The antagonists’ arguments, opinions and viewpoints against changing Section 25 (2)(b) of the South African Constitution (4)

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 2: The dysfunctional political and socioeconomic system of the ANC regime (4)
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: 2

1. Background

1.1. Introduction

The study of the previous article (Part One) on the antagonists’ arguments, opinions and viewpoints offer a broad identification of elements and role players present in the political and socioeconomic system of the ANC regime. They each oppose the intended land grabbing of White land by the ANC regime to transfer it free to poor and landless Blacks. The antagonists see land grabbing as part of a greater international political and socioeconomic process through which the ANC regime is promoting its revolutionary and Marxist-socialist policy.
The primary aim of this article (Part Two) is to continue the reflection on these various elements and role players as already described in the previous article (Part One). It is only with such a comprehensive presentation that a picture can emerge of the antagonists’ civil right to uphold the Constitution in its present form. The presentation of the various elements and role players are divided into six subdivisions.
It is important to note how Chomsky’s¹ points out that modern politics often hampers rational thought, allowing the practice of freedom, but limiting the pursuit of truth (creating ignorance among a large portion of South Africans on land ownership, indigenousness and what political and personal integrity means). This limited pursuit of truth limits the development of the critical role of leaders of integrity and independent thinking in skewed political systems. This vacuum causes a lack of responsibility to provide students, individuals, citizens, politicians, and the^1:10 :“…wider public, the knowledge and skills they need to be able to learn how to think rigorously, to be self-reflective and to develop the capacity to govern rather than be governed”.
For Chomsky¹ it goes much further^1:10:

“… it is not enough to learn how to think critically. Engaged intellectuals must also develop an ethnical imagination and sense of social responsibility necessary to make power accountable and to deepen the possibilities for everyone to live dignified lives infused with freedom, liberty, decency, care and justice.”

In the view of the antagonists, Chomsky’s¹ view is a reflection of how the ANC over time kept the South African public away from understanding the meaning of true justice, democracy and civil rights by limiting a non-racial intellectual leadership in the country’s politics. This is also how they successfully deprive Whites of dignified lives infused with freedom, liberty, decency, care and justice. The antagonists view the land process as something that is symptomatic of the ANC’s decay and as something that precludes Whites from a life of freedom. In this context of racism and isolation of groups, as experienced at presence by the South African Whites, Henry Giroux, professor at the McMaster University and distinguished visiting professor at Ryerson University, points to the correctness of Chomsky¹ conclusion, namely that politics can only become emancipatory for a given group of people when these people speak out fearlessly and publically about their experience, like the antagonists are now doing in relation to land. Without such a political catharsis and public resistance against the government of the day by the suppressed antagonists, the criminal politicians of the ANC and their crooked politics will continue. The antagonists are deliberately being obstructed from the participation in politics by the ANC, and if they fail to force their identity into the total political setup, the can recede into obscurity. Challenging the ANC regime on the land issue is of absolute importance.¹ Giroux writes in this regard^1:11:

“Chomsky clearly connects with a need among the public for those intellectuals willing to make power visible, to offer an alternative understanding of the world, and to point to the hopes of a future that does not imitate the scurrilous present.”

Giroux further highlights^1:11:

“Chomsky publicly argues against regimes of domination organized for the production of violence, and social and civil death. The force of his presence…offers up the possibility of dangerous memories, alternative ways of imagining society and the future, and the necessity of public criticism as one important element of individual and collective resistance”.

Chomsky’s¹ advice on rectifying discrimination, exploitation and abuse of suppressed groups echoes the ideas of the antagonists in their present fight against the ANC’s planned amendment to Section 25 to make land grabbing possible.
Chomksky’s¹ description of leaders with “poor political intelligence” fits the leadership crises of the ANC since 1994, from Nelson Mandela up to Cyril Ramaphosa, characterised by state capture, fraud and corruption. These leaders have failed to assure that everyone can live dignified lives infused with freedom, liberty, decency, care and justice in their countries. The antagonists as a group, opposing the ANC, know that the Whites are on their own in the ANC’s racist political reign and that they are an easy target for things like land grabbing.²
The antagonists see the ANC regime as one that lacks the political intelligence to be ethical and socially responsible and to be accountable so that everyone in South Africa could have dignified lives infused with freedom, liberty, decency, care and justice. They became a crooked autocracy, greatly biased against minorities like the Whites. As Mthombothi says^2:3: “The ANC is drunk from the alcohol of corruption.” They have lost contact with political, social and personal decency and justice. The ANC’s deviant behaviour since 1994 is spilling over to the land issue, forcing the antagonists to take them on with some sound arguments. It is in this context that Articles 3 and 4 offer some insights.²

1.2. Research intentions

The research aim of this article is to evaluate and to describe what the antagonists believe about the dysfunctional political and socioeconomic system of South Africa that supports and promotes land grabbing. Opposition to this dysfunctional system stands central in the antagonists’ perspective on changing of Section 25 (2)(b) of the South African Constitution to make land redistribution without compensation possible.
This article forms the second and last part of the article titled: “The antagonists’ arguments, opinions and viewpoints on changing Section 25 (2)(b) of the South African Constitution to make land redistribution without compensation possible: Part 1”. This article, Part Two, reflects further on what the antagonists believe about 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 ownership of South African land for the period 1652 to 2018 in South Africa. The sources include books for the period 1947 to 2018 and newspapers for the period 2017 to 2018. These sources were consulted to evaluate and to describe the current perspective of the antagonists for the unchanged keeping of Section 25(2)(b) of the Constitution and thus the continuation of the present land redistribution policy with compensation in place since 1994.
The research findings are presented in narrative form.

3. Discussion

As already indicated, the antagonists’ perspective reflects a broad array of elements and role players active in the political and socioeconomic system of the ANC regime that they associate with the intended expropriation of White land without compensation by the ANC.
The presentation of the various elements and role players in this article is done in six subdivisions.

3.1. Political horrors, anarchy and revolution

3.1.1. Imitating the horrors of the Mao, Stalin and Mugabe regimes

The antagonists fear that the murderous events of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, the horrors of Stalin’s regime and, closer to home, Robert Mugabe’s implementation of the land grabbing in Zimbabwe, can be repeated in South Africa. In fact, they see the farm murders as proof that it is already starting. Opperheimer’s³ writing on the land issue is one of the few instances where antagonists tell the world of their deep-seated fears of a “post-2018 South African Uhuru”. However, the writing is symptomatic of a deeply entrenched idea of victimhood cemented into many White mindsets from 1652. Opperheimer3 almost writes as a lonesome White telling the world why he thinks the present political setup where land must be left untouched, must be upheld to assure Whites of a future economic and personal safe-heaven and as much power as the Blacks in South Africa. But it is also an outcry to the outside world to offer help to maintain the present political and economic model of South Africa if they want to not only to assure the stable and safe lives of Whites after 2018, but also the safeguarding of foreign economic and political interests here. There is undoubtedly a belief hidden under layers of arguments on the land-reform issue that if the present political and economic status quo can be upheld successfully, the present land ownership of White rights will be left unchanged. The flip side of that view is that land expropriation without compensation, with its many other conflicting disturbing rooting will open the floodgates for political instability and marginalisation of Whites.^4-6

3.1.2. The Zimbabwe-South African environment of anarchy

When analysing the Zimbabwe-South African environment of anarchy, is it important to note that in Zimbabwe no horrors were initially committed against the Whites. Robert Mugabe suddenly steered land grabbing into action with his political radicalism and racism. This is very similar to the political radicalism and racism now awaking in South Africa. However, in reality there have not been any atrocities aimed at Whites at the hand of the ANC. The conflict situation has been limited to heated political debate (if one regards the farm murders as a matter of crime that is not linked to formal politics).^3,5
The antagonists are quick to point out that in example cases, like Zimbabwe, violence emerged when the targeted group lost its military power. This could be why land expropriation was not an avenue in 1994: the White minority was still politically organised with a significant hold on the military. However, the numbers of the White South African have declined from 1994 (there are 2.7 million Afrikaners left, and the numbers are in constant decline). They have also become politically disorganised and disoriented. The antagonists believe that the radicals in the ANC, EFF and PAC think that the time is ripe to address the matters left untouched in 1994.^6-8
The lack of Black land ownership is often blamed for the entire context of inequality, unemployment and poverty. Taking from Whites and the re-dividing it among the poor and landless have become an obvious rectifying step. The ANC regime sells the immediate implementation of land expropriation, even without compensation to owners, as a priority to avoid the tragic outcome of land grabbing in the form that it took in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. The antagonists see this reasoning as a dishonest attempt to hide the ANC’s true motives. They feel that the current Black poverty and inequality primarily have their roots in the ANC regime’s substandard governance. Taking land from Whites cannot dramatically improve the country’s failing economy. Black poverty, unemployment and inequality will just continue.^6-8

3.1.3. South African farm murders

The antagonists see the constant rise in farm murders where Whites are the prominent prey as an indication that Mugabe-like chaos is looming. This is a murder spree, they argue, that can also spread to urban areas and cities. The antagonists allege that the killing of Whites, especially Afrikaner farmers, have become a common phenomenon in South Africa since 1994 in an effort to drive Whites from their land.^9,10
The antagonists also see poor governance as one of the main causes of the murders on White farmers as it has led to poor policing, a general lack of law enforcement, immense poverty and unemployment, social and personal isolation of races, uncontrolled gang activities, and the ANC regime openly denying farm murders as a problematic phenomenon. The ANC dismissing of farm murders as “Black danger” propaganda vestigial of the previous regime and false reporting by the antagonists, is seen by the antagonists as planned lies. The antagonists accuse the ANC government of very little effort to prevent it or to offer compensation, even to discuss the matter publically.^9-11
The antagonists have two prominent concerns, namely 1) that Blacks are taking revenge on White-farmers for Apartheid; and 2) that there is a direct effort to drive Afrikaner farmers from their farms as was done by the Mai-Mai in Kenya, by Swapo in Namibia and by Mugabe’s supporters in Zimbabwe. They try to prove this with official data. They report that in 2016 70 White farmers were murdered in 345 farm attacks, meaning one farm murder every four days and one farm attack every day. They support their argument on the danger that farming holds for Whites in post-1994 South Africa, the antagonists further compared the murder averages of 2016 for South Africa with the 2016 data on global averages. In this comparison the world average is 7:100 000 versus South Africa’s average of 33:100 000 (the crime statistics for the financial year 2017 to 2018 reflects a rise to 36:100 000). South Africa’s problems with violent crime are also confirmed by the murder of members of the South African Police Service in 2017, namely 54:100 000. The antagonists claim that the murders of South African farmers came to a shocking 133:100 000 in 2016. In this context it is also reported that the SAPS data for the period 1991 to 2016 reflect the death of 14 589 farm dwellers with a ratio 60% Whites versus 40% Blacks.^9,10
It is clear to the antagonists that White farmers are slowly, as in Zimbabwe, being driven from farms. They see the farm murders as focussed systematic ethnic cleansing, and the decline in commercial farmers from 65 000 to only 35 000 in 2017 serves as further evidence of a murder spree aimed at White farmers.^9,10
Ian Cameron¹², head of community safety for AfriForum, recently reported that there have been 300 farm attacks and 41 farm murders since the 1 January 2018 to March 2018. For the financial year 2017–2018 (1 March 2017 to 28 February 2018), AfriForum reports 70 farm murders. The official crime statistics released by parliament on 11 September 2018 for the same financial year reflects only 62 farm murders with six attempted murders, 33 farmhouse robberies and two rapes; an outcome that AfriForum dismisses as a gross misrepresentation, with good reason.^10,13-15 Cameron¹² claims that his organisation shares their statistics with the police on a regular basis and that the data should therefore correlate. The antagonists see the eight less farm murders reported by the SAPS as manipulation, as reflected by Cameron’s response^12:12:

“I am scared to say it is deliberate, especially now with all this attention from the international community”.

3.1.4 South Africa’s general murder statistics

The antagonists point out that however much the SAPS and the ANC regime would like to dismiss Trump’s description of South Africa as the murder hotspot for White farmers, the country’s overall murder statistics are more than enough to confirm Trump’s worries. They feel that these numbers are indicative that the events brought on by Mao, Stalin and Mugabe is already part of the ANC’s efforts. This reflection also includes the presence of low-level anarchy in the country. For the financial year 1 March 2017 to 28 February 2018, parliament’s general crime statistics¹⁴, published on 12 September 2018, are terrifying. It greatly overshadows farm murders. It reflects that 20 336 people were killed, of whom 6 555 were shot and killed. Of the rest 4 866 were killed in knife attacks, 445 by the use of hands, 76 in axe attacks and 72 were beaten to death with a sjambok. The Minister of Police, Bheki Cele14 (National Police Commissioner from 2009 to 2012) said in reaction^{14: 1-2}:

“It doesn’t matter what figures you put, but if you can’t deal and control the murder cases, you are not bringing any joy to the South African people. It doesn’t matter what else you reduce; if people die and when you look at the figures, there are 57 dying a day. It borders close to a war zone while there is peace; there is no war in South Africa.”

The DA spokesperson on police matters, Zakhele Mbhele¹⁴, pinpointed the root of these evils when he responsed^{14: 1-2}:

“…the ANC had failed to keep ordinary citizens safe. The fact that the ANC spends an average of R9.1 million to protect one VIP but only R1 500 per South African resident reveals that their skewed priorities are crippling the fight against the unacceptably high levels of crime in the country.”

