (again, notes the Guptas in Nune’s earlier past). It emphasizes for the antagonists the blurred and troubled mindset into which the ANC leadership has drifted on human rights, racial doctrine and business ethics.¹⁰³
To highlight why the Land Bank is a tempting vehicle to promote land grabbing, the following can be mentioned. Firstly, farmers owe the bank R49 billion while the bank itself has liabilities to the tune of R41 billion, meaning every sent will be at risk if farms are confiscated. The bank is completely dependent on outside funders like the Development Bank of Southern Africa, the local fund management industry, the European Investment Bank and the World Bank. These are strong role players in advocating for a good government and who can, if they pull the plug, or just partly back out for fear of land expropriation without compensation, erase the bank’s credit status, bringing fast bankruptcy. It is clear that any action that affects the credit quality of loans and endangering loan repayments will cause its funders to step back. What is the ANC radicals don’t see is the fact that the bank is already a crucial funder of commercial as well as emerging Black farmers. A substantial portion of its loans are production loans, meaning that a pullback by funders will affect agricultural productivity and food security, jobs and transformation of ownership to Black farmers.^103,105 Nchocho pointed out the following^103:9: “If expropriation without compensation is not handled carefully, the likely consequences don’t bear thinking about”; and: “…the worst-case scenario in the event of widespread expropriation and the removal of property rights is ‘the real destruction of the economic base of agriculture, as well as the economy of the entire country’”.
The plain fact is that bank loans are guaranteed by the National Treasury, and if it must make good on banks that default, it would cause a financial burden on the Treasury, which is already under strong financial pressure. Economic and financial chaos can follow fast.¹⁰³ The risk for commercial banks in a mad exercise of land expropriation without compensation, whether or not it secures credit for farmers or not, can descend into a chaos in the country’s banking sector and specifically for the Reserve Bank as a pivot.^103,105 Our weak economy means that the Reserve Bank cannot take a negative financial experience of this kind alone as Nortjè points out^105:9: “There isn’t enough fat in the system for the Reserve Bank to bail out another bank [like African Bank].

3.6.3.3. Impact of the current rule

The chaotic outcome described above^103,106,107, activated by the autocratic and blind man style of political thinking and rule of the ANC since 1994, is also well-illustrated by Kuseni Dlamini¹⁰⁶, the chair of Aspen Pharmacare and Massmart Holdings, in his perspective on the 10th BRICS Summit of July 2018, by identifying three crucial shortcomings in the ANC regime’s (and now also Ramaphosa’s) reign since 1994^106:9:
1) A lack of investors’ confidence and growth-enhancing structural reforms under the ANC. Prominent in this total context are the absence of fit-for-purpose state-owned enterprises as result of the ANC’s style of tolerance of mediocrity and corruption, lack of a culture of high performance, lack of accountability, and a lack of consequence management and leadership of integrity and quality. The question is: how can the country attract foreign investors as its local investors lack trust in the government;
2) The ANC’s aimless and confusing intention of land expropriation without compensation is a driver away of investors: they want to know precise the imbalance in land ownership is going to be executed. So far the ANC only reflects their outdated liberation instinct;
3) The ANC’s failed policy on the mining economy and its future ownership as result of the ongoing policy of uncertainty and unpredictability of the ANC regime on a clear and sound Mining Charter. The hard fact is that the South African mining-sector is a thin shadow of its past as a contributor to the country’s coffer or to employment. Where in the 1970s to 1980s every R100 made in the economy so much as R21 came from the mining, is it contributed now only R7 to the economy.
The ANC’s radicals who promote RST and RET, which includes land- and mine expropriation, don’t see the devastating effect on the upkeep of current employment when dead and dying gold- and other kinds of mining towns emerge and the sources of salaries, which assure the functioning of poor towns in Eastern Cape, stop. Add to this the food shortages that can follow after the land grabbing of White farms and the collapse of food production, as happened in Zimbabwe. This makes the antagonists fear a fourth industrial revolution. Again, in this present chaos of the country’s economics, Black poverty and joblessness, promising already only better lifestyles for a few fortunate ones, while unemployment among the untrained in the diminishing labour market will gear-up at high speed. It seems as if the radicals lack some constructive and responsible future and strategy on what economics, work availability (forget growth), society- and family stability are.^103,106,108
The basic outcomes of above aimless political thinking, planning and actions by the ANC elite have led to a lack of trust and cooperation for the local business sector. This is a situation which is further aggravated by the government’s ignoring of the talents of the local business sector to bring know-how and solutions to the government’s (mostly self-created) problems. The local business sector should take a prominent position in policy-making to advance the greater society’s interests directly in government. It’s a setup which will mean balanced control of state affairs and the end of the ANC’s way of ruling. Instead the local business sector is made a permanent and sometimes a very hostile opposition.¹⁰⁶
Indeed, distrust of the ANC regime as a governmental safe-keep of taxpayer money is very high amongst many South Africans, not only for the antagonists. An international 2016 study that tested the opinions of the citizens of various African countries as percentages indicates respectively the following trust counts: 73% for Namibia, 71% for Tanzania and 50% for Mozambique, while the count was only 40% for South Africa. This outcome offers strong support for the anti-land-transformers’ objections to any form of future land redistribution; basically because it is seen as another public enterprise failure: not only because the ANC regime lacks managerial ability and skills, but because it lacks most of all honesty on money-matters. The ANC regime is soaked in corruption and theft of state assets. These, again, are all actions, as already indicated, which seem to be driven by ANC’s liberator’s selfishness and opportunism and its aim to the exclusive enrichment of a few ANC elites.^93-97
The antagonists associate what they think is a certain devastating “Zuma corruption outcome” of the ANC’s pending land redistribution as something that is cemented in most liberation organizations when they come to rule. Such organizations, notwithstanding many political face-lifts, never change their corrupted mindsets. Radical political thinking, planning and doing stay the centre of al liberation movements and it becomes clear when the regime starts to fail the country and its people’s interests. Extreme actions (like we are seeing in Venezuela, Zimbabwe and Sudan), ignoring the short- or long-term consequences to assure political and racial harmony and economic stabilities, follows and it takes years to repair. The way Angola went down-hill during the reign of José Eduardo dos Santos and the crooked Dos Santos family’s endemic corruption for the duration of his 38-year reign (only 14 years more than the ANC’s reign where a Jacob Zuma and his son Duduzane and daughter Duduzile were allegedly also busy with delinquent actions), could not be turned around by Joäo Lourenço since 2014. This is basically because, although the new president tried in public his best to remove members of the Dos Santos family from top government posts and charges were laid against crooked officials, the country leadership fails again because the new leader, Lourenço, was a contaminated member of the Dos Santos regime that he now tries to fight. As the leaders in current Zimbabwe after Mugabe, he is just continuing on another path of political sickness in a corrupted African liberation movement and it is devastating Angola’s economics and international integrity (although less openly as under José Eduardo dos Santosa.^{38,43,44,69,73,102,109–117}
The above Angolan political delinquent path, the antagonists reflect, is fully in line with the ANC’s political delinquency since 1994 and a regime in which Ramaphosa as the new president was also a prominent role-player as parliamentarian and vice-president from day one. Political chaos and economic chaos go hand-in-hand in the future ANC regime. For the antagonists the IMF’s structural adjustment programme that Angola is now facing is not far away for the incurable South African political sickness. Note and remember the reality: The ANC is a prominent liberation-movement-cum-government: indeed, the oldest in Africa.^{38,43,44,69,73,102,109,111-117}
Venezuela is very similar to the ANC’s foolish political reign since 1994. The antagonists point out that in Venezuela, where Nicolás Maduro at present reigns, the currency Bolivar was previously nearly a dozen times devalued by his predecessor Hogo Chávez (1999–2013); a process started for the first time by his predecessor president Luis Herrera Campins in 1983. Chávez himself chopped three zeroes off the currency a decade ago. In August 2018, Venezuela started with a currency devaluation of 95% under Maduro, taking the country further into hunger and hyperinflation. At present the country’s inflation is running over 100 000%. Food and medicine are scarce, while more than 3 million citizens have fled to neighbouring countries. Maduro’s economic plan, as Zuma’s and now it seems Ramaphosa’s, was marked by inconsistencies, lacking clear specifications on aims, developments and plans, and of course saturated by corruption and disrespect for the Venezuelans. Maduro is turning Venezuela into a basket case, far removed from its previous status as one of Latin America’s wealthiest countries. South Africa is moving in the same direction in the view of the antagonists.¹¹⁸
For the antagonists South Africa’s similar failure loomed with the technical recession in August 2018. Ramaphosa’s search for $100 billion in foreign investments will become a hollow call if his expropriation without compensation starts to run. Money can leave the country faster than it comes in. His attraction of foreign capital since he took the leadership based on “secured commitments of R464 billion worth of investment from China, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the UK”, is prominent in his political rhetoric. These “letters of intent” are something else than true investments: last is determined by political stability, not the instability in the class of Angola, Venezuela, Zimbabwe and Sudan.^43,44,119
The resistance by critics, especially the White land owners and capital holders, to the ANC’s intended land redistribution, is more than justified and understandable in the context of the ANC’s liberation and crooked inclinations and doings in this context since 1994. For the antagonists the present conflict around land ownership has one tragic outcome: There is going to be one winner: the ANC, and one loser: the White land owners.

3.6.4. The ANC’s economics viewed critically

3.6.4.1. The failure of the ANC’s economic plans since 1994

Current South African political and economic researchers are in agreement with Geen’s opinion of more than 80 years ago that a an improved economy and social functioning for South Africa can only be delivered by the job market of urban areas, and not an economy bound to the rural farming setup. The antagonists believe that this must be also the main aim and focus of the ANC regime. The current opportunistic and radical socioeconomic reform by the ANC regime, with their emphasis on a “back to the country” redeployment of masses of poor and landless Blacks on farmland to be expropriated exclusively from White farmers, needs evaluation and description. This planned socioeconomic engineering is reminiscent of the communist regimes in Russia under Stalin and China under Mao. As in the failed Russian-Chinese-experiment on land-reform and their redeployment of people to the countryside, “masses” of people are central in the planned Ramaphosa-ANC-back-to-the-country-scheme. In terms of South Africa’s population of between 50 and 55 million, “masses” means nothing less than the majority of people, which can be between 25 and 30 million persons. The rural placement of even 10% of the South African population (meaning 5 to 6 million of the population out of 50 to 55 million) for a successful living on the “to be expropriated” White farmland, is not in any way economically viable or sustainable. It is a doomed scheme. This dooming last resort by the ANC regime to address the country’s many seemingly unbridgeable economic ills and crises with radical actions like land grabbing, makes it prominent to ask the question what the ANC regime did so far in terms of other economic plans and initiatives since 1994 to better South Africa before they fell into despair.^120-122
In light of above economic and financial negativity, is it important to reflect on the business plans and initiatives based on an urban-rural-orientation of the ANC regime since 1994. Firstly, the ANC’s must promote the National Development Plan (NDP) of job creation via small and medium enterprises (SME) as a successful policy intervention for upliftment the poor Blacks. A research project by the SBI (the old Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut) shows that the ANC misuses estimates that lack hard evidence in the reflection of their so-called SME-successes, writes Joffe.¹²¹The ANC regime has failed to create small enterprises, notwithstanding it’s NDP “caring policy”. This outcome of failure was reflected by the Indaba on small businesses held in July 2018, which pointed out the ANC’s failed economic policy to nurture small and medium enterprises. Indeed, the notion of the National Development Plan that SMEs will create most of South Africa’s growth and jobs (the vision of the sector is to create 90% of 11 million new jobs by 2030 and contribute 60% to 80% of the GDP growth), is “little more than a pipe dream”.^120-122
Joffe¹²¹ shows, using the findings of the SBI, that the formal SME-sector (defined as firms registered for tax purposes and which employ fewer than 200 people) is much les than as the ANC’s rhetoric reflects (disarming their claims of a strong SME-sector). This group (classed as small- medium and micro-enterprises) represents only about a quarter of a million (250 000) enterprises with a contribution to employment to South Africa of only 28% job absorption (against a global of 60% to 70%), notwithstanding the fact that it forms 98.5% of all the registered firms in 2016. This finding is drastically lower than the estimated 1.2 million between 6 million postulates by the ANC regime in reflecting on their initiative to better the South African economy. Fifty-six per cent of jobs are provided by 1 000 larger enterprises, which includes the government as an employer (which is show to over-employs wherein political loyalty at the voting-box plays a strong role). A study by RED13X3 of the University of Cape Town reveals that the informal business sector, consisting of 1.4 million enterprises which are functioning outside the tax-net, provides only more or less 17% employment, mostly at a very low level of payment. Most formal SMEs are struggling in a very hostile business environment, varying from regulatory hurdles, red tape, as well as a lack of access to capital and skills development. Their contribution to the cross inland GDP is also relatively lower than previously reflected by the ANC regime in praising their false economic initiatives. Joffe¹²¹ also reports that more than 60% of them employ fewer than 10 people and that about 70% of them fail within the first two years of start-up.^120-124
Research by the Small-business Institute, supported by data of South African Income Services(SAID), shows in short the following South African setup in 2016: 176 333 micro-enterprises (fewer than 10 workers, accommodating 5.1% workers), 68 494 SMEs (11 to 50 workers, accommodating 11% workers), and 17 397 middle-level enterprises (51 to 200 workers, accommodating 12% workers). In total SMEs accommodated 3 863 104 persons, or 29% of working South Africans.^121,124
For the antagonists this failure by the ANC regime is a clear warning of an economy in decline, reflecting growing poverty and a failed ANC regime coming from 1994.¹²¹ In this regard is it important to note that in 2011 the South African economy was R5.7 trillion, while it retracted to R4.8 trillion in 2018.^121,125
Exclusive land redistribution without compensation as a successful way to reform South Africa’s collapsing economy, racial inequality and Black poverty, is a failed option as Stalin’s Russia and Mao’s China already confirm and which the present radical land reform in Venezuela is in the process of confirming. Land redistribution without compensation will only contribute further to decrease and to degrade the South African economy. If the ANC’s economic plans and initiatives since 1994 could not move the country positively, how can land stealing do better?^121-123,126
Speckman¹²³ warning is pertinent when writes^{123: 5}: “South Africa is on the brink of a fiscal cliff and unless the economy improves significantly the government could find itself in Washington, cap in the hand, begging a rescue package from the IMF.”
The technical recession that kicked in September 2018 can be the final straw breaking the ANC regime’s back. They have already started begging as its BRICS-partner, Brazil, is already doing.¹²³
Derby¹²⁵, with his eye on a seemingly unavoidable future IMF intervention in South Africa as a result of the ANC regime’s ongoing economic failures, notwithstanding their attempts, points out the origin of it in its revolutionary and radical economics foundation, spelling only doomed economic and political outcomes. This focuses the attention on the immense lack of economic and political talent of Ramaphosa and his men to bring a New Dawn to current South Africa, to be the result of “birds of the same feathers coming from the failed Zuma regime”; in the present political context only the “sound bites have changed”, like the absence of the term “radical”, when government officials and ANC politicians speak of economic transformation. Does this absence of political and economic radicalism now mean that the nationalization of banks and mines are dead? Derby’s¹²⁵ answer in this context is sharp^125:2: “The answer is quite simply no. It’s an argument that will live again, but, with the country closing in on possible IMF assistance (should the economy not move into high gear, and soon), it’s one that lies dormant. However, as an idea, it lives on and will be recycled some time in the future, when the state of plays allows.”
The ANC elite’s radicalism on land grabbing may also become dormant in 2019 in the ANC regime’s search for IMF assistance. It will become more aggressive in practice when the circumstances for ANC radicalism arise again. The safe-net of the Western economy, notwithstanding the “re-colonization” of South Africa after 1994 by the Chinese and Russians and the ANC’s hostile rhetoric against the West, especially the USA, can be the only rescuer of South Africa after 2019.¹²⁵
For the antagonists the fact is there that the country is in a far worse position at present than when the ANC regime implemented their other economic plan, namely the five-year Growth, Employment, and Redistribution Strategy (Gear) in 1996. It was supposedly focused on privatization and the removal of exchange control, but it failed because of the revolutionary/liberation ideology that incorporated the radicalism of the trade unions and the communists on the ownership of land. Notwithstanding a short-term improvement in the economy with raw-material exports to China after 1994, this economic positivity was erased inside the ANC’s failed economic-political system, while the ANC’s failed policy brought constant economic uncertainty. This poor economic situation was further aggravated by the failure of the state-owned institutions to be free from corruption, mismanagement and state capture (while last-mentioned came down directly because of the ANC regime’s revolutionary/liberations ideology that had effected its integrity, political standards and ethics).^123,127,128
South Africa’s debt-to-GDP, as well as the growing annual shortfall versus income, is another good example of the constant failure of the economic plans and initiatives of the ANC regime, which is bringing the country in economic disarray. From a 27.8% debt-to-GDP ratio in 2008 it has risen to record high of over 53% in 2017, moving upwards to the 60% notch now. The debt-to-GDP ratio forecast by the Treasury for the 2020–2023 financial year, is 56% (from the previous 60%). Although this number is far from the 180% of Greece, George Glynos warns, the MD of ETM Analytics, the movement to the 60% mark spells danger. It is important to note that the GDP has risen from 25% at the end of Trevor Manuel’s tenure as finance minister with a pick-up on the start-up of the Zuma presidency and the followed-up ministers to rise to 50%, before moving to 53%.^123,127-129
With regard to the country’s income it is important to reflect that the National Treasury collected R71.34 billion for the 2017–2018 financial year and is predicting an additional R1.22 billion for 2018–2019, leaving shortfall of nearly R48 to R50 billion. This shortfall is pushed-up by Zuma’s feeble fee-free higher education and training scheme (accepted without obstruction by the ANC regime and its leaders like Ramaphosa), accepted in December 2017 and requiring a further R57 billion in new allocation over the next three years. This means a deficit of R28 billion and R57 billion (R85-billion) respectively for 2018–2019, funding that is only solvable by borrowing or by the rising tax, which has a domino effect on investment, consumption, standard of living, job creation and inequality. The severity of this domino effect of constant and growing shortfalls is confirmed by the paying of R180 billion this year alone in interest charges. For Khumalo the present failed ANC regime’s economics only spells chaos when he looks at the allocation of R85-billion against a mere R36-billion from tax increases in this year’s budget.^123,127,128
It must also be noted, writes Speckman,^129:4 that, notwithstanding a spending cut of R85 billion for 2018–2019 and the revising of the budget deficit over the next two years down to 3.6% from 4.3%, the total expenditure in reality for the coming year is R1.67 trillion, which negatively represents a 2% real growth in expenditure. David French, tax consulting director of Mazars, points out that South Africa has been steadily increasing its official spending levels for a number of years now, with negative consequences for the economics, as the technically recession starting in September 2018 confirms. This failed economic setup of the ANC regime makes the constant worry over the growing debt-to-GDP understandable. Inside this failed economic network it is also clear why the value of land deprecated with nearly 30% this year, even before land grabbing became a prominent and controversial issue.^123,127-129
As were with Stalin and Mao in their ongoing failed political regimes (driven by a political system of Communism characterized by corruption, suppression, state-capture under autocracy), the present ANC regime and Ramaphosa need a drastic attention distraction from their ongoing failed economic policy to stay in power after 2019. Inside the context of distraction and political manipulation, the internalized characteristics of the ANC as a revolutionary movement, offers land expropriation without compensation, an excellent opportunity for the ANC regime to do the so-called “donkey’s carrot” kind of economic upliftment of its poor and landless Black supporters while costing the ANC regime basically nothing.^123,127-129
For the antagonists the ANC regime with its total failure to create wealth through SME and to erase the debt-to-GDP, together with their intended land expropriation without compensation, is as a wantonly agent, not only to impoverish the land’s White agriculture sector, but to keep in place the syndrome of a masses of “poor and landless Blacks” as a “partisan powerbase” to overrule and limit the democratic statutory institutes and the Constitution. This crooked political setup that had kept the ANC in power since 1994 with its executive top-leader, was the basis of Jacob Zuma’s reign and is now spilling over to the Ramaphosa-reign. The main aim of this ANC political delinquency is to diminish and limited the development and presence of a strong Black middle class [leaving a small group of favoured and empowered crooked ANC elites at the top and a massive class of extremely poor people on the lower socioeconomically level; a group who mostly sees and accepts the ANC regime and its elite as their unquestionable saviours (many of this group have become financial and emotional dependence in their daily living of the ANC regime, as reflected that so much as 40% of them receives in one form at least a social grant)]. The Black middle class, who mostly oppose the autocratic and crooked politics of the ANC regime, underwrites democratic capitalism and are thus mostly anti-ANC. This group is essential to economic growth and to addressing inequality because they create jobs and stimulate a large economic umbrella to uplift the poor and landless Blacks, especially outside the agricultural sector.^130,131
This ANC’s economic and governmental failings and their political short-sightedness and delinquency, not only drives away the Black middle class, but has also forced them into poverty. This outcome has a serious negative impact on the upholding of the economic initiative in the country.^130,131
The loss of the Black middle class, together with the capitalist business sector and the labour sector, which has become anti-ANC due to the ANC’s corruption, is a prominent determinant in cutting the political size of the ANC, making it a dwarf of its past.^132,133 Musyoka¹³² describes this diminishing of the ANC precisely^132:18: “The emperor was left with no clothes, having lost support from three influential constituencies – capital, labour and the black middle class”
Regarding the Black middle class’ present economic empowerment and status, Musyoka¹³² shows that they as a group (forming 20% of the total population) contributes more than any other group to tax revenue, forming 40% of the labour force (although they tend to be a stagnant group of around eight to nine million), receives between 30% to 35% of the employment income, owns just under 10% of the country’s wealth and represent 85% of all that is spent in the country notwithstanding their 20% part of the population. They are being side-lined by the ANC regime and left under-developed to generate wealth for the country and to contribute to tax revenue.^132,133
The current income of the middle class is shown by research of National Income Dynamics Study and Southern Africa Labour and Development Unit (SALDU) of the University of Cape Town at this stage to be much lower than the previous official estimates. From this data only one in five (20%) South Africans have a disposable income of at least R2 900 per month (earning gross around R 7000 per month) and are at all times open to falling into poverty. This 20% group is faced with financial obligations to jobless and poor family members, making them very sensitive to poverty status.¹³³The presence of a burgeoning Black middle class is “a figment of the national imagination”, posits Professor Murray Leibbrand^133:5, the director of SALDU.
The underdevelopment of the Black middle class are especially driven by the lack of an established SME sector, a lack of training and education, and the injustices done by BBBEE to enrich only a selective small group of Black elites. The ANC regime’s allegation that the lack of farmland and farming opportunities is a role player underdevelopment of Blacks are factors is false. This outcome confirms again the ANC’s failure to execute its’ promised economic plans and initiatives.^132,133
The antagonists argue, as Geen¹³⁴ did 80 years ago, that the cornerstone to erase Black poverty and landlessness is education to equip poor Blacks to fulfil to the demands and functions of highly paid jobs. This makes urbanization crucial. Land expropriation without compensation lacks the ability and pittance for the masses of poor Blacks to make a financial turn-around. The land matter serves only as a front to cover up the ANC’s manifold political failures, as reflected above by their inability to develop a successful SME sector and a flourishing Black middle class.^132-134
The sudden A-h-a-experience of the ANC regime that the farming sector is one of the least transformed sectors and that through land expropriation without compensation the situation can and will be corrected is an untruth that shows the failure of ANC regime to understand the economy and where in the economic and business sectors the solutions lie. Tshandu¹⁰⁸ points out that the retail sector of South Africa is the least transformed sector in terms of ownership, despite its 59.97% contribution to GDP through consumer spending. The Department of Trade and Industry’s rhetoric that White domination of the retail sector is not acceptable and that “new players should emerge, especially those owned by Black people”, is an empty promise to address the racial inclusivity of the retail sector, notwithstanding a strong Black labour union present in the sector to force change. Tshandu¹⁰⁸ reports that according to Empowerdex’s 2017 Most Empowered Companies List, the grocery chain Spar Group has only Black ownership of 6.35%, while its female Black ownership stands on 2.35%. Africa’s largest retailer, Shoprite, has a Black ownership of 8.65% and a female Black ownership of 4.29%. The Black ownership of Clicks is 18.5% with a female Black ownership standing on 8.75%. The exception possibly Woolworths with a Black ownership of 37.2% and a female Black ownership standing on 16.02%.^108,135,136 The answer to this failed transformation of the retail sector is described by Nomozamo Xaba¹⁰⁸, an executive of Empowerdex, as follows^108:10: “Customers such as you and me are unlikely to inquire about our supplier’s contribution to BBBEE before we buy bread and milk…and so there is little pressure for this sector to transform”.
In the above context the question is why the White farmers sector is the focus while less than 3 500 (10%) of farmers provide more than 90% of the country’s food? Why the pressure on the agricultural sector to transfer? As often reflected in this research, the antagonists believe there are more sinister reasons behind the land grabbing of the ANC regime that have nothing to do with sound economic plans and initiatives.^108,135,136
This “passivity of customers in the retail trade” bring the antagonists back to the sudden positioning of the agriculture industry and land ownership in the mindsets of the post-Zuma leadership: Are White land ownership and the White-farmers’ contribution to BBBEE, besides their successful constant delivery of affordable food produce to customers, really a concern of the masses of Blacks of whom so much as 90% do not want to farm or to live on rural farmland as they have adopted a Western culture? For the antagonists a much more masked political agenda, driven fiercely by a segment of political radicals, is present: the presence of Whites in general. The White farmers are a first target, basically because of their political isolation and their vulnerability on isolated farms. In this context the opinion of some antagonists is that land redistribution without compensation is plain a lingering hate of some radical Blacks and their revenge on earlier White supremacy and wrongdoings. This is also an exercise driven by the ANC’s internalized culture of terrorism, which includes land terrorism and –grabbing to take the best (the good and developed farmland of Whites in 2018) for themselves without paying for it. This reminds one of the “Zupta” state capture.^{41,108,135,136}