Japhet Ncube¹⁶, the editor of the Star, drove it home when he wrote^16:2:

If you feel unsafe in your home and on the streets, you haven’t been imagining things. South Africa is one of the most unsafe places on Earth. More people are dying here than in many war zones across the world.
We are all just statistics waiting to happen. The criminals rule South Africa.
And if we bank on politicians to stop the killings, the criminals, who sometimes work with police officers, will be knocking on your door soon.
And you can’t do anything about it. The police are unable to do anything about it. The government is unable to do anything about it. The battle has been lost.

The police is currently short of 62 000 officers due to a lack of funding and mismanagement. In the same period billions of Rands went down the drain as a result of state capture. The size of the police force has decreased from 200 000 in 2010 to 191 000 in 2018, meaning a decline of 9 000 in eight years while the population is growing.¹⁷
The antagonists see many other indicators that point to the horrors of the regimes of Mao, Stalin and Mugabe. The annual GLOBAL Peace Index of the Institute for Economics and Peace gives us insight into the most dangerous countries in the world, ranking 163 independent countries on how peaceful they are (or, in contradiction: how dangerous they are), with the lowers scoring countries being those technically at war (like Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Iraq, Somalia). These 163 countries were assessed using 23 indicators that were each scored on a scale of 1 to 5. The 163 countries cover more than 99.7% of the world’s population. South Africa came in at 39th, but this changed negatively after the September 2018 parliamentary report on crime compiled by the SAPS.⁹ The editor⁹ of The Star writes^9:12:
“The stats paint a grim picture. They show why South Africa is in the league of countries as Belize, Honduras and Venezuela in the murder stakes.”
The antagonists therefore view inciting public remarks such as “We will not kill the Whites now” as gravely serious.^9,15,18-20

3.1.5. Increasing anarchy and destruction

3.1.5.1. What is anarchy?

The antagonists’ belief that the horrors of the regimes of Mao, Stalin and Mugabe can also happen in South Africa, is based on the realities of upheavals in the country. There are many examples. There has been a wave of civil disobedience over the last ten years. Poor service delivery has resulted in protests and unrest. The shortage of jobs, accessible education and training, housing and medical care is resulting in full-scale anarchy, leaving the possibility of civil war and revolution before the end of 2019. The antagonists are not alone in this thinking. The South African veteran political analyst and journalist, Barney Mthombothi²¹, confirms this fear when he tries to convey what anarchy is and what it means to the ordinary citizens of South Africa^{21: 17}:

Anarchy is defined in the Collins English Dictionary as: “General lawlessness and disorder, especially when thought to result from an absence or failure of government…the absence of any guiding or uniting principle; disorder; chaos”.
That could be our destination if we’re not careful.

Mthombothi²¹, a wise man, fine diplomat, true patriot and excellent journalist, avoids creating panic by saying that the country is already in anarchy. The political truth is that the country is in a constant low- to mid-level stage of anarchy; it is just waiting for the interference of the politically corrupt and opportunistic Zuptiods’ and intervention by the present South African government to explode into full-scale anarchy and its accompanying revolution and civil war. This may happen as soon as the 2019 election. All South Africans have been affected by injustice and have been dreaming of a broad socio-economic correction. Inequality, poverty, unemployment and landlessness are central. It is mostly the majority of poor and landless Blacks who had hoped that the election of 27 April 1994 would bring a new, improved life and who had placed the ANC into government to do exactly that, who are really suffering. They are now starting to make the country ungovernable with unrest and violence. The antagonists see an escalation in the scope, frequency and the severity of unrest and violence.^21,22
Although Whites and land owners have thus far been largely unaffected, they are aware of this growing danger, not only in terms of their future right to own land, but also their personal safety. The tragedies of Belgian Congo, Rwanda, Somali, Sudan and Zimbabwe are burned into their minds, consciously and unconsciously. As much the Whites are confused about the most likely outcome, they are also confused about addressing the matter. Their public participation has mainly centred on 1) the legality of the 1994 regime change and upholding the Constitution, and 2) the use of the court of law to force order. They see land expropriation without compensation as a social injustice and a form of civil disorder. In their view it is a stop en route to anarchy and revolution to overthrow the present democracy of South Africa.^21,22

3.1.5.2 The antagonists’ undeclared fears

The antagonists have thus far failed to address their own deep-seated fears constructively in public. Their public communication lack openness surrounding their fears about anarchy, both anarchy that could result from the populace’s growing frustration with the ANC government and the anarchy that could stem from the hostility against Whites that is built into the ANC’s radical statements on land expropriation and remarks such as “kill the Boers”, “the colonist Boers stole our land”, and “land possession by Whites is a sin”. This silence of some White South Africans is the result of a fear of reprisals from the poor and landless, of being labelled as non-Africans, colonists, or being associated with radical groups such as the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB). The antagonists feel that a dislike of any objection to Black wrongdoing has been cemented into the mindsets of the radicals in the ANC, EFF and PAC. This entrenched dislike of justified criticism is illustrated by the reactions to Donald Trump, who dared to publically acknowledge the problems South Africa has with land expropriation and the murders on White farmers (Can Trump be wrong to ask for an inquiry when facts show that in 2018 the average for murders per day was 57 persons in South Africa, which is six times more than the average number for the USA? The question posed to the ANC regime is: Who are these 57 murder victims and why and where did these murders happen?).^14,15,21,22
The ANC regime’s growing loyalty to and association with anarchist elements are also forcing most Whites into passivity and silence, although they speak freely in private. They have to voice their concerns about a failed ANC regime, their view that expropriation without compensation amounts to theft and their doubt about Ramaphosa’s ability to serve their interests. Such a “confession” would open a conversation on land reform. It could put Donald Trump’s remark on South African land grabbing and the threat to White lives into perspective, away from the propaganda and cover-ups.^{12,14,15,21,22}

3.1.5.3. Attitudes of apathy about criminal wrongdoing in society

Antagonists point out that the recent and current unrest and violence involve a mixed crowd of mostly Black youngsters and adults with a focus looting of shops and properties, torching vehicles and public and private buildings and occupying private or public land. In Cape Town, losses due to arson directed at the Metrorail train fleet, has topped R300 million since 2015. Just fighting off the arson and protecting passengers by means of a security team have cost Cape Town’s city council, the Cape provincial government and Prasa R48 million per annum. The police mostly stand by passively, leading to a culture of no prosecution as if they fear angering a powerful political group who may be their bosses in the near future (or as if these hooligans are already their political partners). This apathy towards criminal wrongdoing is a global phenomenon where anarchist forces are gaining control.^21,23 The base of the wanton destruction is a direct outcome of the masses’ disillusionment with the ANC’s politics, elite and regime and their failed democracy.^21,23
The direct outcome of the masses’ disillusionment is already clear, as Mthombothi²¹ writes^21:17:

“We’re witnessing a level of destruction probably not seen in the country’s history, save in war”.

Indeed, in well-ordered countries with well-ordered regimes in place, this would not happen as here in South Africa where the criminals run the show and the people are left unprotected, as Mthombothi²⁴ reflects^{24: 25}:

“South Africa have become blasé about crime, especially the ANC’s mindset on the matter and the thousands of people’s murdering, rape and robbing every day went unnoticed, even became internalised as the normal.”

Above is an important remark by Mthombothi24, seeing that the ANC-IFP anarchy in KwaZulu-Natal in the 1990s was described as brutal and cold-blooded, at the time the most severe within the borders of post-1910 South Africa. In this context is it important for the antagonists to note that the present anarchy may have a strong racial and ethnic under build, namely Black-on White and, as in KwaZulu-Natal, Black-on-Black violence.^25-27 Munusamy²⁵ writes as follows about this forgotten history and the possible implications of a revolution for the country’s stability^25:18:

“The history books reduce the violence to a bland narrative of events and statistics about the number of people killed. Articles you find online fail to adequately convey the horror of the time and the depth of human suffering in violence-ravaged parts of the province.”

Sibongakonke Shoba²⁷, a political editor of the Sunday Times, brings us back to the murder scene in KwaZulu-Natal in the 1990s. Shoba’s warning is clear^27:21:

It was not the first or last time that IFP impis raided the area. Due to KwaMashu’s proximity to Richmond Farm and Lindelani, IFP strongholds, the bloodthirsty warmongers often acted on their temptation to show off their shooting skills whenever they marched past the township.
But that Sunday they were craving more action.
We later learnt that our attackers had been bristling for action after being addressed by IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi at a rally in Durban. They were still dressed in IFP regalia, mainly T-shirts emblazoned with Buthelezi’s beaming face.

3.2. Exclusion of the poor from the ANC

The political, social and economic disillusionment of the poor and landless Blacks has become deep-seated. It is no longer simply dissatisfaction with poor service delivery, corruption, political incompetence, poverty, landlessness and homelessness. It has become an “…immense feeling of exclusion from the ANC regime, party and elite”, writes Mthombothi.^21:17 He continues by commenting on the ANC elite’s failure as responsible political leaders^21:17:

While apartheid excluded people by virtue of colour, the new dispensation unfortunately has its own haves and have-nots. ANC members and those close to them are “deployed” to cushy jobs in the government, get handed state contracts, live in plush suburbs and drive fancy cars.
The poor, meanwhile, can only gawk in awe and amazement at the opulence that is at last so close and so visible, but that they can neither experience nor enjoy. While the government has failed to provide basic services to the poor, it has at the same time become a generous cash cow for the rich, the powerful and the connected. The contradiction is both stunning and maddening. It’s Animal Farm all over again. The pigs are having a great time.

But, the antagonists point out, during anarchy the “prosperous pigs on the animal farm are gobbled up by a beast with the head, mouth and teeth of a dragon”: total anarchy and full revolution. The description of illegal occupations below shows how far this process had progressed.
The final words of Fikile Mbhele²⁸, who obstinately refused with 28 other families to vacate low cost houses that they occupied illegally of the eThekwini municipality since January 2018, became a common refrain among occupiers, reflecting a total disregard for law and order^28:10: “We decided we had to come here and take these houses, and secure the houses from outsiders.” Occupiers argue that as individuals with constitutional rights, they are constantly being overlooked by the ANC municipalities. Instead unrelated people from outside their traditional areas were offered houses and even councillors have become involved in illegally selling houses. The legal steps taken by the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) against the eThekwini municipality to defend the occupiers’ right to occupy in view of the failure of the ANC’s local systems to serve the individual citizen’s rights are enlightening. There is no municipal housing beneficiary list, the housing administration is substandard, residents of the area are not consulted about placements, the municipality breached the Constitution and other pieces of legislation in the handling of this housing project, while other housing projects in the city in general also lack a housing allocation policy in line with current legislation.²⁸
This not only provides insight into the human rights violations of the ANC regime since 1994, but confirms the correctness of Mthombothi’s²¹ postulation, namely^21:17: “…that the ANC regime has failed to provide basic services to the poor and that the political system, from the top to the lower levels, has become a generous cash cow for the ANC’s rich, powerful and connected.”
Mthombothi’s²¹ direct reference of the ANC’s model as^21:17: “… an animal farm wherein the pigs are having a great time”, is quite applicable and descriptive, but at the same time a serious point of concern for the future of South Africa.
Ramaphosa has thus far failed to act decisively by using the security forces to end anarchy in any form or even to condemn it. This reality is reflected by his skirting the issue of violence. Does he fear “…the hubris of Zuma’s 2014 prediction that the ANC will ‘run this government forever and ever…until Jesus come back’”? A racial and ethnic bloodbath can result from Ramaphosa’s land expropriation without compensation and labelling of Whites as colonial land thieves, argues the antagonists.²⁹
The antagonists wonder if Ramaphosa is treading carefully around Black unrest and anarchy because of his poor positioning in the NEC of the ANC. His position means that he has to refrain from angering Jacob Zuma and his strong faction. Ramaphosa is insecure about his position in the unstable ANC at this stage of his presidency in 2019. Some political analysts and other hopefuls only see a future stable country in the distance with Ramaphosa in a doubtful future role, as Bruce³⁰ reflects^30:16:

“We ordinary folk are just going to have to get used to a little uncertainty. For my part I think the Zuma crowd will gradually fade away. Whether that means Ramaphosa succeeds is another question.”

Predicting the presence of leaders like Ramaphosa and Zuma in our future political history is foolishness, the future is just too unpredictable, but seasoned politicians, historians and futurists can offer the voters various considerations. At this stage of our history, the antagonists view both Ramaphosa and Zuma as risks and persons who do not belong in respected democratic governmental regimes. Chronic anarchy has sadly become part of their rule.^21,29-31
Viewed from another perspective, the antagonists’ note, the people’s despair with the ANC regime’s failure to protect them has led to behaviour recent years that could be seen as chronic anarchy, but which is in reality pure self-defence and an expression of “normal” civilian rights to address their immediate danger. Mothombothi24 focused on these “legal” self-defence behaviours as follows^24:25:

Society has lost faith in the government’s ability to protect its citizens, and as a result vigilantism is on the rise. People are taking the law into their own hands.
Police Minister Fikile Mbalula seemed to lay the blame for rampart crime at the door of the police. The police should obviously take the rap; but so should the minister. The buck stops with him. The police, for instance, had been without stable leadership since the departure of the hapless Riah Phiyega as national commissioner two years ago.
And of course the crime stats have a lot in common with the horrendous economic number laid bare in parliament a day later: two sides of the same coin. A thriving economy would create jobs and take people out of crime.