3.6.4.2. The ANC’s ongoing economic battles

As history always confirms when it comes to politicians and their antics: politicians never learn – they get into the same wars for the same reasons as hundreds before them, only to suffer the same endings. Sometimes they lose the battles but win the war; sometimes they win the battles but lose the war; and then sometimes they lose the battles and the war, leaving them with no hope or opportunity to return to their previous glory. It happened with the KhoiKhoi and KhoiSan who took on the migrating Blacks and Whites. They were wiped out of the South African politics.^137,138
Now in 2019 we see it again with the foolishness of the ANC regime, supported by a segment of the landless and poor Blacks in exchange for their votes in the 2019 election. The antagonists view Ramaphosa’s view on land redistribution as a power game with the masses. ^138,139
Viewing land redistribution as a financial comes at a heavy cost in the end. ^{26, 50-76} Land expropriation is political “adventure” that the ANC government cannot pay from the state’s coffer and normal taxes or from national/international loans because of their dubitable intentions.¹⁴⁰ One easy and tempting way out of it, in terms of its political drive as a terroristic-cum-liberation-cum-democratic political party, is for the ANC to fall back on their basic political philosophy of grabbing and destroying, as Mthombothi¹⁴⁰ reports^140:17: “…to destroy stable economic systems because they were unable to run from 1994 a passable governments and must now fall back by the “redistribution” of the wealth of their “conquered” rich Whites through land grabbing and stealing from the minority and non-defendable individuals and groups.”
Khumalo¹⁴¹ roots the behaviour of the ANC well^141:10: “At some point, especially with limited resources, we need to prioritise, or as young people say, ‘we need to pick a struggle’ ”.
This ANC’s “struggle-picking” is a long-standing culture, cemented into it a terrorist and liberation instinct to obtain without input, like their practices of RET and RST, where land-grabbing is now a primary element. The antagonists’ comments on the economic and judicial wrongdoings of the ANC are confirmed by the scepticism of the formal business sector that the ANC can create wealth in a honest way because of their lack of political integrity, business inability and bad political intentions. ^{26, 50-76}
There are many negative realities related to land redistribution that must be spelled out all involved, from existing land owners to new land owners and banks, to prepare everyone involved and to handle it as applicably and practically as possible. One must remember that although the ANC’s ongoing losing economic battles will cost the country and the good South Africans enormously in personal and economic integrity and values. The ANC elite will be left untouched (as Jacob Zuma) for their manifold wrongdoings coming from 1994. The good South African must prepare him/her for this one-sided suffering. Derby¹⁴² brings these negative (and conflicting) realities well to the foreground and openness when he writes^142:2:

But of course, as part of land reform, some farmers will find themselves having to carve up their lands; one can’t ignore our shared history.
Land reform comes with great upheaval as it involves taking land from those who have it and giving it to those who don’t. To unleash it, title deeds are necessary. Landowners, white farmers, the government and our chiefs and kings need to buy in so South Africa can reap the economic rewards.
The issue of land reform should not be left to political parties to use as a populist ticket either for or against. It’s necessary to fix the structural fault lines in the South African economy.

3.6.4.3. Killing the goose that lays the golden egg

The arguments, opinions and viewpoints offered by the ANC regime that drastic land reform is unavoidable to uplift the poor and landless Blacks financially to give them entrance to farming and the economy, together with their idea that the whole process of land expropriation will in no way affect South Africa’s economic status in general, is seen by antagonists as either a total ANC myth dissociated from any reality, or a well-masked plan of evil-doing to Whites. In this context, the criticism is specific that the ANC regime (and many of Black politicians, activists and radicals promoting land exportation) plainly lacks a sound understanding of the negative principles of economics: the comprehensive negative impact of nationalization of any private asset(s) is prominent. In the Ramamania it seems to be specific White assets. In terms of the antagonists’ argumentation it is propagated that forcible redistribution without compensation will have disastrous effects (not only for the rich Whites), but all over for the South African economy to include the masse of poor Blacks with time. It is argued that the ANC regime land expropriation scheme, even before it is in practice, will kill the goose that lays the golden egg. The outrage of big private enterprises is already significant and it foresees the coming loss in foreign investments that will make South Africa more and more a risk for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to rescue.¹⁴³
The term golden egg refers to the broader South African economics in which the land expropriation issue can be seen as one link among many that form the chain of the current South African troubled economy and its many ills. To understand in the first place the three elements poverty, unemployment, inequality in relation to poor economic planning and policy, homelessness, economic aggression and conflict, racism etc., which all stand central to land expropriation, some economic role players, determinants and drivers are evaluated and described in this sub-division.

3.6.4.3.1. Poverty can devour all riches

If the ANC regime is hoping that the effects of land grabbing on the economics would be minimal when they do it as a once-off quick and hard cleansing by implementing land grabbing with absolute no changes thereafter, they are in for a surprise argue the antagonists. Also, to argue that such a fast, hard solution by the ANC regime of land grabbing will work because investors and individuals can accept and deal with losses fast and that they only dislike short-term uncertainties reflects a lack of understanding of the basic principles of economics. The loss of land ownership is a loss that is different from the individual shareholders of a company that went bankrupt (or is even nationalized). Farmers lose their much loved land, their source of income and their basic assets for their old age. Then there is the clear racism factor of political, social and economic discrimination because the losers are in the ANC’s case only Whites. They don’t even offer them sound evidence as to why they are losing their land versus the outcome as winners only Blacks without any reasons to show why they have to benefit.¹⁴⁴
An all-out RET, of which land grabbing is a primary component, will still leave poor South Africans poverty-stricken. Fourie¹⁴³ shows that if the total wealth of the approximately 38 500 millionaires of South Africa (which includes a significant number of Blacks) is paid out in cash to each South African citizen, the amount received by each citizen will be a single payment of R38 282.00. If this amount is wisely invested for 10% interest (tax-free), the monthly income would only be R319.00 per month, which is not much of an income if the current average monthly income of R7 750.00 for Black households is insufficient to take them out of poverty. For the antagonists it is clear that persons like Ramaphosa, Malema and their intimate cronies, besotted with land grabbing from Whites, do not really understand the basics of economy.¹⁴³
Research shows that if the more or less 35 000 commercial farmers active in 2018 is halved, there will be only 17 500 farmers in the system. For these 17 500 farmers to be successful in terms of Western/White or even modern African lifestyles and standards and to be sufficient in own financial needs (which the 35 000 existing farmers are already struggling to do) without raping the present economic and farming system or directly or indirectly harming the livelihoods of others involved in the farming sector, is just not possible. The fact that farm labourers are some the lowest paid workers and some the poorest people in our country, have not changed when they moved from commercial White farms or subsistence Black farms. It is simply impossible to create new opportunities for more farmers and labourers in the agricultural sector in a decent compensation/payment-system when the whole setup goes broke.^135,143
When the more or less 35 000 commercial farms today active in South Africa (and which as a total group currently contribute 95% of South Africa’s food output,) are each turned over to ten Black families, it will only create work for 6% of the South African jobless. In this kind of “informal” farming there will be an immense cost to produce, while the individual structures to upkeep farming will not be affordable given the income generated. It is postulated that this kind of subsistence farming model will not generate enough for a single family to live on, not even speaking of producing food for the country.¹⁴³ The Ramaphosa myth of successful land expropriation and the establishment of a mass of successful Black farmers, is interpreted by the antagonists as just another failed African economic dream and a failed ANC experiment. It is wishful thinking, nothing more.^135,136,143
The antagonists, look at the above facts, find it difficult to listen to the claim of Mamphele Ramphele³⁸ of ReimagineSA during her promotion of land expropriation as a governmental instrument to return land to Blacks as a source of pride, wellbeing and for sustainable social stability to Blacks, as well as job-creation in the farming sector, null and void when she postulates^38:21: “Why can’t the promotion of jobs and better education be part of more land restitution within a well-planned development process?”. Her much argued other postulations, offered with enthusiasm about the relevance of blind land expropriation as an absolute need for survival of the individual, turned out to be myths lacking economic intelligence. It is echoed by the failure of the experiment of socialism/Marxism in Venezuela by Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro.^{38,103,136,143}
The potential and ability of Ramaphosa and his cronies to bring economic success to poor and landless Blacks and the country as a whole with land expropriation without compensation of White land, the anti-reformers reflect again on the ANC’s well-known continuing farming failures (The postulation here is that the ANC regime only obtained a 10% success in the placing new farmers from 1994 to 2018). Soko¹⁰³ pinpointed these constant failures of the ANC, especially on farming^{103: 9}: “That’s because it’s one thing to give land to people, but if you don’t give them adequate support and advice and so on, it’s not going to work”.
Glorifying the exclusive farming enterprises to absorb more Black workers and farm owners, like with the lone-standing macadamia-nut farming where the produce of just over 700 South African farmers gives the country a 34.4% of the world market in 2017 (against Australia’s 37%), is a false bravado to support land expropriation. Firstly, this kind of structured specialist farming is an expensive and long-term investment, but it does not need many workers. Secondly, this sector forms part of a very competitive world market. There is a lack of understanding (besides the presence of loads of aimless emotions in their propagation of the creation of a large contingent of farmers) by propagandists of land expropriation of the limitations South Africa’s geography puts on farming. The downsizing of expensive farming is well-illustrated by the effect of mechanising to side-line the high costs created for farming by regulation agricultural labour. To reinvigorate agriculture via land expropriation to offer the poor and landless Blacks richness, or even an affordable life-style, is only a fantasy of the ANC. Statistics confirms this over and over. In 2017, agriculture, together with forestry and fishing, contributed a meagre 2.6% to the country’s GDP and could only accommodate 5.3% employees of the total labour market. (At the moment agriculture is growing at a negative of less than -20%). If the numbers double positively through land reform, the contribution to the GDP and employment will only be 5.2% and 10.3% respectively.^{38,44,103,127,136,143}
Derby¹⁴⁵ takes this issue further by pointing out the chaos in waiting with land grabbing (even with compensation) to cut poverty and unemployment and to phase out inequality between Black and White. The established farming sector is already financially unstable and risky. He writes^{145: 2}:

I’m certain that in the farming sector today, you’d find quite a few farmers more than willing to offload their assets to the state. With only 4% of farms in the country generating a turnover of more than R5m, and the vast majority indebted to the tune of more than R160bn to both private bankers (R129bn-plus) and the Land Bank (R40bn), there’ll be many willing to sign off all their liabilities.
These are just some of the financial realities of farming, which are best captured by the struggles of milk farmers in the Free State, the North West and Mpumalanga – realities that we need to consider rather carefully as we seek to speed up what has been a land reform process that has been blighted by bureaucratic failure of the state.

The ANC’s intentions can destabilize the presently stable farming sector and rob it of its richness and devastate its successful farmers, leaving the country food insecure overnight.