3.3. The impact of contaminated international alliances on South African land grabbing

Political commentators view land expropriation fashioned after the EFF’s fantasy of wholesale confiscation of private property and banks as misleading “fake news”. However, it is not so far-fetched when considering the rhetoric of the ANC elite, many other radicals, and Ramaphosa himself on the absolute need for immediate expropriation without compensation. The view of the retire politician, Tony Leon, touches on a nerve. He reflects on the ANC’s radical new land redistribution and the inclusion of Julius Malema and the EFF as part of the unstoppable future radical rulers of South Africa. He compares the resulting future of South Africa to that created by political leaders Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. Leon’s32 comments read as follows^32:18:

He [Nicolás Maduro] and his late predecessor [Hugo Chávez] implemented an EFF-style programme of uncosted giveaways, at war with private production or even basic economics, reducing what was once the richest country in the hemisphere to beggary.
Inflation is recorded at 13 000%, the world’s highest, and prices of basic foods, mostly now imported, double every month. But eventually fact-free economics wearies the truest of believers, and very few bothered even to vote last weekend.
One fed-up Chavista, Carlos Gonzales, 64, who abstained, put a price on his disillusion. “My monthly pension is only enough to buy one frozen chicken…”

The radical propagandists have already decided on the outcome of the parliamentary hearings on possible land reform. There is only one outcome they find acceptable: extreme land reform. The antagonists feel that it clear that the radicals will force down radical land reform, whether or not it could end in revolution, rebellion, war or a second Rwanda.³³ Malema³³ himself stated publically on 22 July 2018 that if revolution breaks out^33:3: “…the EFF will join in to empowers the previously oppressed to have access to the land”.
In the view of the antagonists, chronic anarchy is evident from the illegal land occupations all over South Africa. These occur outside the boundaries set by Section 25(2)(b) or any other legal interpretation of the Constitution. Examples include occupations in Alexandra, Klipfontein, Waterfall, Johannesburg, and Hermanus in the Western Cape. Ramaphosa spoke out against unlawful land occupation in March 2018 and called on the police to clamp down on it (like taking down 100 illegal structures at the end of March 2018 in Alexandra and arresting five persons). He also told MPs the adopted parliamentary resolution on expropriation without compensation is not a call for “a smash-and-grab-guideline”. However, the land grabbing is gaining momentum and Ramaphosa has become very quiet on the matter. Land-related incidents – resistance against evictions, land invasions and land protests – numbered 70 between 2013 and 2017. Of these 84% occurred in metros, with only 16% occurring in rural areas. However, a finding of the Institute for Security Studies that there has recently been a flare-up with 41 of these conflicts taking place in 2017. Of the 70 incidents, as many as 71% turned violent, with again the most in 2017. In KwaZulu-Natal, housing offices in Zwelihle, a library and a satellite police station were set on fire recently. Even farms in the historic Tea Estate area in Inanda, owned by Black small-scale farmers who farm on the land and hold deeds to it, have been targeted by Black occupiers. It is reported that in April 2018 some of the Black land invaders and grabbers near Durban flattened a sugar-cane crop to make way for their illegal houses.^34-37
In his overview of the looming anarchy, Umraw³⁸ reflects that the City of Cape Town reported a 74% increase in land invasions year on year; that in Gauteng one man was killed and four people injured in protests over land, while various property developments in KwaZulu-Natal were stopped due to illegal occupation of land by squatters.³⁸
In the Free State about 100 inhabitants of the Monyakeng Township at Wesselsbron, started in August 2018 to erect plots on a farm, while the same happened in August on a Stellenbosch wine farm. In both cases the farmers alleged the efforts were well-organised and started after Ramaphosa’s announcement on expropriation. Jansen³⁹ reports as follows on the Stellenbosch’s farmer’s reaction^39:4:

“Things just happened to smooth and the structures are erected on an organised way. Here stands sometimes gleaming cars around. I understand the structures are being given at R350 each to the people and that prominent ANC-men are involved. He said that the police ignore the complaints or arrived hours later.” [Own translation].

Also, the Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) veterans joined the fight from in KwaZulu-Natal in April 2018 by illegally occupying units in the Masinge housing project in Margate, flats in Cornubia, Durban and the Aloe Ridge social housing complex in Pietermaritzburg, ignoring court orders. Nair reports that there are hundreds of members of the MK Military Veterans Association who have been illegally occupying housing developments across KwaZulu-Natal.^34-37
Themba Mavundla³⁷ shows how serious this has become when he, as the provincial chairman of the MK Military Veterans Association, reveals their aggressive and hostile intentions by saying^37:4:

“They need the houses. This has been going on for years and nothing to do with land expropriation. We won’t back down.”

The initial fight for rural land has spilled over into urban areas between 2017 and 2018. Gift Maboke³⁵, a community leader from Alexandra, paints a picture of this future of conflict outside the legal system^35:4:

…none of the city’s vacant land [urban] was safe from occupation. ‘Any [vacant] land we see we are going to attack [regardless] if it is owned privately or by the city’; and
…the fight for land was shared by all poor and disenfranchised people across South Africa. ‘We are not talking about Alexandra [Johannesburg] only. It’s not us alone. We are talking about all townships and people who do not have land or accommodation. We are together’

In reaction to these illegal actions even Nomaindia Mfeketo, the Minister of Human Settlements, could not rule out more recently the possibility that the President’s (and the parliamentarians’) announcement about the land expropriation without compensation has been “misconstrued” by poor Black communities and sent an “incorrect message” to the poor. However much the ANC regime would like to argue, the antagonists point out that illegal land occupation has become an unstoppable movement.^36,37 It is with good reason that Collins⁴⁰ writes^40:4:

“No vacant land in the city is safe from occupation”.

In the context of Ramaphosa’s possible indirect instigation of land grabbing,^35,36 Mfeketo³⁶ replies^36:4:

“Well, that might be. Not only in Cape Town, Gugulethu, Khayelitsha and Waterfall – you’ve seen people who think they have arrived. ‘This is our opportunity to land-grab’.”

Mfeketo³⁶ and Collins’s³⁵ concerns about a troubled future South Africa relates to Ramaphosa’s public announcement on the night of 31 July 2018 at 22:00 on land grabbing. He claimed that Whites hold 87% of the land. He has promised to take it away without compensation, and there is no turn-around for him now without evoking revolution, as Julius Malema warned him.⁴⁰ Consider Ramaphosa’s main argument of land expropriation in his speech to Black professionals at a September 2018 business breakfast in Pietermaritzburg^41:4:

“Happen it shall, whether people like it or not; it is going to happen”.

He promised that the ANC regime only wanted^41:4: “…an equal balance in land ownership because an alleged 87% of South Africa’s land had been given before 1994 to a minority population (Whites).”
However, the rest of the speech reveals confusion about what balance would entail41:4: “We are saying that the equation has to be balanced, and because we are balanced people and we are not mad, we are going to do it in a responsible manner, but we are not going to turn away from making sure it does happen.”
The antagonists read much (and not always positive) into Ramaphosa’s remark that: “…we are balanced people, we are not mad, we are going to do it in a responsible way”.⁴¹
The prominent question for the antagonists is: If Ramaphosa and his inner group are so balanced, why do they need an urgent change to Section 25 and why did Ramaphosa ignore the outcome of the parliamentary commission’s testing of the public’s opinion on the matter? The antagonists interpret this kind of autocratic behaviour by Ramaphosa as intentional invitation of revolutionary thinking and behaviour. His political revolutionary arrogance is visible when he says^41:4:

Land expropriation without compensation is going to happen whether South Africans, US President Donald Trump and the UN General Assembly like it or not,

and:

I am going to explain it without any fear and I am going to say: ‘This is us. Take us or leave us’.

Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi⁴², the leader of the Inkhata Freedom Party (IFP), referred to the above remarks as an act of blunt disrespect for parliament, while the FW de Klerk foundation⁴² highlighted Ramaphosa’s abuse of the national broadcaster. He made the announcement as the leader of a political party (president of the ANC) but made it seem as if he was doing it as President of South Africa via the parliament. This reflects the different governmental setups of South Africa since 1994: 1) up to the end of Zuma’s reign there was a tripartite setup with a Zupta grouping under Zuma (highest), followed by Luthuli House (middle) and parliament (lowest), while now 2) the Ramaphosa government has a bipartite setup, driven at the highest level by Luthuli House’s ANC NEC, with the parliament powerless on the lowest level. This spells the presence of chronic anarchy, not only reflected by the delinquent behaviour of the poor and landless Blacks, but also the behaviour rooted in the power of the ANC elite.⁴²
The antagonists point out that they have heard this kind of rhetoric of saying one thing and doing the opposite, from autocrats like Robert Mugabe, Idi Amin, Nicolás Maduro. Ramaphosa and his elite speak on behalf of the people, but they echo the autocratic and revolutionary speak of the pre-1994 ANC.^27,42
The above, in the view of the antagonists, signals the arrival of the final, official stage of land grabbing. It reverts to the unruliness that characterised the ANC as a revolutionary organisation. Returning to symbolically speaking of the injustice of land ownership is impossible in 2018. ANC radicals like the MK veterans now want action. Ramaphosa’s³⁶ early warning^36:4: “We are not going to accept land grabs”, had become empty words as protesters (who belong to his group) not only said they are going to practice land grabbing, but did it^36:4:

“We have taken our land. Don’t worry about building us houses, we will build our own. Just give as water”.

Most of all, Ramaphosa now promotes this behaviour with his latest public remarks on land grabbing. Any future efforts to stop the radical ideology of dramatic land reform have become impossible: he himself preaches it. The antagonists indicate that there are various other radical actions of the ANC regime that promote illegal land grabbing and that disempower White farmers on their own land. The Extension of Security of Tenure Act for instance works against White farmers. This Act specifically provides for security of tenure by regulating farm occupation. It describes the rights of farm dwellers when facing eviction and provides recourse when they are evicted by White farmers. The antagonists see this piece of legislation as another step towards forcing land redistribution by reducing the rights of the legal owner and making eviction costly. In many cases this poses a risk to the property and the life of the legal owner.⁴³
The Ramaphosa regime finds itself, as the Chávez-Maduro brotherhood in Venezuela did, within a context of empowered autocrats, opportunists, psychopaths and crooks, as a journalist reports^44:16:

“It was only a matter of time before the total disregard for the law and the constitution that was shown by our leaders in recent years trickled down to the masses. The media exposed countless allegations of wrongdoing – including the blatant looting by the Gupta family and their associates. But no one has been sent to prison.”

The antagonists feel that the foundations have been laid for anarchy and the destruction of the socio-economic and political order. Ramaphosa’s land expropriation only adds to the chaos.⁴⁴
The current total disregard for the law and the Constitution has its origins in Zuma’s compromise of credible institutions of law enforcement. The editor⁴⁵ of the Sunday Times wrote on 26 August 2018^45:20:

“The hawks were heavily compromised during the looting period, and led by buffoon. The same with the National Prosecuting Authority, led by a lame sheep who had no clue what it meant to use prosecutorial powers.”

The Zondo Commission of Inquiry has shown that there is more than enough to prosecute several looters of the state coffers, but the new Ramaphosa regime has taken no action.⁴⁵
The uncontrollability of the masses is also reflected in the sudden resurgence (August 2018) of xenophobia (a reminiscent of the explosion of xenophobic violence in May 2008) in the trade sectors in Soweto and other Gauteng townships. It has led to at least four deaths and the looting of the shops of many foreign shopkeepers, forcing them to flee. What is worrying in this specific context is the murderous aggression directed at Black non-South Africans (an identity class that includes the Whites as so-called colonists) and the ANC regime’s failure to do something about these behaviours. The editorial⁴⁶ of the Sunday Times reflects as follows^46:24:

“Successfully prosecutions are few, as police stand idly by, often doing little more than helping shop owners escape the wrath of the mob. It is a blight on a democratic SA.”

The researcher Jean Pierre Misago⁴⁷ of the African Centre for Migration and Society at Wits University’s conclusion on the base of these Soweto attacks is hair-raising^47:12:

Communities find different reasons for attacks. They mobilise people by feeding them stories that are not necessarily correct.
This is a clear case of xenophobia violence. In previous instances WhatsApp messages calling for violence have originated from local business associations, whose members want to get rid of foreign competition.

For the antagonists Misago⁴⁷ hits the spot with his identification of ethnic crimes and the bad intentions of people who have failed to compete and then fell back on anarchic behaviour, like land and asset grabbing. Consider the xenophobic remark directed at foreign Black shop owners by Rose Nkosi, the president of the South African Spaza and Tuckshop Association (SASTA), accusing them of “creaming our people”. Members of SASTA even marched to the office of Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba, demanding that he stop foreigners running spaza shops.⁴⁷
A Somali, Abdi Sala⁴⁸, whose shop was plundered for the fourth time in seven years in Soweto, cut the xenophobia of South Africa to the bone^48:12:

“[Black] South Africans are spoilt. When the electricity goes off they loot, if they don’t have water they loot, [if they are unhappy about] no jobs then they rob the shops.”