3.6.4.3.2. Rural poverty as a public killer

Robust growth of the South African economy in terms of training, the availability of work, and industrial development is needed to solve the socioeconomic problems now prevalent, not land-grabbing. The country’s political setup and integrity must be able to generate inland capital and growth on its own. The way to move towards this is immediate bettering of the regime’s relationship with the country’s business sector for direct all-over investments and developments, and not increasing dependence on unstable foreign capital flows.¹⁴⁶
The IMF’s “Article lV” of August 2018 reports that the South African state under the ANC has become caught up in irresponsible debt-making. The report reflects on why our public debt doubled in the past decade. At the core stands mismanagement of state funding, theft and corruption and inappropriate development of useless projects. It shows that the ANC regime’s debt has doubled since the 2008/2009 global crisis to reach now 53% of the GDP. The IMF¹⁴⁷ reflects that this was entirely driven by the government’s irresponsible constant increased spending on the public sector wage bill as number one, followed by interests on debts and social grants. The wage bill and social grants expenditures are mostly for political opportunism at the voter box. They do nothing to boost growth, but indeed boost growing debt, making the IMF very doubtful of the country’s financial future.¹⁴⁷
This IMF¹⁴⁷ outcome is in line with Soko’s^{103: 9} view that the Black youths “are not interested in farming or land, they want jobs”, basically because of the poverty catch in agriculture. This postulation is also confirmed by the IRR-finding and the government themselves in that only 8% of land compensations that were awarded between 1994 and 2018 to Black claimants were in the form of land as compensation. The story of Ramaphosa and his cronies that farming by Blacks can bring work and sound economics – for which they need much land, making land grabbing the most logical (but undoubtedly the cheapest) way to provide land, is nothing but an economic farce. The base of truth is that land as a source of income per individual cannot deliver the same income as a job. The constant decline in the number of South African farmers from 116 000 in 1950 to more or less 36 000 in 2018 (± 1 000 per annum) confirms this reality about the viability and sustainability of a career in farming. The failure (50%) of the placement of seemingly well-qualified and selected Whites (mostly Afrikaners) in the 1930s in a land redistribution scheme by the White regime and the Dutch Reform Church (DRC) to solve the Poor Whites Problem, confirms that the placement of masses of poor people on land mostly does not work. The solution to the present poverty and inequality is to promote urbanization with the development of cities with modern facilities and infrastructure, the development of industries to create jobs, better education and training, etc.^{38,103,136,143}
Africa has become the world’s most rapidly urbanizing continent, reports Pilling¹⁴⁸. A study of the World Bank indicates that 472 million people in sub-Sahara are already living in cities. High birth rates and migration from the countryside has caused the African urban population to double to 1 billion people by 2014. From 2015 to 2045 the Mckinsey Consultancy¹⁴⁸ estimates that 24 million more Africans will be living in cities each year, basically as a result of the rate of real GDP-growth due to the productivity in cities. South Africa is part of this immense urbanization trend: neither the ANC regime, nor Ramaphosa will be able to stop it.¹⁴⁸
Farming careers in the present South African farming situation is risky. Aggravating this by adding masses of poverty stricken Blacks spells only disaster. There are better solutions to improve the situation of poor and landless Blacks. This is a situation in which the formal business sector as a primary activator and generator of capital, economy and jobs, stands central. Indeed, it is the only entity with the power to steer the economy of the country to functionality. However, the ANC has failed to enter into a partnership with the business sector.⁵⁰
Ruralisation and its farming setup as a primary artery for the country’s economics was dropped nearly 80 years ago in South Africa after an earlier similar effort to address inequality and poverty, specific among the Whites. It was clear for the then White regime of South Africa that exclusive land ownership and –work in the rural area as an instrument for the upliftment of the Poor Afrikaner, were not favourable. Interestingly, this early report also referred to the poor and landless Blacks in the country-side. It also mentioned that exclusive land ownership and –work in the rural area as an instrument for the upliftment of the Poor Blacks were less favourable. As for the Whites, it was also believed that working and living in towns would bring financial and economic rehabilitation. Geen¹³⁴ writes in 1939s, nearly 80 years ago, as follows on this troubling matter (which antagonists say is now re-emerging by the ANC’s foolishness in South Africa)^134:20:

… the development of South African industries will provide more work for all classes of the community, including the Poor Whites, many of better sort of whom have found employment in the towns, for example in the mining industry or in the police force. The Carnegie Commission did not consider that the best place for the Poor Whites was necessarily on the land. In fact, in their Report the commissioners stated that industrial work in the towns was “one of the most potent means of bringing about their economic rehabilitation”.

The ANC regime’s present economic plan and initiative of land expropriation to redeploy masses of poor and landless Blacks to the country-side as farmers and labourers is nothing else than the planned killing of these people through extreme poverty and famine.

3.6.5. The ANC’s politics viewed critically

3.6.5.1. The ANC’s capitalist-democratic failure

The myth of the ANC as the sincere care-taker of all South Africans, guaranteeing rights like land ownership, even respecting the simple citizen’s rights of Blacks, is a farce in the view of the antagonists. South Africa under the ANC is at the edge of an abyss, shackled into captivity by masses of parasites, acting even against the poor Blacks masses with contempt. The broadcast journalist and author, Redi Tlhabi,¹⁴⁹ touches on the truth when she remarks^{149: 18}: “Sometimes it feels like this government [ANC] hates Black people, like its predecessor [NP]”.
If some of the sincerest members of the ANC start to distrust the Party, how can they expect the opposition or those against the ANC’s land-reform inclinations, to trust them? Read the reaction that Mongane Wally Serote¹⁵⁰, a South African award-winning poet and novelist, a long-standing member of the ANC and chairman of the ANC Stalwarts and Veterans, wrote on the 12th November 2017 in a well-known local newspaper on the failing and corrupted ANC^{150: 18}: “The crisis resides in the hijacking of the ANC by corrupt elements who, despite their rhetoric, are completely bereft of the basic civic consciousness that had been the hallmark of ANC genealogy for many decades”.
But is Serote¹⁵⁰ a late-comer to the choir bemoaning the current ANC’s corruption? Not at all: The ANC icon, the most honourable president Nelson Mandela¹⁵¹, pointed out in a public speech in 1999 (20 years before Serote’s remarks and only five years after the “1994-independence”) the immense corruption in the ANC when he said^151:571:

Among the new cadres in various levels of governance you find individuals who are corrupt – if not more – those they found in government. When a leader in a provincially legislature siphons off resources meant to fund service by legislators to the people: when employees of a government institution, set up to help empower those who were excluded by apartheid, defraud it for own enrichment, then we must admit that we are a sick society.

Even the South African Communist Party (SACP), well-known for its radical Marxist ideology, has reflected on the present integrity of the ANC regime, which went down the drain the day of Jacob Zuma’s reappointment as president in 2007. The SACP states that although the ANC’s bad improved for a while after 2007, the integrity crisis restarted soon thereafter, not only with greater magnitude, but with the worst of corruption cemented into its foundation. In short, even for the SACP, also a liberation movement by excellence, it has become clear in 2018 that state power and a Constitution shaped for presidential autocracy is too important to be left in the hands of the corrupted ANC as a regime. This “formal letter of disapproval” by the SACP is also applicable to president Ramaphosa and his regime, reflecting back on his intended drastic land reform with its disastrous outcome for White land owners, poor Blacks and the country’s economics.¹⁵²
The Zondo Commission of Inquiry is an excellent example for the antagonists of the political (if not also mental) madness of the ANC as a regime and as a party (and the danger for South Africa if they stay on as the regime after 2019). Zizi Kodwa⁵⁴, the ANC’s head of the presidency at Luthuli House, made an arrogant declaration in the Sunday Times of 26 August 2018, reading^{54: 22}: “The ANC is not on trial at the commission of inquiry into state capture”. It reflects not only a lack of consciousness what is right or wrong in the ANC elite, but also the lack of ability and integrity to take responsibility for their involvement in corruption as a regime and party from 1994 up to today.⁵⁴
Mr Kodwa and his co-leaders in the ANC elite are seemingly newcomers from Mars. The ANC and all its tentacles lack shame.^98,153,154
Steenhuisen⁹⁸, DA MP, the chief whip of the opposition in the parliament, hits it right on the spot when he nullifies Kodwa’s and the other ANC’s like Ramaphosa’s plea of innocence when it comes to state capture and crookery, which flourished over the last eight years, when he says^{98: 24}: “Those in the ANC who latterly claim they were not aware of what was happening, including President Cyril Ramaphosa, are frankly insulting the intelligent South Africa public. It is simply inconceivable that the capture of the state and associated shenanigans were unknown to a large segment of the ANC top leadership”.
For the opponents it is of interests that Kodwa⁵⁴ and the remaining Zuma cronies in the ANC and the present leaders have to appear before the Zondo Commission to explain how the South African state was stolen under their watch. Such cleansing can give some insight into the role land expropriation without compensation played in present and past state capture. Land expropriation without compensation seems to have its roots into the Zuma-Gupta-ANC elite, reflecting again another well-planned outcome to bring riches for the ANC’s elite, instead of helping the poor and landless Blacks. On Kodwa’s “innocent plea” of not guilty on behalf of himself and the ANC in total, Munusamy¹⁵³ gives him sound and wise advice^153:26: “It is not acceptable for the ANC to wash its hands of accountability for state capture simply because it removed the chief enabler from power”. What she should have added is that the “other enablers” are still inside the ANC elite and regime, and that their hands are very, very dirty.^153,154
The antagonists do not have to gather their own evidence of contamination of the country’s politics: numerous political overseers have done it well for them.^155-158
The seasoned political journalist, Ranjeni Munusamy^153,159, did it when she reflected on how the ANC’s 54th national conference at Nasrec in December 2017 just rubber-stamped the Zuma regime’s crookery: not only ignoring Zuma’s ousting of persons of integrity in the ANC elite and senior posts, but approving it. The Guptas’ state capture and the undermining of state security were by the ANC leaders denied, even contradicted as false. It is totally contradicted by the dangerous extent of Zuma’s criminality: his crooking with the Guptas went as far by them trying to clinch a deal on the five stored South African nuclear warheads, forcing the CIA in 2009 officially to warn the South African authorities to prevent this.^153,159
The denial of wrongdoings by Zuma’s and some of the leaders of ANC at the Nasrec-conference are contradicted by hard facts. Munusamy¹⁵³ refers as follows^153:22:

•     The ANC national     executive committee (NEC) had been told that the Guptas had prior knowledge of Zuma’s 2010 and 2011 cabinet reshuffles. In fact, the Gupta-owned newspaper The New Age in 2011 published an accurate prediction of Zuma’s cabinet changes before he announced them.
•     These were just some of the signals that the Guptas had commandeered control of the state and the capture of the ANC’s highest elite [to make South Africa a tripartite governmental state: on lowest level the Parliament; on middle-level Luthuli-house and its ANC NEC; and on top-level the Gupta-clan].
•     Yet the ANC did not question the usurping of its political power, did not come out in     support of Nene when he was fired, and allowed Jonas to dangle in the wind when he exposed the Guptas.
•     The ANC NEC shut down an internal investigation into state capture and buried its     head in the sand.
•     Not even the great Zuma vanquisher, President Cyril Ramaphosa, had anything to say     about the Gupta infestation in the state until he was ready to make a bid for the ANC leadership.

The crookedness of some of the ANC’s elite with the Guptas is even more evident from the testimony of Mcebisi Jonas¹⁵³ before the Zondo Commission when he said that after his refusal to take a bribe of R600 million of the Guptas, they threatened to kill him if he disclosed what had transpired. There was another threat to Jonas by Ajay Gupta who said the Gupta family has the ability to destroy his political career.¹⁵³
On the corrupted Gupta management of Jacob Zuma, Munusamy¹⁵³ reports as follows on Jonas’s testimony^{153: 22}:

The whole state was in favour of state capture”, Jonas said. He said the Treasury was utterly dependent on political support, particularly from the president, but it did not have it.
He testified about how Gupta bragged that he and his brothers were the de facto rulers of SA. “You must understand, we are in control of everything”, Jonas alleged Gupta told him, citing the NPA, the Hawks and the intelligence services. “The old man [Zuma] will do anything we want him to do”.
There is no indication that this was not true. Zuma made no attempt to distance himself from the [Gupta] family or to act to protect the state from their looting spree.