The antagonists see the intended grabbing of White land by the ANC elite is just looting, equally to that of foreigners’ spaza shops. The ANC regime has become spoilt by the ease of their political self-enrichment since 1994.
The antagonists do not doubt that the same xenophobia awaits them if land grabbing under the guardianship of Ramaphosa is allowed to continue without direct and fierce resistance from the government.^9,47 The editorial⁴⁶ of the Sunday Times of 2 September is further very informative^46:24:

“Looting is usually a sign of a society in an advanced state of social decay, suggesting rising public desperation and a breakdown in law and order.”

In this context the question of the antagonists is relevant: What are land grabbing other than looting and the destruction of law and order in South Africa? And what else is looting and the breakdown of law and order than anarchy?⁴⁶

3.4. Mbeki’s ANC of 1994 versus Ramaphosa’s ANC of 2018

The arrival of Jacob Zuma and thereafter Cyril Ramaphosa as presidents of the ANC, making them at the same time also the presidents of the Republic of South Africa, introduced a new climate of political and judicial estrangement from the “old” ANC with leaders such as Thabo Mbeki. The radicalism that arrived after the ousting of the corrupted Jacob Zuma seems to be radiated by Luthuli House, which has almost become the only and highest policy- and decision-making body in the country. Former Jacob Zuma and his post-2018 ANC NEC are still quite central to this radicalism. The public often think of this radicalism as coming from the younger generation (with a root like Julius Malema), but this is not true. It is instigated and fuelled by the older, rigid ANC leadership who grew up in the old but now mostly outdated Russian political mentality of extreme Marxism (although it is now becoming more reminiscent of fascism). The present issue around land ownership reflects this radicalism. There is suddenly extreme discrimination against the Whites as a minority racial group, together with prominent fascistic behaviour reflected specifically by some of the ANC’s top leaders in the selective execution of this racism and discrimination. (This political ideology stands parallel to China’s extreme discriminative behaviours and manhandling of its various minority groups that the world comfortably ignores. Note here the intimate relationship between the ANC elite and the Chinese regime).⁴⁶
Revolution and liberation, used to obtain political power and self-enrichment, are still central to the thinking of the likes of Jacob Zuma, as it was in the 1960s. The schizophrenic ANC cabinet of 2019 Ramaphosa’s constant efforts to please the older revolutionary ANC leaders in his NEC, makes the ANC of 2019 a totally different entity than the 1994 party that introduced democracy to all South Africans for the first time. Munusamy⁴⁹ presents the antagonists with a good guideline in this context when she says^49:22:

“We are stuck with the same old problems because we are stuck with the same old leaders in the same old electoral system”.

Land grabbing in this context is thus not a surprise, but the normal way of governing. Indeed, the antagonists postulate, it would have been the way some of the ANC leaders of 1994 went about if they had a free hand at the time.⁴⁹
The following three subdivisions compare the ANC of 1994 with the ANC of 2019. The sections examine: 1) the schizophrenic ANC cabinet of 2019; 2) a farewell to the Freedom Charter of 1955; and 3) a new Ramaphosa and his new ANC.

3.4.1. The schizophrenic ANC cabinet of 2018-2019

Reflecting on Ramaphosa’s present aggressive and conflicting behaviour, specifically with reference to Whites and land expropriation, Munusamy⁴⁹ takes the antagonists back into the past by reflecting the prominent role players who created a schism between the ANC’s present and past^49:22:

“When Ramaphosa made changes to former president Jacob Zuma’s cabinet at the end of February [2018] he retained the configuration of portfolios and fired 10 ministers. He kept some of the worst-performing members, ostensibly to avoid causing too much turmoil within the ANC by purging the Zuma faction.”

But, in 2018 things became worse for the antagonists as the Zuma faction successfully reassembled with the controversial and politically stained Ace Magashule as ANC secretary-general. He quickly repositioned himself as a replacement for Ramaphosa, should the Zuma faction succeed with a campaign to re-establish Zuma and his cronies in the ANC. This is where good politics and sound economics stumble: the Zuma faction is still revolutionary and they target the masses with misleading and hostile political scripts. The Zuma faction at Luthuli House and in the Ramaphosa cabinet is using the country’s old electoral system to strengthen and to spread their outdated Marxist radical ideology and to re-profile the ANC as a liberation organisation for poor Blacks (while opportunistic enrich them selves at the coats of these poor) . Absolute loyalty to the ANC with the interest of the country in second place is a big part of this ideology.⁴⁹ It makes the entry of honourable and patriotic leaders with progressive political and economic ideas very difficult, as Munusamy⁴⁹ reflects^49:22:

“There is little prospect of fresh, talented and upstanding leaders who are making strides in other sectors of society entering public office because the political space is so toxic and dominated by the same old faces.”

The end result, posit the antagonists, is that South African politics has become “hollow and acrimonious”, returning the same (many times corrupted and radical) people to parliament, over and over, to take the party on wrong political paths to fulfil these politicians’ opportunistic and delinquent aims and needs.⁴⁹
The South African electoral system offers the ANC as a party and individual politicians the opportunity to stay on in leadership positions for any length of time. At the same time it offers them the opportunity to promote conflict and revolutionary ideas via an untouchable circle of deviant MPs and MPLs, as reflected by the untouchability of Jacob Zuma. The antagonists believe that if this system had been improved, the changes of the ANC to be in power in 2019 would have been zero. Leaders like Zuma, Ramaphosa or Magashule would never have been appointed in executive political positions. It is only the South African courts and judicial commissions that could break up many of these political evils resulting from the failed electoral system. However, the faulty electoral system is still with us, serving the Zuma faction (and the Ramaphosa faction) and their radicalism (and this will happen during and after the 2019 election), favouring a specific leader with specific cronies. This dilemma of political power within the ANC since 1994 is well illustrated for the antagonists by the intended land grabbing plan of the ANC elite. The radicals in favour of land grabbing are uncontrollable by the electorate from the outside. They can ignore their voters’ wishes and demands in terms of the present false democratic method of voting in parliament, seen as representatives of the people.⁴⁹
Munusamy⁴⁹ very precisely describes this failed system that led to the autocratic rule of South Africa since 1994 by a fascist ANC government^49:22:

The country has not grappled with the prospect of electoral reform, even though the current system has proved inadequate in terms of public accountability. The proportional representation system means that MPs and MPLs are accountable to party bosses rather than to the electorate. The Zuma years showed how difficult it is to hold presidents accountable when they are protected by their party.

Mcebisi Jonas⁵⁰, a former deputy finance minister, ANC member and a presidential investment envoy openly challenged the political ills of the ANC. “To save the South African democracy requires focus on its people and their interests and not the political party”, writes Jonas^50:22. The presence of populism and revolutionism, as reflected by the Ramaphosa regime with its uncontrolled land grabbing policy, has the tendency to amplify a vicious cycle of declining legitimacy in governance, reduced investment, rising unemployment and increased social tension, says Jonas50. For him the present societal crisis in South Africa under the reign of the present ANC came about because the ANC lost its moral, ethical and political integrity. As an entity they need a positive turn-about, they should even be forced to such a turning by the public^50:22:

“Civil society mass action and activism against corruption tended to be about fixing the ANC”.

Jonas⁵⁰ posits further^50:22:

“But we must also acknowledge that our nation has lost its way. SA is at a crossroads. One path follows current trends – rent-seeking, corruption, declining state legitimacy, reduced investment, economic stagnation, inequality band social tensions”.

Jonas⁵⁰ says that when it comes to standing for the interests of citizens, democracy and the country against the interests of the party (which in many cases represents the masked agendas of corrupted leaders), the interests of the people should come first. The antagonists fully agree. Jonas’s guidelines for political correctness and warning of a growing decay of law and order, is clear^50:22:

“We all have a responsibility to stabilize our democracy and chart a new economic path. This needs a new agenda and orientation in civil society, premised on the fact that in every revolution, the people are primary – everything else is secondary.”

This includes the false patriotism and false love for the people while the integrity of the leader in question is already compromised by a personal and political pathology of sole self-enrichment and -empowerment. The masked agendas behind the intended land expropriation without compensation are undoubtedly often anchored in personal and political pathology, making it unstoppable as the delinquent leader gains more power. The antagonists fear that it is no longer possible to save the democracy, especially given the ANC’s courting of China and Russia.⁵⁰
Thabo Mbeki⁵¹ comments on the above dynamic in a 30-page covenant, denunciating land expropriation without compensation. The document is not only immensely informative about the present identity of the ANC, but is also shocking as it shows how the ANC as an initially progressive party for all South Africans has deteriorated in only a decade. It has become a racist party; corrupt to its core and focused on the progress a small group of Blacks (This political manoeuvre stripped the ANC of its hard-fought political integrity, putting it fully into the league of the despotic and racial National Party of pre-1994 South Africa). Mthombothi⁵¹ refers to these 30 pages offered by Mbeki as the Mbeki intervention on land grabbing.⁵¹ He writes as follows in this regard^51:21:

“It’s almost as if he’s saying those in charge of the organization [ANC] neither know what they’re doing nor understand the implication of their actions”.

The antagonists are well aware of the possible impact of the plans of the schizophrenic ANC cabinet of 2019 on the future rights of Whites as land owners. The antagonists feel that they have much to fear.

3.4.2. A farewell to the Freedom Charter of 1955

Putting his arguments, opinions and viewpoint on the ANC’s current political delinquency in perspective, Thabo Mbeki⁵¹ charts the evolution of the ANC as an organisation from its founding in 1912 and reflects prominent events in its history. The drafting of the Freedom Charter in Kliptown in 1955 stands out, as do the breakaway of the Africanists in 1958 and the expulsion of the Gang of Eight in 1969, events that have shaped the ANC to unite all South Africans specific under a non-racial and non-discriminative policy as guided by the Freedom Charter. Mthombothi⁵¹ points out that Mbeki bases his view of the wrongness of the expropriation of land without compensation from Whites on two fundamental prescriptions in the Freedom Charter, namely 1) South Africa belongs to all who live in it, Black and White; and 2) that the land shall be shared among those who work it. With land grabbing, both these prescriptions will be violated. Mbeki responds^51:21:

“If the ANC abandons these two principles and strategic positions”, he says: “…it must accept that it is turning its back on its historical position as ‘the parliament of the people’”.

In this context the expropriation of land from one national group without compensating them to redistribute it to another national group is a radical departure from the traditional ANC and its prescription to trustworthy policies, cemented into its culture over 105 years. Mthombothi⁵¹ reflects as follows on Ramaphosa’s policy on land ownership (in conflict with the Charter)^51:21:

“SA belongs to all who live in it, black and white, except as this relates to land”, and “All national groups are equal before the law, except as this concerns land”.

The Freedom Charter’s land clause, dated 1955, is not the only guidance Mbeki had for his political arguments on racial freedom and race-free property ownership. The clear declaration of 1955 is also reaffirmed by an ANC document issued after the historic conference in Tanzania in 1969, making it clear that the ANC was cognisant that the redistribution of land would include all race groups, writes Tabane^52:6:

“It makes bold to say that the restrictions of land ownership on a racial basis shall be ended and all lands shall be open to ownership and use by all people irrespective of race.”

Mbeki’s recent pamphlet is clear of the “second phase of transition” ideology that is driving the present Ramaphosa land grabbing initiative. The insecurity of the Ramaphosa faction is evident from the personal attack on Mbeki because he dared to doubt their lack of knowledge about the ANC’s history and principles and their lack of integrity. The infective language of the secretary-general of the ANC when he called on Mbeki “to shut up” shows where the ANC leadership is in 2019. Tabane brings us back to reality when he posits^52:6:

“The current position is at best misguided and at worst a demonstration of the loss of its moral compass by the ANC – and the fact that it is purely fictional to consider the ANC a leader of society anymore.”

Looking closely at Mbeki’s pamphlet, it is clear for the antagonists that the current ANC’s character has changed, as did its mission at the recent 54th national conference. As a party it has transformed to where Jacob Zuma has long wanted it, namely an exclusively Black party, recognising it self that it does not represent all the people of South Africa anymore. Where the “old” ANC always regarded itself as the absolute opposite of the Apartheid NP that divided people along racial lines, there is now a “new” ANC that is dividing people along racial lines. There is no hope that the current ANC would change back to 1994, recalling its new 2018 policy on land grabbing. The ANC has changed permanently because the country’s political terrain has changed drastically. It has become radical, making it the home of selfish, opportunistic and political radicals who lack the conscience of the cadres of the “old” ANC. After testing the politics for 24 years, the ANC has become a Black NP that cannot recognise its own 1955 roots. It’s a new political party with a new vision and mission, the old name just remained. This outcome spells doom for Whites in general, and White land owners specifically, according to the antagonists.^51,52
Mthomboth⁵¹ puts words to this state of affairs with his decisive conclusion on the “new” ANC^51:21:

It’s now operating in a different setting. It is no longer waging a thankless liberation war away in the deserts of exile, but it’s now back home in the lap of luxury and in charge of the most sophisticated economy on the continent. It’s no longer led by the selfless, wise old men and women who sacrificed everything for the good of all, but it’s now controlled by BEE types, shysters, a thug or two and the odd murderer, all in it for a slice of the action. Greed now trumps selflessness.

Whites, the antagonists say, must note Mthombothi’s⁵¹ unwritten conclusion: they can expect much more political delinquency from Ramaphosa (or from Ace Magashule, if he and the Zuma faction successfully oust Ramaphosa in 2019 and redeploy Ramaphosa in a subordinate role to Luthuli House). Ramaphosa’s actions, especially with regard to land grabbing, can ultimately be much worse than Zuma’s endeavours.^50-53

3.4.3. The new Ramaphosa and his new ANC

Munusamy’s⁵¹ description of what is wrong with the “new” ANC offers two warnings. Firstly, the expectations of the poor and landless Blacks will never be met. The leaders of the new ANC have other intentions with the land they want to confiscate. Secondly, it does not matter how failed and corrupted the whole exercise of land grabbing turns out, the antagonists should accept that land expropriation without compensation is here to stay as long as the “new” ANC rules. This can only change if the ANC loses at the ballot box. Munusamy⁴⁹ is clear^49:22:

How do we find the path to basic human decency and morality when we surrender our country to an endless cycle of power-drunk, greedy people who exploit our vulnerabilities and have no desire to help the people they serve?
In the cabinet, in parliament, in provincial government and in municipalities, there are too many people who see their positions as entitlement to wealth and perks.
Unless there is a complete overhaul of society and the political system, there is little chance of the deadwood being cast out and inspirational, resourceful and courageous leaders rising.

When the ANC radicalism is examined more closely, it is clear that their growing political relationship with autocratic Russia and China is a crucial element. These countries were the ANC’s best companions during Apartheid. Although the ANC leaders see South Africa as the opposite of China when it comes to human rights and the suppression of individual freedom and human engineering to suit communism, the ANC’s outdated version of communism and their autocratic behaviour, including land grabbing, make the two twins. The ANC masks this with false friendly and opportunistic contact with democracies like the US, Japan, Europe, in an effort to profile “democracy”. When Ramaphosa announced his land grabbing intention he first visited China to obtain “approval”, which he of course “received” indeed, while at the same time he dared South African Whites, the UN and Trump to test his right to make a radical decision on the matter. Since 1994 the ANC has slowly decreased contact with democracies like Europe, the US and Japan while they made friends with political radicals, not only China and Russia, but Zimbabwe, Venezuela and Brazil (and even Libya under the late Kaddafi).^49-56
Under Ramaphosa China is, as under the Zuma regime, selectively respecting South Africa’s sovereignty in economic relations and interests. Munusamy and Mbeki are wrong to expect a positive overhaul of Ramaphosa politics. These politics were already “overhauled” by China and Russia into political, social and economic radicalism where the racial factor of the White man is central. Ramaphosa and his cronies indeed see a “White problem” that must be addressed. Julius Malema has found a comrade at last.^49-56
The current South Africa of Cyril Ramaphosa and his cronies are not at ease with White rights, privileges, benefits and riches. Land expropriation without compensation ignores the ANC’s founding manifesto. The ANC has lost its golden past. This makes the ANC elders like Thabo Mbeki and most of the Whites strangers in South Africa.
The antagonists believe, as Mbeki illustrates, that the radical ANC under Ramaphosa and his followers will take the last pieces of land from the back pockets of Whites in the near future.

3.5. Lies and myths versus facts and truths

The antagonists see multiple facts, lies, myths and truths that surround the ANC elite’s rejection of the 1994 dispensation’s land redistribution programme. So far most of these lies and myths remain unchallenged. The ANC regime’s perspective and untested allegations to justify their right to take land should be addressed, evaluated and be put into perspective. This is done in the following eight subdivisions, namely: 1) the people’s dissatisfaction with the 1994–2018 dispensation’s land redistribution; 2) Blacks prefer land occupations above the option of financial compensation for land lost between 1913 and 1994; 3) a large group of aspiring Black farmers is waiting for rural land; 4) the ANC has a clear expropriation and redistribution plan for the greater Black South African community; 5) there is an urgent need to balance the racial demographics of the country’s land and home ownership by placing Blacks in traditionally White areas; 6) the ANC has since 1994 successfully guided poor Blacks to financial independence; 7) Blacks are indigenous South Africans and Whites are European settlers; and 8) the Tsar and Stalin’s collective farm projects in rural Russia were great successes.

3.5.1. The people’s dissatisfaction with the 1994–2019 dispensation’s land redistribution

The ANC has publically claimed that the 1994 to 2019 land redistribution programme was characterised by incompleteness and dissatisfaction and that the programme did not deliver on the promise of transferring the prescribed land to Blacks as agreed by the 1994 dispensation and the Constitution. In their view, this makes land grabbing an absolute need. However, Opperheimer³ offers evidence to the contrary. Opperheimer³ posits that according to the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), the Land Claims Court has resolved more than 95% of the claims that have arisen in the past 23 years in terms of the 1994 dispensation’s prescriptions. More than 1.8 million individuals have received compensation in the form of pay-outs or land.^3,58 Omri van Zyl⁵⁸, the executive director of Agri SA, puts the amount paid towards redistribution at R45 billion and the amount paid towards land reform at R43 billion.
According to Opperheimer³ fewer than 3 500 (out of 76 000) or 5% of the claims remain unresolved. This gives an average of 3 152 claims resolved per annum of the total 73 500 claims successfully addressed since 1994. The still 3 500 outstanding claims will take at most one or two more years to complete (more or less to be completed in 2020) if the present debacle around land expropriation without compensation doesn’t hinder the process. There is no evidence of any incompleteness or dissatisfaction around land transformation as run by the 1994–2019 governments. There is no urgent need or reason to address the remaining 5% of claims with such an “attack” on White land ownership without compensation. The land transformation agreed upon in 1994 has, in the view of the antagonists, basically been completed.³
What is most worrying for the antagonists, given the near completion of the process, is that the ANC suddenly wants to “enlarge the pie” of land ownership at cost of their initial partner, the Whites. This breach of contract by the ANC regime under Ramaphosa needs the attention of the Constitutional Court.³ It is clear for the antagonists that the ANC regime’s claim of dissatisfaction among “the people” in relation to the 1994–2019 dispensation’s land redistribution is without any base. The 1994 to 2019 land reform programme served the people well.
For the antagonists is it clear that the new ANC and its merry men will not be pacified easily. They are into stealing and doing harm to the White farmers. For the opponents the ANC elite’s present intention of land grabbing is only a smokescreen for other future trespasses against Whites.

3.5.2. Land occupation versus financial compensation

With reference to the ANC’s argument that the majority of Blacks prefer land to cash pay-outs, reports showed as early as 2013 that of the roughly 76 000 rural land restitution claims disposed in terms of the described programme as decided by the 1994 agreement, more than 70 000 (91.5%) of the claimants had chosen to take compensation in cash rather than reoccupy the land they had lost. This means that of the 95% cases resolved, the choice of compensation in the form of receiving land per se as a vehicle for compensation, only 8% of the beneficiaries chose to receive land.³
The antagonists’ counter-argument is that the ANC’s recent claim of an absolute need for land for the poor and landless Blacks and for farming per se, is false. This finding means that the 1994 agreement worked well. The antagonists suspect that the land issue is being put forward by the ANC to mask the motives of some Black political leaders and radicals in the ANC. Political delinquency seems central to the whole land expropriation issue. The fact that 92% of Black land claimants did not wish to take back their ancestral land serves as proof for the antagonists that there is no drive for land on the side of the masses.³
For the antagonists there is enough evidence that a transfer of White land to Blacks is not the dramatic political issue of the moment; nor is there evidence of great numbers of Black farmers in rural areas. The resolution of the remaining 5% of cases is almost insignificant and cannot be the reason for the supposed great disappointment with the 1994 to 2018 redistribution programme. The statement of the propagandists that claimants prefer land occupation over and above financial compensation for land lost between 1913 and 1994 can therefore be rejected.³

3.5.3. Aspiring Black farmers waiting for rural land

There is a specific argument that there is an immense need and opportunity for more commercial Black farmers in South Africa’s rural areas. This contradicts the experience of the White farming community and the organised and formal business sector. Their data on land redistribution is often more scientific and analytical, free of emotional rhetoric. The organised farming and formal business sectors fully support land redistribution and underwrite its urgency, but in an orderly manner.^3,59,60
The antagonists also point to the fact that replacing White farmers with Black ones will only accommodate a fraction of the poor and landless Blacks, making the whole exercise a failure from day one. A disaster is looming if there is no large-scale job creation outside the agricultural sector for the rest of the 90% of poor and jobless Blacks, whether or not land redistribution comes into effect. The large contingent of unemployed and untrained Blacks is becoming a national disaster that could easily result in anarchy.^3,59-61
Exacerbating the problem of the contingent of poor and landless Blacks is the hard fact of a negative growth in the agriculture sector as reflected in September 2018 (-24%). [In this context of negativity, the estimated growth for South Africa for 2018 is between 1.2% and 1.8%, meaning the ANC regime’s economy has stagnated and technically fallen into recession].^3,59,60
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has reported in 2018 that Africa’s urban population will double within a generation, contradicting the point of masses of people wanting to occupy rural land. The fact is that Africa’s peasantry is dying off. This phenomenon, as already cited in this subdivision with tested facts, is also present in South Africa. Farming has become one of the less lucrative South Africa careers, and farming has become very expensive and time-consuming. The number of commercial farmers is already on the decrease due to problems such as the cash flow needed for mechanisation and the risks involved in farming.^4,51,59,61
The ANC should in fact focus on more urban land for housing for Black working citizens. Ramphele⁴ points out this reality when she writes^4:21:

“The fourth myth is that land restitution is mainly a rural and farming matter. Cape Town, the seat of parliament, exemplifies the cruelty of the failure to redress the spatial geography of apartheid cities.”

It is clear from the above evidence that there is not an immense group of aspiring Black farmers waiting for rural land. It is a false postulation and a myth. The evidence also reflects that even if there was truly a large group awaiting farmland, the farming environment lacks the potential to accommodate them.

3.5.4. The ANC’s plan

The antagonists point out that the ANC regime has failed to offer the public full legal and descriptive details on the land expropriation matter. The whole initiative is driven by and based on Malema and Ramaphosa’s rhetoric, while a simple basic plan on paper remains absent. If expropriation without compensation is really on the cards, how long will the process be? Who will hold the title deeds? How will Black beneficiaries be selected? Will new Black farmers receive funding or mentoring? How will viable and sustainable markets be created? How will the correct produce be selected? How will this affect the short- and long-term food security of the country and what would be the specific role of Black farmers in this regard?^3,59-61
This vagueness is worrying, seeing that the ANC’s similar processes of BEE and AAA to uplift the “poor non-Whites” since 1994 could not attain true success and are still in running, seemingly indefinitely. The vagueness of the 1994 programme mostly favoured the ANC elite. The antagonists stress that Ramaphosa has thus far offered only empty emotional and political rhetoric, filled with aggression against Whites. The ANC regime’s knowledge on implementing such a system stops with its various spokespersons’ rhetoric, basically because they are “uneducated, untrained and inexperienced on the complicated processes around land expropriation”.^3,59-61
The formal business sector has also requested a guideline and constructive plan from the ANC. Barron⁶³ makes it clear that the political intention of expropriation is one thing, but successful implementation based on sound ethic, business, economic, judicial and cognitive principles, is something total different. Besides that, it can be very complicated and time-consuming, and can be devastating to economic and political stability if it goes awry. Just defining a theoretical framework (hopefully by outside experts) can take up to three years. Implement such a “sound” theoretical plan in practice can takes a further five to ten years. The programme implemented in 1994 has not been concluded after 24 years. This estimate does not even include rejection by the formal business sector or experts if the framework is developed by opportunistic, foolish and short-sighted law-makers and political radicals in the contaminated ANC, EFF and PAC. Verwoerd and his followers attempted similar folly in 1955 with the Tomlinson Commission, which recommended that the best political, social and economic solution for South Africa would be to dismantle Apartheid. The Tomlinson Commission predicted the current dilemma.^3,59-61
Barron⁶³ quotes the insights of Professor Mills⁶³, head of the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business on land redistribution^63:9:

The government needs to spell out how expropriation without compensation will feed into the National Development Plan and contribute to the overall national development objectives of the country.
What is their priority? Is it land expropriation or creating jobs? Young people living in rural areas want to live in urban areas. They are not interested in farming or land, they want jobs. So what is expropriation without compensation going to do for them? How is it going to bring them jobs?

Hereto Makgoba⁶⁴ also writes^64:21:

“I have not heard anyone [ANC] 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?”