All the evidence shows that the ANC is not able to steer a land redistribution programme. This means that their potential to make the comprehensive land expropriation programme a success is doubtful. Tony Leon¹⁶⁰, a former leader of the opposition in the South African parliament and a former ambassador to Argentina, writes that the ANC regime cannot even ensure regular electricity or even basic sanitation at primary schools, or safely care for psychiatric patients, but, notwithstanding these failures, they in their foolishness want to govern every facet of life, economics, and politics in South Africa. This failure includes for the opponents also their lives and belongings.¹⁶⁰
Leon¹⁶⁰ is correct with his postulation that South Africa is already in chaos. Claims that civil society is currently doing the best ever and that the credit agency Moody’s decision not to down-scale South Africa can be taken as evidence of a healthy economy are false. These postulations are based on short-term manifestations that mask the reality of a greater collapse in waiting (It was expected that a further degrading of the country for instance by Moody in March 2018 to lower than Baa3 and an outlook of stable, could have immediately trigger the exit of about R100 billion). South Africa’s reprieve with Moody is only a short-term improvement of the economy before end of 2018/early 2019 and it was done to give the country under Ramaphosa a chance “to sort out South Africa’s problems”. Moody is clearly not going to take off pressure off the country. Remember: Moody’s is the only one of the three largest international rating agencies still to have the government’s foreign- and rand-denominated debt on investment grade.^119,160-164
Looking to the various rating agencies’ probations of the financial behaviour of South Africa, Joffe¹⁶⁵ reflects^165:9: “Chances are that the rating agencies will wait to see what happens at election time [2019]. But SA’s fiscal and growth risks could well see them put us back on watch for a downgrade before the end of this year [2018]”. With the revenue shortfall estimated by PwC at R6 billion (It could be so much as R10-billion), the chance of the worst is high.¹⁶⁵
A degrading factor for the rating agencies that can evoke a fast the exit of R100 billion and more is the formal constitutional implementation of land grabbing and the loss of investor trust in the ANC regime. It be noted that Africa as a whole is facing a new wave of debt distress as the US hikes signal the end of cheap money, which can bring a funding crisis. Confidence is one of the key drivers to get South Africa into the international economy: The South African economy has been lacking international and national trust for a long time and will lack it for a long time in the future. The sweet-talk of pro-ANC economists and senior appointments in South African institutions are not going to help much.^119,161-164
Leon¹⁶⁰ points out that the ANC still has an appetite to encroach ever further into the sections of the country’s economy and that this actually appears to bring more chaos^{160: 22}: “All these our political masters want to control. Or anaesthetize. Or close down”.
The failure of the ANC as a trustworthy regime and as a party, reflecting again on their unpredictable and inappropriate behaviour on the land expropriation issue, lies in their lack of a culture of integrity. It doesn’t matter for the ANC if its leaders committed murder or other wrongdoings, as long it is for the “party’s benefit” and inside its “ideology of liberation”. The party remains loyal to the accused and their doings, even after they have been found guilty. On the 29th of July 2018 no less than 26 tainted individuals held positions in the national (NEC) and provincial (PEC) executive committees, varying from 12 in NEC positions to 14 in PEC positions. These culprits form such a contingent in the power-base of the ANC that they are referred to as “The Rogues Gallery”. Despite being convicted of fraud, Tony Yengeni, Ruth Bhengu and Bathabile Dlamini sit on the NEC, while the ANC whip Jackson Mthembu was convicted of drunk driving. The present minister of policing, Bheki Cele, was fired as the National Police Commissioner in 2011 after being found guilty of improper conduct and maladministration and a finding of being unfit to hold office. The immediate question for the antagonists is how a serious matter like land expropriation can be entrusted to these people if they cannot even can handle their own affairs with honesty and dignity.²⁷
The antagonists’ most poignant question is why these ANC rogues are being allowed into important political positions by the ANC-party and regime. The ANC’s spokesman, Pule Mabe²⁷ (himself sanctioned by parliament for failing to declare his interest in a company doing business with the rail agency Prasa), gives the answer^{27: 4}: “…there was nothing wrong with convicted people occupying influential positions, as the ANC believes in rehabilitation. ‘When individuals rise out of their own shortcomings, regardless of what those could be, they must be given an opportunity to come back and be part of a fully-fledged society’.”
This “humanistic-criminal rule” can be acceptable in some cases for the non-dangerous person who derailed, but it becomes a problem to maintain an honest government if a significant part of its leaders are “rehabilitated criminals” and psychopathic individuals. The questions for the antagonists are: 1) Why are the ANC attracting the interest and membership to its leadership of such a high percentage of delinquents and criminals?; and: 2) Why in the first place did these leaders “fall” into delinquency and crime?; 3) Seen from a psychological point of view, what are their so called “shortcomings” (is it psychopathic or what else?)? The ANC’s answer on the presence of rogues in its top structure is very simple, namely that it believes that members who have been charged in court can remain in good standing because they have not yet been convicted. ANC’s leaders, like Mike Mabuyakhulu who is out on R50 000 bail after being arrested for alleged corruption, Mathabo Leeto who stands accused of awarding a R15 million contract without due process, Nozillo Mashiya who stands accused of using a council credit card to buy R10 000 of liquor, Zukiswa Ncitha and Sindiswa Gomba who are facing charges related to the Nelson Mandela funeral scandal, are prominent ANC’s deemed “innocent until proven otherwise” in terms of Mabe’s explanation. The antagonists’ gut feeling is that the expropriation of land without compensation is going to be a great temptation for many of the seasoned criminals in senior ANC positions. The antagonists’ view that state capture via land grabbing will continue, seems more and more to be correct.²⁷
Leon¹⁶⁰ feels that the current South Africa, captured by the ANC, resembles Otto Bismarck’s view of the ambitious but short-sighted 19th-century Italy^{160: 22}: “It has a large appetite but poor teeth”.

3.6.5.2. A new kind of state capture

The myth presented by the ANC regime and its leaders is that the intended land expropriation of Whites is solely aimed at rectifying so-called White injustices committed against Blacks during Apartheid and colonialism, which, as they argue, created the current immense problems of poor and landless Blacks. Antagonists see this point of view as false. These kinds of utterances and rhetoric are seen by the antagonists as habits and customs of the ANC to distract the attention away from their own past and present wrongdoings and their current delinquent intentions. The antagonists read other more serious intentions into the whole process. What underlies the land grabbing is state capture. The antagonists’ arguments, opinions and viewpoints are not unfounded in this regard: all the signs of capturing are present. The vagueness about what the process will entail and how it would increase landownership for the poor holds potential for state capturing, either through bribes, fraud or the theft of these “new government properties” freshly taken from the White farmers. Zuma’s corrupt cronies are still present in the system, some in very senior positions. Many of these persons are undoubtedly directly involved in driving the expropriation scheme.^111,166-179
At the recent parliamentary hearing at Rustenburg, North West in 2018 on the suggested change to Section 25, the Black community gave voice to their immense distrust in the ANC regime to handle the process honestly. For them the ANC regime’s land expropriation is just a possible ongoing state capture, as illustrated when a said Rubosweni Mmelene³⁵ says that he wants to support the change but feared the effects of rampant corruption in the North West province, which is run by the ANC, and which in the end can result in an outcome that can leave the poor and landless Blacks untouched by any improvement. Mmelene states^{35: 22}: “I understand 87% of land belongs to whites. I want to agree with the amendment but because of the corruption in this province, it is difficult”.
The above confirms the fears of the antagonists. The antagonists especially point to the radicals in the ANC elite’s refusal to state how the expropriation is going to happen, specifically who will hold the titles deeds, who the recipients of the land would be, how people will qualify for land, for what the land will be used, etc. The other concern is the numerous corrupt ANC members in office. The question is what and who is going to stop them in the future: Did Ramaphosa or the ANC regime reappointed them for a specific purpose?¹¹¹
This existence of delinquency and crooked officials in the current Ramaphosa regime is well-illustrated in an editorial of the Star¹¹¹, dated 2018 July 16. The editor writes^{111: 10}: “The dismal side is that so many on the public payroll continue to palm millions surreptitiously while supposedly serving South Africans, in spite of repeated and widely publicized instructions against this”.
In this regard the editorial states that 721 of the country’s most senior public servants are moonlighting without disclosure, forming part of a total of 1 943 public service managers who are directors of private and public companies, while there are hundreds of senior officials doing remunerative work outside the public service. KwaZulu-Natal (also the base of Jacob Zuma and his faction in the ANC NEC) seems to be the provinces the most guilty of misconduct by officials: 30 top officials, including two director-generals, two deputy DGs, five chief directors and 21 directors, received alone gifts worth close to R900 000.^111,166-179
The level of corruption is illustrated by the high-level official with the rank of director-general in the provincial Eastern Cape government in the looting of the state funds in relation to the memorial and funeral services for Nelson Mandela, as well as her further involvement in a tender scandal of R171 million and a misdirection of the provincial government in 2013 into channelling about R300 million of taxpayers’ money into the Eastern Cape Development Corporation. This entrenchment of corruption means that the financial outcome of land distribution can leave both Black and Whites poor and landless.^111,166-179
There has also been a loss of officials with integrity as the Zuma and his cronies systematically attacked these individuals from 2009 and ousted them. Some of the Zuma cronies are still there. The editor¹⁷⁹ of the Sunday Times wrote with great concern on the 3rd December 2017 on this matter of crooks who have now captured even Luthuli House, as well as resurfacing of these bad guys soaked in Zuma-kinds of manipulating and crookery, to clear out the last portions of integrity left of the country’s official system (Prominent are theses crooks steering further the country of the various state-agencies, even the security agency).¹⁷⁹ The editor writes^{179: 20}:

What makes this problematic is that his [Zuma] only interest with such agencies is that they protect him and his associates from any harm, and not necessarily the country.
His appointments to the top jobs in the intelligence ministry as well the state security agencies have always been of his close comrades, who he believes would secure his interests. Any sign that a minister, a director-general or any other senior official was putting the interests of the country ahead of those of the president and his associates has often led to the immediate dismissal. Just ask Moe Shaik, Gibson Njenje, Sonto Kudjoe, Simon Ntombela and other securocrats who have found they rubbing the president and his associates up the wrong way.

A further indicator of the ANC regime’s administrative collapse, starting immediately in 1994, is reported by the May report (2016–2017) of the Office of the Auditor-General¹⁸⁰. It is sobering and depressing reading. The report shows that only 33 out 257 municipalities received clean audits, while irregular expenditure at local government level amounted R28.37 billion.^180-182 (If the wasted money was managed correctly, 1.3 million of South Africans could be accommodated in public work job programmes for a full year, 3 500 pit latrines at schools could be replaced, 14% of shack-dwellers could be accommodated in properly built homes and VAT reduced instead of increased.)^180-182 The lack of proper financial management (mostly due to corruption, theft and fraud) by the ANC regime is further evident from the way municipalities failed to collect money for services rendered to inhabitants, the private sector and governmental departments inside municipalities. In total municipalities are owed R139 billion by service users, meaning they don’t have the funds to pay Eskom for electricity used. In total, municipalities, as a result of service users not paying, owe Eskom as much as R27.8 billion. The total debt of the ten municipalities with the most debt amounts to R11.8-billion. ^180-183
These failed municipalities are well described by Dan Sebabi¹⁸², a senior member of the South African provincial legislature’s cooperative governance and traditional affairs committee. He points out specifically the role of crooked politicians and corrupt municipal officials in theft from the deposits transferred of municipalities’ union funds to the now VBS Mutual Bank under curatorship (more than R1,5 billion is involved).^181,182
It goes deeper as many political and financial analysts already have indicated. The ANC regime is largely ignoring all these warning signs of the presence of corruption because its intimate members are directly and indirectly involved. When the ANC elite is faced with a problem (which they can either not solve or do not want to stop because of their criminal benefitting from it) they simply try to lay it to rest with extreme, unworkable political promises that generate more conflict (and more opportunity for theft), like offering free land to the landless and poor Blacks via land expropriation without compensation from Whites. Sebabi¹⁸² reacts to these failures, thefts and corruption by ANC-cadres as follows^{182: 2}: “You are plunging Limpopo into a ball of fire. You tell our people you invest money when they don’t have water, when they don’t have roads. What do you expect our people to say? How do you expect them to respond?”
This corrupted setup around many of the ANC regimes’ governing bodies and leaders did not, as illustrated by the antagonists, change in culture or after staff replacements following the departure of Zuma. The ANC’s “new era” under Ramaphosa looks for the antagonists much like the ANC’s “old one” under Zuma. There are just not any constructive signs of true political renewal and integrity under the leadership of Ramaphosa to steer land reform honestly to benefit the poor and to isolate the opportunity for land capturing.^{111,181,182,184}
The following editorial writing confirms the immense culture of corruption inside the ANC regime and the state well^111:10: “The extent of the undesirable practices it [Public Service Commission – PCS] found points to the monumental task facing Ramaphosa in cleaning up the government. It will take years, great stamina and the will to be ruthless wherever the rot is found”.
The telling stories of Sidimba and Sifile¹⁸⁵ on the above kind of dodgy and highly irregular transactions all over South African under the ANC – something that can quickly spills over to land redistribution – reaffirm the current corrupted culture still in the post-Zuma period in the South African government, when they write^{185: 1}: “Shocking widespread corruption, fraud, theft and mismanagement of hundreds of millions of rand at the Municipal Councillors’ Pension Fund (MCPF) has been referred to the Hawks by its curators”. How serious these dodgy deals are, is the fact that its referral to the Hawks was in terms of the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act.