Ramphele⁴ refers to the ANC regime failure to offer an appropriate plan of land redistribution as^4:21: “…the lack of a national spatial plan due to the lack of political will at all levels of government to tackle land reform”.
The formal farming and business sectors view Ramaphosa’s⁶² talk of land redistribution (with or without compensation) as unclearly formulated. His guarantees that the outcome will not hurt the economy or foreign investment in the short or long term are unspecific and undoubtedly open to various political and judicial interpretations. The antagonists see either a lack of a sound understanding of basic economics, or the deliberate masking of radicalism. Indeed, Ramaphosa’s hesitation when it comes to making clear decisions and his growing vague rhetoric, signals possible ulterior motives in the view of the antagonists.⁶⁵
The antagonists and formal business sector fear that land redistribution will hurt the economy, and the ANC’s nonchalance about this worries them. They also feel that it would destabilise racial relations in South Africa to the same extent that Apartheid did.⁶⁵

3.5.5. Balancing the demography with land ownership

The ANC regime argues that the racial demography of South Africa’s land- and home-ownerships is imbalanced as result of the socioeconomic and political inequality between Whites and Blacks, which the ANC radicals allege is due to the richness and racial privilege of Whites. This wealth inequality is alleged by the ANC regime and propagandists to be responsible for the development of exclusive high-quality White areas and White farmers with better living standards and conditions than that of the Blacks working and living on the farms. The demographics of the country thus reflect a clear division between Blacks and Whites in terms of race and socio-economic classing. For the average Black it is just impossible, because of his/her immense poverty, to break out on his or her own from the impoverished living areas and circumstances and to penetrate the exclusive White areas. In this rich man–poor man model the issue of farmland became mixed up with urban land, making it one issue that could be solved by land expropriation.
In an effort overcome above imbalance of the racial demographics the ANC regime argues that land redistribution without compensation is essential. Free land is the ANC regime’s key to unlock this “White exclusiveness”.
In terms of the imbalanced racial demographics, Opperheimer³ offers counter-evidence. He states, based on research by the IRR, that in 2015 the various racial groups’ ownership of homes was almost perfectly proportional. This postulation by Opperheimer³ is supported by the government’s own recent land audit. Regarding the ownership of property (not farm land), this audit shows racial parity with 49% erven owned by Whites and 46% owned by Blacks. The audit reflects more or less the same ratio for sectional title ownership. This data, argues Opperheimer³, indicate that redistribution, when it includes home ownership per se as a focus point, is unsubstantiated. Opperheimer³ does not feel that the racial demographics of the country need immediate correction through land expropriation. The antagonists see the negative ANC propaganda on racial demographics as a well-planned social engineering initiative by the ANC leadership to support RET and RST, to limit the socioeconomic and political privileges, rights and positions of Whites in greater South Africa and to force the integration of Whites into the greater Black community.^3,6
In this context, with the focus on the ANCs discrepancy between Black and White when it comes to ownership, the antagonists point out that although there is unhappiness and discontent with the new South Africa, only 18% of the population’s discontent is about poor accommodation. Opperheimer3 points out that research shows that less than 1% of South Africans were concerned with owing land. For South Africans of all the races there are much more worrying issues. There are indeed three serious matters worrying the public, namely unemployment (40%), lack of and poor service delivery (34%) and poor education (15%). These are all results of the failed ANC regime. For the antagonists it is clear that the ANC regime’s present attack on White “rich” lifestyles as reflected by White living standards, etc. and the ANC’s hostile plans to equalise the “imbalanced demographics between Blacks and Whites”, is nothing else than an effort to cover up their failure as a regime since 1994 to erase unemployment, poor service delivery in Black areas and to improve Black education. The present poverty, unemployment and inequality stem from the ANC regime’s failures and not from imbalanced racial demographics.^3,6
In response to the so-called disturbed racial demographics of the country as alleged by the ANC regime and its radicals, the antagonists argue that such disturbed racial demographics is a misrepresentation of the truth for political gain. Opperheimer3 states that only 3% of South Africans are worried about the race factor. Race in relation to the present ownership of land and Black discontent with the general South African political, social and economic situation is insignificant and the ANC gives a false reflection.³
The IRR found that 71% of Blacks (and 74% of Whites) have no concerns about race per se in their daily life. This absence of a desire for land grabbing among ordinary Blacks is further supported by the findings of the Caro Institute in the USA. The main reasons why South Africans are the 5th most depressed and unhappiest people in the world are not racial conflict or racial hate, but unemployment, inflation and high interest rates. For the antagonists this reflect badly on the ANC regime and its elite.³

3.5.6. The ANC has since 1994 successfully guided poor Blacks to financial independence

The ANC has bragged that they have guided poor Blacks to independence, implying that the ANC regime has changed the lives of the poor and landless Blacks for the better since 1994 in terms of basic living standards.
The basic question for the antagonists is: does the ANC truly develop the poor so that become self-sufficient enough to buy daily food and to afford basic accommodation, schooling and medicine?
Victory Research’s recent report is very significant here. It reflects that a great number of South Africans (Black and White) feel that their basic needs are not fulfilled in any way by the ANC regime. They not only feel that certain basic services are lacking, but that it has become unaffordable for them to afford these services. Unemployment is prominent. This has led many poor Blacks (an estimate 29-million) not having food on the table or basic accommodation on most days.⁶⁷
The respondents (seemingly from the middle class and thus less exposed to the extreme poverty and living conditions of poor and landless Blacks) who took part in Victory Research show that their top concerns and dissatisfaction (measured by percentage with satisfaction 0% and dissatisfaction 100%) with the ANC regime centres on unemployment (47%), crime and security (20%), corruption (18%), poor education (18%), accommodation (14%), basic service delivery (12%), poor healthcare (8%) and high living costs (7%).⁶⁷ It is clear that there is not a White-Black issue here. If the middle class feels this negative about the ANC, how must the poorest feel?
When looking to research reflecting on the living conditions and “satisfaction” of the poor and landless Blacks, it contradicts the ANC regime’s view that they have empowered the Black community. This data make the ANC’s claim of “doing good” to the poor and landless Blacks seems absurd.^68,69
Derby⁶⁸ reflects that in 2018 the financial circumstances of most South African households, not only the poor, were worrying. Prominent is the fact that the percentage of households in South Africa that is receiving at least one form of a social grant, is in the high 40% region, or 17 million persons (with 55% South Africans living in abject poverty). This is a direct outcome of down-sizing mines and other industries, causing unemployment, as well as the overall unemployment culture of the country (officially nearly 30%, unofficially 50%–60%). The unemployment is so severe that many people with good training are left jobless. The ANC regime’s failure to develop entrepreneurship and SMEs to create new jobs, especially for the lower socioeconomic and less trained classes is a major cause. The fact is that the contingent of jobless (and thus mostly foodless) people is growing daily, forcing at least 40% of the total population into financial dependence, poverty and indirect begging from the state (who in reality should generate work opportunities and income to make these people independent citizens).^68,69
The extent to which the absolute poverty is starting to overwhelm even the South African middle class is evident from the need for the National Credit Amendment Bill in terms of which consumers earning less than R7 000 a month and with unsecured debt up to R50 000 will be absolved of their debt if they are deemed highly indebted by the National Credit Regulator.^68,69
The spreading lawlessness and disorder is proof that unemployment is pushing people to the edge. Theft of food and money to buy food has increased. Central to these many asocial and anti-social behaviours stands what perpetrators see as the ANC regime’s betrayal of their rightful (and which the ANC promised them at every election) claim to basic services such as clean water, medical services, work, basic housing, etc. Dissatisfaction is becoming evident from unrest around the country. The growth and intensity of the masse dissatisfaction with the ANC regime are observable in how the initial unrests changed from a clear focus on only poor service delivery, to serious unrest and protests with a focus also on a lack of education, crime and a lack of personal safety, healthcare, transport, the unavailability of plots/land to erect houses and other forms of accommodation. The protests are also increasing in violence.⁷⁰
The evidence shows that the main focus of these angers is the failure of the ANC regime to deliver on its post-1994 promises and the ANC’s failure to use budgets to aid the landless poor. Angry protesters point who are been caught up in corruption, state capture and the self-enrichment to the ANC regime and its elite at the cost of the poor. Their view is that the ANC regime not only failed as a regime to offer accommodation and land within the boundaries of the 1994 land reform programme, but often just ignored the urgent needs of the poor and landless Blacks. It is important to look at some examples of the behaviour and reactions of people from the Black community on the ANC regime’s failure to take care of their interests. It indeed reflects an outright dislike for the ANC regime and its elite.^68-70
The testimony of a tin shack dweller living in a sprawling Durban shantytown, a said Mrs Lindiswa Mhlanga⁷⁰, about her fantasies “to live in a brick house with windows, walls, bedrooms and perhaps a garden for her children to play” like the ANC elite, is heart-breaking, not only because of the tragedy around it, but also because it most probably going to remain a fantasy. A despairing neighbour of hers, a said Mrs. Tembu Xulu⁷⁰, gives a poignant description of her utmost despair about her living conditions since the new 1994 democracy when she said in 2018^70:14:

“I can’t live like this anymore. It’s been 11 years I’m here. We have one room and one bed that eight of us share. What life is this? We have snakes under the shack. I want a life of dignity.”

Blacks are responding on these failures of the ANC with a clear warning to the Ramaphosa regime. S’bu Zikode⁷⁰, the founding president of the national organisation Abahlali (of which 16 leaders have been killed since 2009 under very suspicious circumstances) which has approximately 50 000 members who are fighting for the rights of the poor and landless in informal settlements, says^70:14:

“Many of us have given up hope that there will ever be any change or delivery to our people. What makes us hopeless is that every year the government has a budget announcement and out of those billions, very few communities are benefiting. We know that as long as the ANC is in power, shack dwellers and black people are not going to benefit anything from the government.”

This despair goes deeper than the experience of hopelessness, bringing the unavoidable result of political self-empowerment and lawlessness to the foreground. It is possible that extreme violence directed at the ANC regime is in the making. The antagonists not only consider the failure of the ANC as a party to serve the interests of the poor and landless Blacks, but also the presence of criminal role players inside the ANC regime who trample on the dignity of their poor Black brothers. The poor and landless Black activists highlight the open misuse of the benefits meant for the Black poor by some ANC councillors, instead of helping the homeless Blacks to make them independent citizens who can live a normal life as a worker with an income and a house. Zikode⁷⁰ is especially succinct in when he reports^70:14:

“We believe that many of them eat the money meant for the people. Some of the councillors have told me straight to my face that I am disturbing them from eating. It is their turn to eat. They are there to enrich themselves and it’s obvious. We are reaching a stage where we are saying: ‘Could we accept that we don’t have a government?’”

It would be a mistake to think the hostility of the Black poor and homelessness is limited to speaking out on the matter: their discontent has already moved to militant thinking. We are in a stage of aggressiveness, bordering on militant actions. Zikode’s⁷⁰ words are prominent as he puts the immediate political decision and destiny of the poor and homeless Blacks on the table against the ANC regime^70:14:

If you listen to us carefully, we are no longer talking about homelessness, we are talking about landlessness, the reason being we have accepted that there is no money for housing.
That is why our focus is now on the land question. Can you rather release land for us to see what we can do?
From the onset promises were made and broken, lies were put before truth and money and business were put before human needs. We have been calling for land in our cities for a long time.
Of course we support the call for the expropriation of land without compensation, but it is what we have already doing – it’s what we call land occupation.
It’s really about the redistribution of land from below. People are taking back the land.
Most of the settlements that we have occupied have not been given on a silver plate. People have had to occupy vacant land, because nobody will ever give you land.
Which is why today there are hundreds of casualties.
If you were to ask where all these assassinations and death threats come from: two sources – the police and politicians.
But despite the death threats we are receiving, we will not be silenced.

For Zikode⁷⁰ there is undoubtedly one immediate dangerous enemy of the poor Blacks in their struggle to survive as humans: the ANC and its favoured elite. This outcome is more than enough evidence that the notion that the ANC has developed the poor and landless Blacks into financially independent and functioning citizens is a lie and a myth.

3.5.7. Blacks are indigenous South Africans and Whites are European settlers

Who are the rightful franchisees of South African land? Which of the Black and White tribes deserve South African land ownership? The current argument of the ANC and EFF is that it is only the Blacks. Most of these statements are purely meant for political opportunism and emotional rhetoric. It also reveals political leaders’ lack of an understanding of the political history of South Africa.
It is thus of great importance to separate myths and lies from the truth to determine who counts as non-indigenous colonists (so called land predators), who counts as true indigenous people (natives) and who are indigenous colonists (foreigners who over time indigenised) to South Africa, writes Louw6. The claim of Blacks as indigenous South Africans and Whites as European settlers, making Blacks the rightful sole owners of the country’s land and the intended land redistribution without compensation by the Blacks justified, should be evaluated.
The pre-1900 South Africans can be divided into six broad racial and ethnic groups, namely the KhoiSan, KhoiKhoi, the Black tribes, the White tribes, the Coloureds and the Asians/Indians/Malays. Louw6 shows that earlier inhabitants (settlers) of South Africa, before the Europeans and Blacks arrived, were undoubtedly the KhoiSan and the KhoiKhoi. The Cape Settlement was infused an Asian/Indian/Malay bloodline and this resulted in a new race in South Africa. It meant that two more peoples over time became indigenous to South Africa, namely the Coloureds and the Asian/Indians/Malay. This unique constellation of South Africa brings into focus the many political clichés of who are the rightfully franchisees of South African soil and who should have South African land ownership.^6,71

3.5.7.1. KhoiSan

The KhoiSan were probably the first inhabitants of South Africa. It seems they migrated from central Southern Asia. It is theorised that their migrating resulted from a scarcity of food or as if they were driven out by other stronger races from Asia. The initial tribe split up in three sub-tribes: one group moving south-east to the Malaysian Peninsula, the Philippines and as far as Australia; the second group moving west as far as Spain and the third group moving into North Africa and from there constantly Southwards as result of attacks by the Hamites who were living around the Nile region. Other parts of this third group of KhoiSan moved downwards from the eastern part of Africa, to gather south of the Zambezi after the 1600s, ending up in the Southern African region as far South as the Cape. The KhoiSan are now only present in diminutive numbers, and they are politically and economically disempowerment. They have not made any direct claims to land ownership, although through inbreeding with the Blacks, Coloureds and KhoiKhoi, they can also lay claim to land ownership to a certain extent.^6,71