3.6.6. ANC regime inside the BRICS-kabaya

South Africa’s position in BRICS was supposed to bring massive growth. However, the fact is that not even a quarter of what the ANC promised became a reality. What is clear is that South Africa already started to barter away its political and economic independence. An editorial¹⁸⁶ in the Sunday Times praises the importance of South Africa being a BRICS-partner as follows^186:18: “For South Africa, it is important that we remain in this powerful group, even though it may seem as if we don’t belong”. His comment is foolish: it indeed seems as if South Africa does not belong in this partnership. The cruel facts are there. It is clear that the ANC elite want to belong to BRICS for other questionable reasons and intentions. These delinquent intentions are also applicable to Russia and China, eyeing South Africa for more than noble reasons.^186-188
The claim that the five BRICS countries comprise 40% of the world’s population (3 billion persons) with a growing portion of the world trade – producing more than 30% of manufacturing goods and 50% of agricultural products, that it is responsible for 22% of world’s GDP and that the inter-BRICS transactions form 17% of world trade and investments and has growth in 2017–2018 with 10%, and that the inter-trade between BRICS countries has risen from R203 billion in 2010 to R460-billion in 2017 – is misleading. It is precisely this over-populations (the populations of China and India make up 87% or 2.7 billion of the total BRICS’s population of 3 billion) and poverties associated with it, which is keeping true development away. At the end of 2017 the collective size of BRICS (four initial BRIC members without South Africa) was valued at $19 trillion (R256 trillion) and it is alleged that the Block will overtake the Group Seven (G7) by size of economy in 2035. In truth, is it only China and India that are growing, with South Africa, Brazil and Russia sitting in the low level of growth (with South Africa the clear odd one). South Africa’s contribution to the total BRICS GDP of $16 000 billion in 2016 was only 2%, placing it far below Russia’s 7%, Brazil’s 11%, India’s 13% and China’s 67%. Our GDP is only $300 billion compared to China’s $11 trillion, while Brazil, India and Russia have all passed the trillion dollar GDP mark. Furthermore, our unemployment situation is chaotic in comparison with the four other BRICS countries: for South Africa is it officially a staggering 26% (unofficially it can be between 55% and 60%), while for China it is 2.2% and the other three partners beneath 10%. Our investment imbalance with BRICS results in outflows of $60 billion in cash to purchase goods and services from our BRICS partners while the inflow of cash from them into South Africa is only $18 billion. Looking at it critically, South Africa under Ramaphosa could be vulnerable to the same kind of opportunistic Zuma abuse by its BRICS partners.^186-188
This reality makes the remark we have much to gain from the block by the editor¹⁸⁶ of the Sunday Times laughable. The fact that South Africa is small fry alongside the BRICS giants makes the whole BRICS set-up controversial and a dangerous political and economic play by the ANC regime.¹⁸⁶
The South African minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Lindiwe Sisulu’s view that South Africa is a star in BRICS, is also laughed off by the antagonists. Very little of the foreign investment of $750 billion that China is planning will be allocated to South Africa. Although the two-way China-South African trade reached $39.17 billion, it is an imbalanced one with China in the exporter position, with South Africa as the loser. There are more dangerous determinants for South Africa in BRICS, something the ANC regime knows well, but it does not like to reveal this to the public and their voters. The danger of a repeat of the corrupt Mahlobo-nuclear-Zuma-Putin deal is prominent.^187-188
Jim O’Neill¹⁸⁸, the former Goldman Sachs executive and an expert on BRICS, put ideas of an advanced and rich South Africa in making in BRICS to sleep when he said in May 2018^{188: 22}:

…almost since the day the political leaders agreed to invite South Africa to join the club Brics, South Africa has been disappointing. Frankly, I wouldn’t have made that decision because even if South Africa had enjoyed strong GDP growth, it is never going to be an especially large economy as it doesn’t have a lot of people. Even if it enjoyed enormous productivity growth it would never get to the size of the top 20 economies of the world.

The ANC elite became confused by their own false doctrine of South Africa’s importance in the international trade and politics, a manifestation O’Neill¹⁸⁸ already points out. To say South Africa played and is playing an active role in the creation of the G20 and that the country under the ANC has established itself in many international forums as a strong voice, is a farce. What is prominent is that it aligned itself with the radical elements running many of the failed autocratic and Marxist impoverished world states that had become more and more isolated from respected stable democracies. At most one can say that at the time of its inclusion into the G20 South Africa was the largest economy on the African continent, characterized by established capital markets, relatively modern infrastructure, a robust regulatory environment and strong institutions, but since the entrance of the Zuma regime these many good descriptions became sorely ghosts from the past. Even its partnership with BRICS’s New Development Bank can not make much good to South Africa’s constant down-spiral and political chaos.¹⁸⁹
The BRICS New Development Bank’s vice-president and CFO, Leslie Maasdorp¹⁸⁹, makes the following very poignant remark^{189: 7}:

Commentators interpret this R1-trillion target as foreign direct investment, but in most instances, including China, only a small percentage of gross investment comes from outside its borders.
The bulk of the investments in infrastructure and new equipment typically come from domestic savings. Stimulating domestic investment in South Africa is the most critical task.

In the same breath Maasdorp¹⁸⁹ tries to relate domestic investments in South Africa to the China, Singapore and Korea economical solution. It is far-fetched. Maasdorp relates^{189: 7}: “Some of the most successful investment destinations, such as China, Korea, Singapore and others, have built up their investments rates at between 30% and 45% of GDP. What this means is that out of R100 of income, on average R30 to R45 is re-invested in the form of new factories, new infrastructure and equipment.”
What Maasdorp¹⁸⁹ and many other propagandists miss, is the simple fact that the ordinary South Africans are poor, domestic savings are minimal because there is no money left to save. There is immense distrust between the ANC regime and private investors. South Africa’s economic development is delayed by the demands of the labour unions, which are essentially part of the ANC regime. The country’s institutions are saturated by state capture and corruption, while Marxist extremism has been the basis of government since 2009. These outcomes nullify the entry of new factories, new infrastructure and equipment, even the good aim of the BRICS Bank to uplift South Africa.
Looking critically at the BRICS constellation, O’Neill¹⁸⁸ shows that BRICS’s success stands solely on China’s relevance and dominance^188:1: “Who would care about BRI, or BRIS, without China”, asks O’Neil¹⁸⁸. Notwithstanding the low level position of South Africa in BRICS and its poor chances to really ever benefit immensely from the BRICS-kabaya, South Africa has value for China’s “imperial dreams”: it is primarily a bridgehead into Africa for China to steer its political (and growing military) influence and trade of essential products. These aims, visions and doings of Communist China are seemingly in line with that of some of the radicals in the “new” revolutionary ANC-party who put the country’s interests in second place to their self-enrichment and empowerment via China.¹⁸⁸
South Africa’s membership of BRICS reflects a clear picture of a failed state coming from 1994 that is hanging onto the other radical states in an effort to survive the present. For the antagonists South Africa has since 1994 become a politically failed state under the ANC regime and its political radicals. Its failed economics is a direct result of this. André Perfeito⁹⁰, the chief economist at Gradual CCTVM, describes the twining of Brazil and South Africa’s failed situations when he says^{90: 3}: “Brazil’s problem is not economic, it’s political, so is South Africa’s problem”.
Martyn Davies⁹⁰, the MD of Emerging Markets and Africa at Deloitte, also emphasises that there are other stark similarities, varying from economic to politics, between the two countries that do not bode well for South Africa. Prominent is corruption scandals involving state-capture. Most of the politicians of both states are contaminated with crookery: in July 2017 the Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was sentenced to nine and a half years in prison for accepting bribes (Zuma has thus far missed this fate and it seems more and more that he is not on his way to be a prisoner like Lula da Silva), while Lula da Silva’s successor, Dilma Rouseff, was impeached in August 2016 for creating an artificial budget surplus by unlawfully allowing loans from state-owned banks to the treasury. Around the corruption monster is it likely that the present Brazil president, Michel Temer, is going to suffer the same kind of fate in the near future. Notwithstanding corruption as a prominent similarity between South Africa and Brazil, Brazil shows still some kind of other goodness that is lacking already South Africa. One is, as said, the failure by the ANC regime to prosecute Zuma and his cronies (of whom many are part of the present ANC elite).⁹⁰
Davies⁹⁰ reports between South Africa and Brazil on the prominence and difference on genuine efforts to prosecute political crooks as follows^90:3: “According to Transparency International’s 2016 Corruption Perception Index, South Africa and Brazil are in 64th and 77th position respectively. But despite Brazil’s dismal ranking, its judicial system at least continues to function”.
Davies⁹⁰ writes further on the other many bad similarities between the two countries^90:3: “Given the worrying similarities between the leadership of both countries, South Africa could follow in Brazil’s economic footsteps, with a two-year lag”.
At this stage for the antagonists it does not matter if Zuma or if Ramaphosa is the president of the Republic of South Africa, an outright failure and misuse of the whole intended land redistribution is a reality. This is a conclusion that seems difficult to contradict and much of this chaos to execute actions with success is vested in the ANC’s liberation contamination. Ramaphosa, as Zuma, became also fast and easily steered into the political mindsets of the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India and China.
With South Africa’s partnership in BRICS, both the two South African leaders’ feet are helped to be cemented in the liberation and revolutionary thinking, planning and doing of their patrons, Brazil, India, China and Russia on the practice of corruption, disrespect for human rights and political manipulation to benefit the regime’s elite. For South Africa it is more and more a case of “re-colonialisation” by its two BRICS partners, namely Russia and China.
Basically, in the South Africa’s re-colonialisation only the country’s foreign mentors and masters changed between1948 to 1994 and from 1994 to the present day: for the NP-regime (1948-1994) the mentors and masters were Western Europe and the USA, and for the ANC regime from 1994 these mentors and masters are China and Russia. Louw¹³⁸ points out that in 2018, as in 1795, the country is still being governed inside a colonial model by a self-serving minority (this time Blacks of the ANC elite who Boon¹⁹² refers to as the African Takers, and similar in style of reigning as that of China and Russia) located at Luthuli House in the name of the masses. This “Black colonialism” and exploitation of other Blacks are internalised in the failed ANC regime, the Gupta-kind-factor of crooking, cadre employment, state capture, extreme corruption and nepotism, with as background South Africa’s Chinese and Russian masters. This ANC regime’s autocratic liberation setup is also seemingly for the antagonists driving their present land-grabbing initiative.^138,192
South Africa’s present revolutionary mentality makes it more and more a twin brother with China and its equal revolutionary mentality on business and human ethics and principles. The country’s growing shying away from the USA, Japan and Europe is because the low level of political and business ethics South Africa do practice present-day do not fit in with them anymore. But this shyness to political order drives the country’s currency daily more and more in disorder.¹⁹³
The editor¹⁹⁴ of the Sunday Times points out that when the rand plunges (as it is doing now constantly) it starts immediately to feed into not only political chaos, but intensively economic chaos of a country, eroding its economic and financial foundation independence (and with time also its political base), making it also losing it’s sovereignty. The editorial shows^{194: 20}:

Once a central bank loses its most important attribute, credibility, and that comes with its independence in following its core mandate, a currency is left to the wolves of Wall Street.
At that point, what would be the buying power of the state? Would it ever be able to play its part in stimulating the economy without having to resort to big-money loans from the IMF or the Chinese state? That is where sovereignty is lost.

The ANC regime of South Africa already knocked at the doors of the Russian and Chinese states, putting its sovereignty on a silver tea-tray to be taken.^13,15,117
Indeed, for most of the anti-propagandists’ against land reform, the politically contaminated thinking on the regime of Ramaphosa has turned from Ramaphoria to Ramaphobia and Ramareality, and is now heading for Ramafear, and possibly in Ramaflipflop. The White farmers are caught inside this Ramaphoria-Ramafear.^73,190,191

3.6.6.1. Russia and the Zuma-Putin-mega-nuclear-deal

The Mahlobo’s nuclear deal points for the antagonists to the built-in negativity of the BRICS-factor to stimulate corruption inside the ANC regime’s lack of sound strategy planning and financial insight and its ever-present corruption. Prominent stands here the obtaining of unaffordable nuclear power from Russia by the corrupted Jacob Zuma and his cronies in collaboration with Russia and its Vladimar Putin. If the disastrous Zuma-Putin-mega-nuclear-deal (better known as the Mahlobo’s nuclear deal, which would include a massive nuclear reactor – besides the acquisition of eight other smaller nuclear power plants), was accepted and activated, it is clear that South Africa’s debt to Russia would be so immense that South Africa went bankrupt and need restructuring to meet its debts, ending in a failed economy and mass unemployment. (To get insight into this immense fraught and corrupted deal just follows the Zondo-commission’s testimony of the ex-Finance minister Nhlanla Nene to see the unaffordable 2015 project’s value for Russia was R1.6-trillion, as approved by the Zuma-cabinet on the 9th December 2015. Note also: Nene went down as minister at the end because of his Guptas-connection). A direct negative outcome (and the most probably if the deal had realised, which was near finalising when Zuma was ousted as president), could be that Russia re-entered the ANC-South African financial-disaster around the ANC’s failure to pay for the nuclear deal by taking possession of South Africa’s guarantees of minerals and mines for the back-up finance of the nuclear-deal to help and to stop bankruptcy of the ANC regime. Through mechanising our mines and direct job-loss by the Russian intervention and interference, a further down-grade economy would follows, activating a totally down-grade of the South African economy with permanent recessions, to create more debts and further mineral concessions to Russia, leading locally not only to massive unemployment, but a total collapsed industry and widespread famine. In such a disastrous outcome — well planned and steered by the self-enrichment of Zuma and his collaborators — very little of South Africa’s sovereignty would remain.^195-198
Dino Galetti^195, a researcher at the Universities of Johannesburg and Yale, describes the possible catastrophic outcome if the Mahlobo’s nuclear deal would had been accepted, as follows^195:22: “Ultimately, we become a colony of Russia in all but name, since we owe them a never-decreasing amount even when they own much of the country’s resources”.
For the antagonists the ANC elite, up to the presidency, lack the basic integrity to guard the interests of the individual South African. Neither do they have any consciousness about impoverishing the South African Nation life-long. Re-colonisation by a foreign country does not bother the ANC elite at present, as their affiliations with Russia and China confirms. Even the revised Ramaphosa New Nuclear Deal shows signs of possible corruption and the potential to bring, as the Mahlobo’s nuclear deal, at the end the same way of devastating economy for South Africa and making the country a subordinate of Russia: a distant part of “Putinland” wherein opposition leaders are assassinated, where Ukraine is disempowered and the Putin-Eurasian-Union of autocrats, oil and gas, are reigning. Although Ramaphosa has recently put on ice the Mahlobo nuclear deal and allowed only the building of two nuclear reactors in South Africa by Russia, is there still alleged remnants of corruption and theft coming from the initial Mahlobo’s nuclear deal valued at R1.6-trillion.^{195,196,198,199}

3.6.6.2. The ANC regime’s growing brotherhood with Communist China

The ANC regime’s twinning with other leftish and Marxist regimes — regimes also cemented in the old-age liberation ideology and mostly saturated in corruption and the utmost autocratic reigning of their people — did not stop with the Russians. This reality is becoming more and more obvious with their present brotherhood with Communist China. China (a blood partner in which direction the post -1994 South Africa in a great extent seems more and more is starting to move) never accepted an economy built around open markets and liberal-democratic western values. The Chinese leaders’ strategies of politics and economics are driven and motivated by their commitment to the upkeep of the Chinese Communist Party’s monopoly on domestic political power, and as said, ignoring the spirit of democracy and disrespects liberal rules and norms. For South Africa, in his growing relationship with and dependence of China to finance its bankrupted treasury, there is, as with the doomed Zuma-Putin nuclear deal, the possibility of another financial disaster under Ramaphosa in making. The much advertised drive of Ramaphosa to collect $100-billion in investments from overseas in five years, reflects two potential disasters in making for the country.^{13,119,193,200}
Firstly, is it seen by the antagonists as an exclusive opportunistic political act by Ramaphosa. If he is successful to obtain foreign investments it undoubtedly will reflect him as a good leader and serves him as an empowerment instrument to establish a leadership of excellence inside the ANC regime, -elite and –party. Such an outcome, argue the antagonists, can cover his leadership short-comings, like a lack of empowerment and popularity inside the greater ANC. The changes will be good that the strong political-radical Zuma-faction in the NEC can be expelled and the hostility of the KwaZulu-Natal ANCs against him also be erased. The second outcome holds the same kind of catastrophic outcome as had the fully Mahlobo’s nuclear deal been accepted. Unavoidable go with development investments/loans guarantees and pre-requisites to assure that the investments/loans are been back-paid with profits. No lunch is free, as the Zuma-Putin-nuclear-deal had shown when the tin of beans was open. The R10–billion by Mercedes-Benz at its East London plant, the $10-billion pledges by Saudi-Arabia and United Emirates respectively and the $14.7-billion pledge from China and $2.5-billion from the China Development Bank for example in Ramaphosa’s effort to collect $100-billion in investments from overseas in five years, all come undoubtedly with pre-requisites that can have clauses which can struggle at the end South Africa’s economy and its political independence. How the ANC regime is doing loans and investments (seemingly in line with the Communist China’s corrupted business and human ethics) inside this hopeful $100-billion Ramaphosa-investment-drive without a definite aim and plan, and a lack of openness to give insight of the possible presence of corruption and fraught, was confirmed by the fact that the Bob Davies, the Trade and Industry Minister, could not give any details for instance at the recent BRICS-summit on the $14.7-billion Chinese investment, and only could mention the $2.5-billion as a “loan” by the Chinese Bank to Eskom. It is excited big money, but it has “snacks” for the country as a whole on the long term.^{13,119,193,200} The question is prominent that if Ramaphosa and his cronies are suddenly ousted, what are going to happen with his deals?
The doubts and concerns of Munusamy’s²⁰⁰ about Ramaphosa’s and his intimate cronies’ business attics are justified. It must be also the doubts and concerns of the ordinary South African. At least are here concerns and doubts in-depth shared (and treated as a possible new effort of state-capturing) by the antagonists, when she writes^200:20: “We can only hope that investment and loans still mean different things, and that we do not have to pay back the “investments” money to the Chinese. But if Davies does not know what these vast amounts of money are pledged towards, how are the rest of us supposed to drink the Kool-Aid?”
Bruce¹³ takes this specific concern further by asking, after a very in-depth reviewing of the Chinese investments, if it is at the end not going to cost South Africa’s its sovereignty as the Russian Mahlobo’s nuclear deal nearly did? Far fetch? Not at all, posits Bruce¹³, reflecting on the political empowerment already inside South Africa by the Chinese. Bruce writes^13:16:

“It already happened recently with the ousting of a journalist of the Independent newspaper group of Iqbal Survé, which Survé bought a fewer years ago with a strong financial input by the Chinese, dare to critisise the discriminative and suppressive racial and religious treatment of China’s Muslim population.”

For the South African poor masses, burdened by VAT and fuel price rises (and betrayed by the ANC regime since 1994 to better their financial disposition), it would be important to know what these investments pledges really mean before the 2019-Election.^{13,119,193,200}
What is clear from this secrecy of the ANC elite is that some of these loans are to be paid in dollars, like the $2.5-billion (R37-billion) recently loan to Eskom. The recent pledges of investment/loan made by the Chinese of almost R400-billion to South Africa, again also lacks details in what currency the investment or the loan might be denominated in, or what it will be spent on.^{13,14,15,117,186,200}
Notwithstanding this blanket on information, is the only assurance by the ANC regime regarding their deals with China, the ANC regime’s remark that South Africa is in no danger of losing anything, writes Bruce¹³. The minister of International Relations and Co-operation, Lindiwe Sisulu defends these mysterious new Chinese loans and investments simple by arguing that the country wants to be free from its previously European ties and wants to develop its industries on the back of somebody they can depend on inside the ANC’s ideological route of revolutionaries. This, say the antagonists, gives a very in-depth insider-view of the gobbling up of South Africa by China and our growing dependence of finance by China at all cost to can survive our failed economics^13:16: “We ‘falling into the arms of the Chinese not because we want, but because we have to’”, posits Bruce¹³. But it goes further: the introduction of South Africa into the outdated and failed communistic political system where autocratic and suppression of South Africans will become the rule and all private land and assets be nationalised.
Xi Jinping, president of China makes no secret about China’s ambitious plans to enlarge its global influence, while it’s common knowledge that in all these actions China’s short and long term interests come first. (This is reflected well by China’s basically exclusively buying at cheap South Africa coal, iron-ore and other mining products, ignoring constructive trade that can better the value-chains in South Africa’s economy.) And the Chinese like to make new markets fitting exclusively to their own needs and plans by building workable infrastructures, like harbours, roads and buildings, to serve exclusively their own import and export needs in their “financial dependent” African allies, like South Africa. Take for instance Ramaphosa’s signed deal with his beloved China on their building of a new coal power station of 4 600 MW (an equivalent to another Medupi), effectively owned by them, which is seemingly not going to feed into the national grid, but instead will feed a 60km2 metallurgical zone in which the Chinese will produce power to run a Chinese owned integrated steel-mill and a large variety of other iron and steel projects. This Chinese development setup will collapse any local labour input and permanent employment in South Africa. This project, still to be developed, was well-selected by the Chinese for their exclusive interest because it sits on the railway line north into the rest of Africa.^14,117
On the well-masked attack of South Africa’s political and economic sovereignty, allowed by Ramaphosa and his Minister Sisulu to their partner, the political radical China, to stream into the South Africa’s industrial heart via loans, projects and investments and the occupying of its soil, Bruce¹³ writes^13:16: “It’ll be interesting to see how many local firms and how much local labour goes into China Zone. Because once signed and sealed, it’ll be all but Chinese territory. All we can hope is that Ramaphosa has extracted a price commensurate with the privilege he’s given to Xi Jinping”.
For the antagonists are there much more involved. Prominent stands here the present land expropriation and the possible role of China in “helping” the incoming Black poor farmers to set up a Black farming sector and the finance around it.^{13-15,117,186}
The editorial of the Sunday Times, dated the 29th July 2018, showing praise for Xi Jinping and China’s efforts to “uplift South Africa” and alleged that South Africa has already safeguards in place against Chinese investment terms that do not favour the country’s interest in the long run. But the editor admits in the same breath that Xi Jinping is a master at “realpolitik” and that China is known to shun local labour, skills transfer and localisation in foreign projects. Contradicting himself, the editor at the same time (notwithstanding his earlier safeguarding remark), asks himself the question if South Africa had safeguard its interest during negotiations! More in this context of Chinese opportunism, it is important to note that the China Zone has the potential for further Chinese development and of their South Africa possession-taking through some of the recent masse investments promised by China to Ramaphosa and, guided in some masked way by these secret China-deals, to can steer Ramaphosa to build new corridors for further Chinese development from the China Zone in Limpopo to Richards Bay. Free and cheap land for Chinese use stand clearly out.^{13-15,117,186}
Zuma failed to make provision when doing his exclusive Mahlobo’s nuclear deal with Putin for such a commensurate (besides of course state-capture!). Can Cyril Ramaphosa, coming also from the Jacob Zuma-stable, really be trusted with the country’s front-door keys to can handle the eagerly knocking Chinese? The question for the antagonists is: Can the gratis availability of masse White-farmlands and other land grabbed from Whites without compensation, not also going to fit well into the Chinese-ANC-scheming of more Chinese developments inside a so-called China Farming Zones?
Regarding the darkness of the general public by the Ramaphosa-regime about most of their present business doings with the Chinese and the possibility that nasty surprises can spring suddenly from it, the journalist Bronwyn Nortjè makes reference of the so-called conspiracy theory already presence, namely that the sole aim of land expropriation without compensation by the ANC is to make land cheaply available for Chinese farming projects in corporation with the poor and landless Blacks, making the start-up and running costs of the post-2019 policy on land expropriation for the ANC regime minimal. This “absurd” viewpoint is not without merit, seeing that most of the dealings with the Chinese by Ramaphosa and his intimate team, as said, are mostly under a cloud of secrecy without any good reason offered to defend this secrecy (The whole intended project of land-expropriation also falls in the same category of secrecy, cutting out the public of the intentions, new ownerships, etc., beyond the vague “announcement” that it is meant for the poor and landless Blacks). With a reasoned concern of further wrongdoing of all kinds by the ANC, it is important to note that the Zondo Commission shows that the ANC regimes previous so-called “business deals on behalves of the country” is undoubtedly something more comprehensive heinous than just state-capture. Crookery, corruption, self-enrichment and political manipulation are salted in the ANC regime’s planning, thinking and doing over a broad terrain, with the state and the country the two easiest lambs to kill. Is the absurd story of a relation between a Chinese urge for South African farmland and land-grabbing not indeed a smoking gun, ask the antagonists.^{13-15,117,186}
It is indeed a smoking gun if the Akkerland farm incident serves as example. Hereto Dr Theo de Jager⁴⁰, the president of the World Agricultural Union, gives as some answer with regards to the rumours of land grabbing, specific for corrupted Chinese interests, wherein Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, the minister of land-development and land-transformation and other prominent ANC elite’s stand central with their hastily and forcing expropriation intentions. With reference to the first farm in this expropriation-drive, namely Akkerland in Limpopo – which was intended to be expropriated at a fraction of its real value for the “community” – it came to light that this was a cover-up because the land was urgently needed by a mining company which wants to mine coal on it for a Chinese industrial development project which is also going to form part of a massive Chinese power-station and metal-layouts/plants between Louis Trichardt and Musina. (The expropriate order of her was in the meantime halted by the land-claim’s court).⁴⁰
The hard economic, social and political facts that the Western-orientated South Africa and China do not play the same rules all-over, is seemingly missed out in Ramaphosa’s and Sisulu’s political mindsets. Or is there another kind of capture and state-reorientation in making with the growing new ANC-China-brotherhood?²⁰¹
The fact that South Africa is in serious economic trouble, lacking strong executive political leadership with integrity across the society, makes the awareness of new state wrongdoings under the blanket, as in the time of Zuma, prominent around the new love affair with China.^189,202 Munusamy’s²⁰² warning brings as again back to our contingent of failed ANC-leaders who can again start-up immense wrongdoing like land-capture. About the much needed strong executive leaders in the present-day South Africa, especially the ANC regime, she writes^202:18: “That leadership is not evident anywhere, certainly not in politics. The lesson from experience of state capture is that the government should never be trusted with too much power and the citizenry always needs to be aware of the activities of their elected representatives”.
Looking critical to China’s economic intentions with South Africa, it is clear that it is using South Africa opportunistic as it is also doing with the many other instable Africa-countries it had encircled as so-called business-partners. China’s intention and inclination are primarily to get it self here well-established to put the hand on South Africa’s cheap, vast deposits of platinum group metals, gold, manganese and chrome. Further are there South Africa’s economically affordable mangoes, apples, plums, oranges, pears, grapes, cherries and wines which are much popular in China. Besides above recent promised investments of R17.2-billion by China, the country already investments in South Africa infra-structure are estimated to be $25-billion, with a further $5-billion in wind-power in Northern Cape and R220-million in the clean-cement industry. The already silently rooting of the Chinese supremacy into South Africa is the further indicator that China is in total involve in 300 investment projects and helped to create work for so-called 400 000 jobs here. The immense Chinese growing network and its rooting into the ANC’s structure of politics and economics in South Africa, is evidenced in the fact that the China-South African trade has increase with 25 times from 1994 after the ANC’s power-taking.¹⁸⁸
But above picture of an “increase with 25 times” from 1994 to 2018 is in reality very imbalanced and misleading. It does reflect overall “trading movements”, missing out on the presence of real good trading benefits for South Africa. True to Xi Jinping’s “realpolitik” is China the sole winner. The economist Dr Roelf Botha^193:4 reports in this context that the South Africa export of manufactured products to China was only 7% of the total exports to China while the imports of these kinds of products from China were more than 90% of the total imports from China. This endangers the existence of the local manufacturers of South Africa which already are struggling. The poor quality of these cheap manufactured Chinese products, as well as their industrial products, specific like the 2014 Transnet’s buying of 591 locomotives, is excellent examples. Further is the negative outcome of these Chinese imports visible in the fact that the over the last five years the local manufacturing sector grows only 2% while the growth in imported manufactured products from China has risen to more than 30%. Botha¹⁹³ shows that if the metals and mineral exports to China are excluded, South Africa’s trade deficit in 2017 was R167-billion with China, reflecting a 34% deficit, which is more than the total trade deficit of South Africa to the USA, India, France, Italy, Japan, South-Korea and Britain.¹⁹³
Central in the new Chinese largesse to South Africa as a BRICS-partner, stands China’s so called Belt and Road development-scheme, based on the Chinese comprehensive and sincere relationship with Africa, where through the Chinese government lent to various Africa-governments around $100bn (R536 trillion) to finance large infrastructure projects. This Chinese venture already led thereto that Chinese exports to Africa doubled from 2009 to 2015, to make China Africa’s largest trading partner. While the initial outcome of this Chinese-presence was experienced as positive by some African-countries, the Chinese Belt and Road scheme became more sinister from 2014, making mostly the Chinese the only beneficiary.¹⁵ Only five African countries are not running a significant trade deficit, writes Bronwyn Nortjè. Jeremy Stevens, the Chinese-economist at the Standard Bank Group, reports that Kenya for example shipped only $166-million of goods to China while it imported $5-billion from China in 2017 (This included the equipment used to build the $4-billion Chinese-funded railway in Kenya).¹⁵
Excluding South Africa, accounts the Chinese debt of the total debt contracted by sub-Saharan African countries, around 14%. China’s so-called “assistance” to Africa countries was enlarge in September 2018 with another $60-billion in new development funding, stretching over three years. A further prominence with these Chinese loans, reports Stevens, is that it contains many times clauses that lock-up new markets for capital goods and equipment as well as work-opportunities exclusively for Chinese-labour, making opportunities for the growth and development of the in-debited countries limited. The promise by the Chinese president that “heavily indebted and underdeveloped countries don’t have to worry about paying back the loans”, spells masked-opportunism from the Chinese. Nortje¹⁵ can with good reason the Chinese intentions questioned when she says^15:9: “…can anyone be that nice?” Remember further over and over her warning: there is not such a thing as a free lunch. Never ever!
Although the Chinese Communist government fronted their impact into South Africa also innocently as part of the Chinese comprehensive and sincere relationship with Africa, is the arriving of the new Chinese largesse in South Africa a point of great concern for the antagonists, seen from a political and economic viewpoint. The question for the antagonists is if the incoming Ramaphosa – Xi Jinping politic-socioeconomic-venture is not, as said before, again a repeat of the dangerous previous Zuma-Putin-Mahlobo-venture wherein it was alleged that South Africa’s uranium deposits as well as its mineral-rights as guarantees stood central. Further is there for the antagonists the land expropriation issue wherein the Chinese can become very prominent role players. And of course stands here for the antagonists again prominent the allegations of enormous bribes in the rewarding of contracts which surely can include the present land of Whites.^15,188,193