3.5.7.2 KhoiKhoi

The KhoiKhoi probably have their origin as result of a mixture in Somaliland between KhoiSan and Hamites. It seems that they migrated Southwest down into Africa to the region of the Great Lakes, and, after staying several centuries, they moved further Southwards more or less around 600AC, to reach the Orange River where they initially established on the banks of the river and along the West Coast, from Walvis Bay to the Umtamvuna River. Later on they started to split up into smaller tribes, with each an individual name and customs, moving again further Southwards.^6,71
Notwithstanding the fact that they were one of the first migrants to establish themselves in South Africa as an ethnic group, the KhoiKhoi have very little impact because of their small numbers and early political marginalisation. In terms of equality and justified human rights of the South African Constitution, they must, as the KhoiSan, be given the right to claim rightful ownership of the South African soil.^6,71

3.5.7.3. Indians/Asians/Malays

Indians/Asians/Malays, although late-comers to South Africa as labour to Natal in 1860, have, like all the other races in South Africa, became indigenous to the country. Many of their forefathers or tribal associates were Asian/Indian/Malay female slaves who came to the Cape Refreshment Settlement between 1650 and 1670. Many of these women had children with Whites at the Cape, making the Indians/Asians/Malays rightful claimants together with the Whites to future land ownership. (The direct, first infusion of “non-White blood” into the White parent stock of today’s Afrikaners can be as high as 75%).^6,71
It is clear that the Asians/Indians/Malays’ claim to South African land ownership as indigenous people is not limited to their South African identity, but also through their early inbreeding with the Whites and the Coloureds.^6,71

3.5.7.4. Coloureds

The vertical biological development of a closed and outcast group of mixed people, mostly excluded from the White nucleus that formed the modern Afrikaners, is surely true as evidenced by the South African Coloureds and other mixed people of today. However, the superficial split between Coloureds and Whites is confirmed by historical evidence of an immense horizontal biological impact of “Coloured blood” on Afrikaners’ genes, contradicting earlier numbers of only 6% to 10.7% of mixed Afrikaner descendants and the separate vertical development of the Coloureds as a separate ethnic group. This brotherhood between White Afrikaners and Brown Afrikaners makes the claims of White Afrikaners on land ownership fully applicable to the Coloureds and vice versa. The further mixing of the Coloureds with KhoiSan, KhoiKhoi and Blacks makes these three groups’ claims on land ownership also fully applicable on the Coloureds and vice versa.^6,71
Notwithstanding this birth right and the fact that the Coloureds are the second largest tribe in the country, they are still politically, economically and socially as deprived as in the pre-1994 dispensation.^6,71

3.5.7.5. Blacks

The South African Blacks, like the South African Whites, are both comparative newcomers to Southern Africa. The South African Blacks’ probable initial home was Central Asia, from where the moved into Africa en masse, splitting in two: one group moving down to the middle of Africa and the second group moving along the East Coast to reach Sofala in the 10th century. When the Portuguese established themselves on the East Coast, these various East-bound Black groups reached Natal and in the 1650s the area around the Kei River. The middle group of Blacks also moved Southwards to establish themselves in the vicinity of the Vet and Caledon Rivers the 1750s.^6,71
After the early First and Second Black Colonisation of South Africa between 1810 and 1840, Blacks become permanent settlers with time and obtained indigenous status (especially through land grabbing, war and the complete termination of their opponents).^6,71
The constant reference of Black politicians to the Afrikaner as an “alien, murderous colonist” in South Africa, or to the Whites as the only colonist in South Africa, is false. Louw’s6 study shows that it is an undeniable fact that the current Black population are also foreign to South Africa and indeed in the same boat as the Afrikaners.
The South African Blacks have no more right to land ownership than the KhoiSan, KhoiKhoi, Coloureds, Asian/Indians/Malays, Whites and Afrikaners. Land redistribution can only be executed in their favour in terms of their shared indigenousness with the KhoiSan, KhoiKhoi, Coloureds, Asian/Indians/Malays, Whites and Afrikaners due to a time factor of living in South Africa. Their portion of land to be received in terms of the intended land expropriation project can only be calculated and determined based on the total South African population versus the ratio of the KhoiSan, KhoiKhoi, Coloureds, Asian/Indians/Malays, Whites and Afrikaners. Their present claims to land and the intention of land redistribution without compensation, is land grabbing and terrorism, similar to what their forefathers did when they settled here as foreigners.^6,71

3.5.7.6. Whites and the Afrikaner tribe

The popular view that the “Afrikaner” is a unique and “pure” White race that had its origins at the Cape Settlement in 1652 is wrong. Miscegenation and a multiracial component involving the South African Indians/Asians, Coloureds, KhoiKhoi and Blacks is a fact.^6,71
The multiracialism of today’s Afrikaners makes their legal claims to land ownership of the South African soil equal to that of South Africa’s Asian/Indians, KhoiSan, KhoiKhoi, Coloureds and Blacks. The Afrikaners have become indigenous, as did the Asian/Indians, KhoiSan, KhoiKhoi, Coloureds and Blacks, to South Africa.^6,71
The radical Black politicians’ claim that Blacks are indigenous South Africans and that Whites are settlers, is false and misleading. Indians/Asians, Coloureds, KhoiKhoi, Blacks and Whites are all foreigners (migrants) to South Africa who became indigenous over time.

3.5.8. The claim that the Tsar and Stalin’s collectivist farming projects in rural Russia were great successes

The radicals in the ANC often argue that the communist countries’ form of land ownership could work here. This is especially true for Julius Malema of the EFF who believes in the full nationalisation of all South Africans assets. When one looks critically at the similarities between the present-day political intentions of the ANC elite of South Africa and that of the Russian regimes as reflected by the Russian political history between the 1860s and 1950s, the similarities are startling: the same political radicalism, masked agendas, misuse of the problem of poverty and landlessness for own political and personal enrichment by the elites, the intentional lack of a clear land reform plan, political revenge on the previous beneficiaries of the old regimes, disrespect for the civil rights of individuals and for humanity, and the outcome of an even worse political end results. In both cases the end result of the land ownership issue was either revolution(s) or the possibility of revolution.^4,6
It is therefore important to the antagonists to test the notion that the Tsar and Stalin’s collectivist farming projects in rural Russia were great successes and interventions that could be applied to the land expropriation model of the ANC regime. The historian Professor Niall Ferguson⁷³ gives us great insight into this matter with his comprehensive book on the world’s political history titled: The War of the World. Ferguson⁷³ writes^73:198:

In the summer of 1931, in his seventy-fifth year, the playwright George Bernard Shaw paid a nine-day visit to the Soviet Union. What he saw — or thought he saw — was a workers’ paradise under construction.
Here was a symbol of the apparently realizable dream of state socialism, and Western visitors like Shaw reacted ecstatically. They had seen the future, and — compared with the apparently defunct capitalist system — it seemed to work.
Granted an audience with Stalin himself, Shaw was ‘disarm[ed]… by a smile in which there is no malice but also no credulity… [He] would pass…for a romantically dark Georgian chieftain’. In an impromptu speech in Leningrad, Shaw declared enthusiastically: ‘If this great communistic experiment spreads over the whole world, we shall have a new era in history…If the future is the future as Lenin foresaw it, then we may all smile and look forward to the future without fear’. ‘Were I only 18 years of age,’ he told journalists on his way back to England, ‘I would settle in Moscow tomorrow.’

Shaw⁷³ elaborated further in 1931, writes Ferguson^73:198-199:

“Stalin has delivered the goods to an extent that seemed impossible ten years ago, he rhapsodized. ‘Jesus Christ has come down to earth. He is no longer an idol. People are gaining some sort of idea of what would happen if He lived now.”

But Shaw was not the only famous and important Brit who was mesmerised by the communists’ benevolence to the poor in the 1930s: with him on his “tour of believing” were also Nancy and Waldorf Astor, and the Marquis of Lothian, Philip Kerr.⁷³
Shaw’s⁷³ “goodness” that came to the peasants (the poor and landless Russians) in the countryside under Stalin is now also seemingly on the way for poor and landless Blacks in South Africa. However, it is important to note that a limited form of land redistribution already took place in Russia under the Tsar with his abolition of serfdom in the 1860s and the transfer of land by a form of land ownership to them.⁷³
The bid by the Tsar to build a new class of “thrifty peasant proprietors” by means of a form of land redistribution, had limited success for various reasons. The specific belief that their “independence” from the rich and the mega-landowners and their own say in agriculture would transform the poor and landless Russians into successful commercial farmers overnight, failed. Although the peasants’ input with agricultural produce boosted the Russian economy, it just introduced another form of inequality. More or less 80% of ordinary Russians living in the countryside remained poor and deprived of benefits and dependent on the Tsar’s whims. Although the living standards of the peasants improved, they were still far from those living in towns and cities. The backlash of the Tsar’s abuse of the poor and landless under the mantle of their economic and political empowerment, upliftment and independence only to enrich his elite circle, doomed the project to a failure right from the start. In real life the masses of poor and landless Russians gained nothing.⁷³ Ferguson writes^73:14:

“The hope that they [80% of the population] would gain land as well as freedom among the peasants by the abolition of serfdom had been disappointed.”

What becomes clear is the absence of a definitive plan and the focused intention to uplift the poor and landless Russians to empower them and not only the doings of the corrupted Tsar-elite.⁷³
The vagueness of Ramaphosa’s plan of who would receive land, the allocation of deeds and what would be expected from these individuals, seems to be conflict in the making. In the Russia of the 1860s there were also different (often opposing and discriminative) socio-economic groups (as in the present-day South Africa), aggravating the battle for land ownership. This not only laid the foundation for immediate political conflict in Russia, but also a revolution. Ferguson⁷³ reflects on this infighting^73:14-15:

“A disgruntled peasantry, a sclerotic aristocracy, a radicalized but impotent intelligentsia and a capital city with a large and volatile populace: these were precisely the combustible ingredients the historian Alexis de Tocqueville had identified in 1780 France [and its revolution]. A Russian revolution of rising expectations was in making…”

It is more than clear from the Russian tsar’s failed experiment that neither extreme land grabbing nor orderly land redistribution bring immediate socio-economic and financial solutions and satisfaction for the poor and landless, especially when their numbers are large and the liberation regime’s intentions with land expropriation is based on political delinquency.
The above Russian experiment on land expropriation did not stop with the later doomed Tsar regime. It was later continued by the dictator and political delinquent Josef Stalin as president of Russia.
Stalin⁷³ lends another dimension to the presence of the peasantry and its grievances inside the greater Russian community in the 1930s. Described in a differences: the misuse of the peasants through their “grievances” (here in South Africa the antagonists refer to this Stalin opportunism in terms of Ramaphosa’s politicking as the “people wants, needs and demands”), to promote and to benefit exclusively Stalin’s elite’s interests and sick political visions.
As in South Africa at present, the politics of socialism all over Russia was Stalin’s solution to address the peasant problem and their upliftment via “land ownership and wealth”. But, “What Stalin meant by ‘socialism in one country’ was a new revolution – an economic revolution that he, the self-styled ‘man of steel’ would lead”, writes Ferguson^73:199. The “public” outcome of Stalin was one of “promoting” the interests of the poor and landless peasants living in the countryside (filled with grievances about their living conditions from the time of the Tsar), while in reality he killed them off to promote solely his own self-interests through military force and the greater Russian economy needed for military power via the agricultural economics. His economic revolution of masse industrialisation, secondary to social transformation, offered Stalin the opportunity of misusing the peasantry as the new proletariat (especially in the urban areas) to keep him and his elite in power without really awarding them significant political and economic power. It also limited the political and economic empowerment and aspirations of the peasantry still living in the countryside, tilling the soil for the Stalin elite’s benefitting. Ferguson posits^73:199:

“By forcing a huge transfer of manpower and the resources from the countryside into the cities, he aimed to enlarge at a stroke the Soviet proletariat on which the Revolution was supposedly based.”

At the same time Stalin attacked the surviving elements of the pre-revolutionary society – “…former capitalists, nobles, merchants, officials, priests and kulaks with all their class sympathies, anti-pathies, traditions, habits, opinions, world views and so on…”, who he saw as remaining threats to his regime, writes Ferguson.^73:199 Stalin’s policy of collectivisation of the Russian agricultural sector and its people was only superficially an attempt to improve Soviet agrigulture^73:199:

“Its true goal was the destruction of the class enemy – to be precise, ‘the liquidation of the kulaks as a class’”.

Ferguson⁷³ brings us nearer to the above events when he points out^73:200:

“Predictably, the consequence of the systematic annihilation of any farmer suspected of being a kulak was not economic growth but one of the greatest man-made famines in history. As Party functionaries descended on the countryside with orders to abolish private property and ‘liquidate’ anyone who had accumulated more than the average amount of capital, there was chaos”.