3.6.6.3. BRICS-kabaya’s “realpolitik” of the re-colonisation and enslaving of South Africans

For South Africa, arguing the antagonists, is a prominent outcome of the whole China-South African-trade-venture via BRICS, the “Chinese chains” accompanying it, like the possible rising of the debt obligations bonded to the Chinese loans/investments and our ability to finance that debt, the snatch up for cheap by the Chinese of our raw materials and a growing dumping place of Chinese poor quality products in South Africa. Hereto stands also China’s undoubtedly infiltration of the South African politics and governance system. Inside the present strong political-economic impact on South Africa by China, can the Chinese final outcome be far-away from an altruistic one as Ramaphosa and his cronies as well as Xi Jinping’s try to project to the world.
For the antagonists it can be the beginning of a gobbling-up of the country over a broad spectrum by China. Re-colonisation through “realpolitik”, as previously indicated, by the antagonists, seems a possible outcome. Easing for the Chinese to can infiltrate the South African politics and economics stand for the antagonists the corruption and willingness by some of the ANC elite in their handing-over of the birth-rights of South Africans to the Chinese, as was shown by the well-planned think-out corrupted Mahlobo-nuclear-Zuma-Putin deal. The fact that the ANC lacks funding and know-how to start up an immense Black farming sector, make the Chinese with their so-called “development capital” and their seasoned farming expertise an ideal partner to manage and to develop the masse of White farm land they intent to expropriate without compensation.^15,188
The already corrupted ANC elite’s brotherhood with BRICS represents at this stage for the antagonists another crooked root growing fast into the already dysfunctional political and socioeconomic system of South Africa. The political contamination of South Africa can bring full out the nationalizing of private assets and the suppression of minority groups as the Whites.

4. Conclusions

It is clear for the antagonists that numerous contaminating elements and role-players are making the political and socioeconomic system of South Africa dysfunctional. The ANC is a prominent player in this regard. Land expropriation without compensation is entangled with all the ANC’s governmental processes and procedures. For the antagonists land expropriation is intimately linked to the ANC’s failed political and economic management, which is exclusively based on Black liberation and revolutionary politics. It is revenge for the past.^202-225
Louw¹³⁸, in this context of the possible vengeful intentions of the ANC on Whites, which is now a primarily motivator for land grabbing by the ANC regime, writes as follows^138:173:

Cries for revenge for the injustices surrounding apartheid are still prominent among some Blacks, even after 23 years of the independence from statutory apartheid. Many Blacks still mourn loved ones who were mistreated or killed by the apartheid managers and their accomplices. Many struggle to escape the impoverishment they suffered at the hand of White regimes, especially by the nationalist Afrikaners after 1948. These negative feelings, emotions and thinking are not limited to the poor, lower socio-economic Black classes who form the majority of Blacks, but is also reflected more and more in present-day by the Black upper classes as well. Most feel that there has not been real legal, civil and financial transformation and correction after 1994 to rectify wrongdoings of Whites on Blacks during apartheid. This negative and unbounded psychological energy manifests in various problematic and conflict behaviours in today’s South Africa.
Dr Albertina Luthuli (daughter of the late Chief Albert Luthuli) says that the present flood of racial polarizations could be expected, because she believes the past cannot just be forgotten to suit the needs of the Whites who want to survive in South Africa. The TRC failed in its attempt to bring the past to the present. For many Black persons who had been wronged by the apartheid system, there seems to be no future in South Africa if the past is not first addressed. These persons still seem to think about rectification of the past as a process of revolution, a forced and physical correction of the past. They are caught in the Castro thinking of the 1960s: “…a revolution is a struggle between the future and the past…” They want to exorcise the past in a way that will constitute full-blown revenge for apartheid instead of reconciliation.

For the antagonists the ANC regime and its fixation on revenge for their tragic suffering in South Africa’s political history, is sadly ignorant of the wisdom of the proverb (RT Bennett):

The past is a place of reference, not a place of residence;
The past is a place of learning, not a place of living.

For the antagonists it is clear that they will never escape the ANC’s hate and grudges: they must take on the ANC regime everywhere and in every way to stop their revenge on Whites, it can end in the genocide of Whites. Land expropriation without compensation is for the antagonists only the first step to genocide. The antagonists, looking to the intended stealing of the land of Whites, have no other choice in their fight of the ANC’s present-day delinquent leaders and elite than that prescribed by Mthombothi^226:17 when he says: “But it should begin with us: we should be brutally frank and intolerant of the misdeeds of our leaders”.
With this article the antagonists did exactly what Mthombothi²²⁶ prescribed: they are pointing out the comprehensive dysfunction of the political and socioeconomic system of South Africa since 1994 with its contaminated elements and role-players, created deliberately by the ANC to execute corruption, criminality and extreme racism. Land expropriation without compensation is only one root in the political and socioeconomic delinquency of the ANC. But it can be a poison root with the ability to kill the innocent and to bring devastation to South Africa.
In the next article, titled: “The antagonists’ arguments, opinions and viewpoints against changing Section 25 (2)(b) of the South African Constitution to make land redistribution without compensation possible: Part 2”, the various contaminated elements and role-players that make the political and socioeconomic system of the country dysfunctional, will be described further and evaluated in depth.

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179. Zuma’s compromised securocrats should be suspended and investigated. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2017 Dec. 3; p. 20.
180. Light is being shone in dark, festering places all over the country. Sunday Times. 2018 May 27; p. 16.
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PEER REVIEW
Not commissioned: Externally peer-reviewed.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
The author declares that he has no competing interest.
FUNDING
The research was funded by the Focus Area Social Transformation, Faculty of Humanities, Potchefstroom Campus of the North-West University, South Africa.
UNSUITABLE TERMS AND INAPROPRIATE WORDS
Please note that I, the author, is aware that the words Creole, Bantu, Kaffir, Native, Hottentot and Bushman are no longer suitable terms and are inappropriate (even criminal) for use in general speech and writing in South Africa (Even the words non-White and White are becoming controversial in the South African context). The terms do appear in dated documents and are used or translated as such in this article for the sake of historical accuracy. Their use is unavoidable within this context. It is important to retain their use in this article to reflect the racist thought, speech and writings of as recently as sixty years ago. These names form part of a collection of degrading names commonly used in historical writings during the heyday of apartheid and the British imperial time. In reflecting on the leaders and regimes of the past, it is important to foreground the racism, dehumanization and distancing involved by showing the language used to suppress and oppress. It also helps us to place leaders and their sentiments on a continuum of racism. These negative names do not represent my views and I distance myself from the use of such language for speaking and writing. In my other research on the South African populations and political history, I use Blacks, Whites, Xhosa, Zulu, Afrikaners, Coloureds, KhoiSan (Bushmen), KhoiKhoi (Hottentots) and Boers as applicable historically descriptive names.