In reflecting here on the destiny of the private land owners and the rich of the countryside (equal to the White farmers of South Africa), Ferguson stipulates the following six criteria set out in 1927 (revised in 1929) by the Soviet Ministry of Finance in their doomed evaluation of wrongdoings of the rich Russians (as Apartheid’s wrongdoings also reflects)^73:200:

1. The hiring of two or more labourers;
2. Ownership of three or more draught animals;
3. Sown area of more than 10–16 desyatims (the threshold varied by region);
4. Ownership of any kind of processing enterprise;
5. Ownership of a trading establishment; or
6. Ownership of one or more agricultural machines or of a considerable quantity of good-quality implements

Looking at the above extreme criteria makes it clear that the more or less 35 000 commercial farmers in South Africa would have qualified in 1927 to be liquidated, making their fear for the radicals inside the ANC elite with their extreme land transformation (and sometimes open hostility against Whites, especially the Afrikaners) understandable.³
To understand better the liquidation of anti-Stalin and anti-Soviet farmers (and seemingly rich farmers) by communistic Russia through their good land expropriation policy in the 1920s, Ferguson takes us on an in-depth journey with a clear warning about the political, social and personal madness of Stalin and his cronies [a similar warning the antagonists have tried to send out to the world (like the note to Donald Trump) of what can comes in South Africa if the ANC regime, besotted by its political madness, stays on after 2019, noting the ANC’s revolutionary foundation and Stalinist orientation]. Ferguson⁷³ text is of such importance that it is fully mentioned here. Ferguson⁷³ writes^73:200-202:

Who exactly was a kulak? Those who had been better-off before the Revolution or those who had done well since? What exactly did it mean to ‘exploit’ other peasants? Lending them money when they were short of cash? Rather than see their cattle and pigs confiscated, many peasants preferred to slaughter and eat them, so that by 1935 total Soviet livestock was reduced to half of its 1929 level. But the brief orgy of eating was followed by a protracted, agonizing starvation. Without animals fertilizers, crop yields plummeted – grain output in 1932 was down by a fifth compared with 1930. Grain seizures to feed Russia’s cities left entire villages with literally nothing to eat. Starving people ate cats, dogs, field mice, birds, tree bark and even horse manure. Some went into the fields and ate half-ripe ears of corn. There were even cases of cannibalism. As in the 1920-21, typhus followed hard on the heels of dearth. Perhaps as many as eleven million people died in what was a wholly unnatural and unnecessary disaster. In addition, almost 400 00 households, or close to two million people, were deported as ‘special exiles’ to Siberia and Central Asia. Many of those who resisted collectivization were shot on the spot; perhaps as many as 3.5 million victims of ‘dekulakization’ subsequently died in labour camps. It was a crime the regime did its utmost to conceal from the world, confining foreign journalists to Moscow and restoring the Tsarist passport system to prevent famine victims fleeing to the cities for relief. Even the 1937 census was suppressed because it revealed a total population of just 156 million, when natural increase would have increased it to 186 million. Only a handful of Western reporters – notably Gareth Jones of the Daily Express, Malcolm Muggeridge of the Manchester Guardian, Pierre Berland of Le Tempe and William Chamberlin of the Christian Science Monitor – had the guts to publish accurate reports about the famine. The bulk of the press corps in Moscow, notably Walter Durancy of the New York Times, knowingly connived at the cover-up for fear of jeopardizing their access to the nomenklatura.

The notion of the propagandists that the Tsar and Stalin’s collectivist farming projects in rural Russia to uplift and empower the poor and landless Russians were great successes is false. Indeed, for antagonists the tragic political history of Russian land reform spells disaster for South Africa. The Mothlante Report points out that the 1994 to 2018 land redistribution under the auspices of the ANC regime failed, not so much because of poorly qualified farmers, but because of the stealing of politicians and officials of the money allocated to farmers. The question for the antagonists is why would this setup not replay itself now?⁷³

3.6. The presidency of Cyril Ramaphosa in perspective

3.6.1. The impact of Ramaphosa’s political baggage

One of the strong critics against Ramaphosa is the conclusion of the antagonists that he is only going to bring further misery to South Africans in general and to Whites specifically, making him just another “political monster” and a leader unable to handle the land expropriation with true justice and political balance inside the ANC elite. This conclusion is based on the view of the antagonists that Ramaphosa is a Zuma collaborator per excellence. The antagonists are constantly pointing out his long “passive” presence as an ANC member and later as vice-president during the Zuma’s time of transgression. It is justified for the antagonists to bring this matter to the table in the now stormy hurricane which is called land expropriation and in which Ramaphosa stands central with the radicals of the ANC. Munusamy^74,75 and Mthombothi^76,77 put this “involvement reality” on paper when they point out that he was the deputy-president and has sat through cabinet meetings where Zuma and several of his crooked ministers tried to take action on instruction from the Guptas. Munusamy^75,78 and Mthombothi^76,77 emphasise that he, as the deputy-president, attended numerous of the ANC’s top-six and national executive committee meetings where state capture was contested. He was also a direct figure in cases where state capture was at least clear to the eye, like the attempted heist of the National Treasury by firing three anti-corruption ANC politicians, namely Nhlanhla Nene, Pravin Gordhan and Mcebisi Jonas by Jacob Zuma in March 2017. The critics also say that Ramaphosa has been influenced and steered by the politically uncontrolled Julius Malema, especially on the land issue.^74-77,80,81
Some political analysts look critically at Ramaphosa’s rhetoric on land redistribution (which they see as similar to EFF politics) from another angle. Firstly, his immediate radical enthusiasm about a fast and decisive land expropriation programme is seen by the antagonists as simple opportunism to win power inside the ANC for support against the pro-Zuma and Zupta-derailing movements to oust him before or during the 2019 election. Secondly, to stay on as supreme leader of ANC, his primary priority at this stage is to save the ANC regime from defeat in 2019 by hook or by crook. Failure will mean his automatic defeat as a figure in the future politics of the country. It is speculated that he is trying to play the long game and that he will wait until after the elections to consolidate his power base to fit exclusively his opportunistic needs.^74-77.80,81 Barron⁶³ writes^63:9:

“Right now it’s about self-preservation, it’s about winning the 2019 election, feeling threatened by the EFF, feeling vulnerable…”

The whole issue around White land has become an irritating affair for Ramaphosa that is unnecessarily being stalled by Whites. It is now limiting his strength as president and ambitions. The Whites’ enthusiasm about Ramaphosa as their saviour as he replaced Jacob Zuma’s hostility, seems misplaced: Ramaphosa’s political baggage is just too much for him to accommodate the Whites as a group with all their needs and demands: things can get worse for the Whites under Ramaphosa, antagonists feel.^82,83
At present Ramaphosa’s impatience about a lack of progress on land redistribution and White resistance since 1994 is growing. President Donald Trump’s questions about the ANC’s land expropriation has aggravated him.⁶³ In his political arena the Whites’ future interests are not important. This mindset makes him a very dangerous to the White community and their future, argue the antagonists. For the antagonists Ramaphosa shows signs of having lost contact with the bigger political picture of long-term economics and nation-building. Indeed, it seems as if the Zuma-scenario of hostility against Whites have not disappeared.^84,85
The matter of land expropriation without compensation can become Ramaphosa’s Achilles heel as a president. The months up to the possible May-2019 election can be a bruising battle for the Ramaphosa camp. They can get any side of the coin, which can both have devastating outcomes in the end. Ramaphosa is accused by the antagonists of constant double-talk and of creating many unrealistic expectations among poor Blacks.⁴⁸ Some antagonists see the present identification of Whites as exclusive land owners as nothing else than the misuse of an “itching political-racial matter” to draw away attention from the ANC regime as a party in crisis to get votes in the next election. It is reminiscent to the White regime’s misuse of an itching political-racial matter in the 1930s when they played of the “poor Afrikaner problem” against the “Black and English dangers” of that time to get Afrikaner votes in exchange for financial benefits to secure their reign of South Africa. The Carnegie Commission then not only revealed this misuse of insecure voters by the nationalist Afrikaner leaders to obtain Afrikaner votes, but also warned against it as a crooked way getting votes. Geen⁷¹ reported well in 1939 on this matter^{71: 201}:

The Commission also drew attention to the danger of allowing people to retain the vote if they were in receipt of government aid, over and above the privileges that fall to all citizens. “There are signs that voting power and political influence are being abused to an increasing degree in order to obtain State assistance” was the unanimous view of the commissioners. The opinion has been expressed that those who accept government assistance should forfeit the valued right to vote.

This unethical and crooked way of getting votes is applicable to the 2019 land intentions of the ANC regime and party.⁷¹
Ramaphosa’s integrity as politician and as previous vice-president of the ANC regime is doubted by the antagonists and thus the White community. Mthombothi⁷⁶ refuses to deviate from his initial question in this regard and puts it clearly that Ramaphosa should react to these concerns before he could be cleared as a clean outsider, truly unconnected to the Zuma and Gupta cronies. The antagonists argue that Ramaphosa’s anti-White behaviours since July 2018 further complicated his trustworthiness as president of South Africa. Mthombothi’s⁷⁶ writing echoes the questions of many antagonists about Ramaphosa into the presidency through the front door. Mthombothi posits^76:17:

And because Zuma, the villain of the piece, is gone, we’re now encouraged to wake up to a new dawn. It’s a confession of sorts. Dawn is preceded by darkness. The suggestion is that we’re emerging from a nightmarish, dark place into a glorious sunshine and that we should be grateful to our saviour.
But hang on a minute. Not so fast. To suggest that state capture is all Zuma’s doing is not only a lie but a complete cop-out. It’s akin to arguing that Hendrik Verwoerd alone was responsible for apartheid. That’s pulling the wool over our eyes. The entire party, especially the top leadership, is complicit.
What is missing – and what those who smugly sat in the inner sanctums of power with Zuma want to avoid — is full and honest disclosure. During the Watergate scandal in the US, a high-ranking Republican senator put this seminal question to Richard Nixon: what did the president know, and when did he know it? President Cyril Ramaphosa and his cohorts need to respond to such a question. What was their role in the state capture debacle and why did they choose to stay silent, which was itself a criminal dereliction of duty?
Ramaphosa needs to level with the public. He should take it into his confidence. Be honest with us. Opening up is not a sign of weakness. To the contrary, it may strengthen his position. Trust is an important component in leadership.
The ANC spurned numerous opportunities to remove Zuma. It stood by him. Those who called for his scalp were mocked and disparaged. Now they’ve made a U-turn and are urging everybody to join in their thuma Mina kumbaya.
A pig with lipstick is still a pig.

The antagonists need not look further than Cyril Ramaphosa’s^83,86 inaugural speech as the ANC’s leader at the party’s 54th National Leaders Conference in December 2017 to see Ramaphosa’s blindness to Zuma’s “bad” lipstick while he was vice-president^83:6:

Finally, I would like, on your behalf, to thank President Jacob Zuma for the 10 years he has spent as the president of our movement and for a lifetime of service to the people; or
We cannot close down the 54th national conference of the ANC without to bring tribute to your [Zuma] contributions over decades in the struggle for Freedom, democracy and development [Own translation].

Mthombothi’s⁷⁶ diagnosis of a pig with lipstick is still a pig seems to fit Ramaphosa’s political actions after June 2018. For the antagonists there is only one of two solutions for the land expropriation matter: get rid of the pig or clean its lips of lipsticks! But this seems easier said than done in the ANC regime’s corrupted setup where there seems just too many “holy pigs” to handle.⁷⁶
Gary Eisenberg⁷⁹ and John Steenhuisen⁸⁷ put into perspective the cloudy, one-sided and privileged politics of the pre-2019 top circle of the ANC. The ordinary people were held to a different (higher) standard of administrative justice than the ANC’s top leadership (a system in which Ramaphosa was a prominent member together with his boss Zuma and of which he must now be answerable to all South Africans).^87,76 Like Mthombothi⁷⁶, Eisenberg⁷⁹ is also questioning this ANC integrity^79:17:

How can a regime of law exist with integrity when access to administrative justice is only possible through a shadow decision-making authority outside of the rule of law?
This principle cannot be more poignantly articulated than in the celebrated words of US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis: “If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy”.

Zuma and his regime became law-breakers and laws unto themselves, leading to immense anarchic outcomes. The question at this stage is where Ramaphosa stands in relation to personal and political honesty versus crooking. Any future perception of him as a puppet serving the ANC NEC under the Zuma-faction can be fatal to his credibility as leader Number One.^79,87,88
The fact is, as indicated already, that the Guptas and top ANC leaders would not been in position to allow such constant state capture without the help and approval of other ANC-leaders in the top structure of the party and in the Zuma cabinet. Does a parallel Zuma regime still exist in the Ramaphosa regime? And, most of all, the honest question: Who are all the pigs with lipstick in the Ramaphosa cabinet and in his inner circle?^76,79,84
The above questions of Mthombothi⁷⁶, Steenhuisen⁸⁷ and Eisenberg⁷⁹ about Ramaphosa’s possible double role in the present South African politics are growing, also in the minds of the antagonists. It may be their single greatest worry.
Ramaphosa’s possible double role may be a factor in other events. Prominent here is the allegation of ongoing political terrorising and extortion of the Ramaphosa camp by Zuma and the Guptas. Is it a possibility that these alleged powers are making the Ramaphosa regime toothless to fire ministers and state officials from the Zuma regime and to kick out Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma from his inner circle? Is extortion making it impossible for Ramaphosa to depart fully from the established Zuma leftist and corrupted system, leading to his ongoing open support for crooked cadres? There is a die-hard suspicious rumour of a secret list (seemingly only known to Jacob Zuma, Oliver Tambo, Joe Nhlanhla and Nelson Mandela) of current prominent ANC members who are alleged to have been Apartheid spies and collaborators. It is now the time for Ramaphosa to address this matter with urgency. As with an open answer on his possible involvement or not in the Zuma regime’s wrongdoings, President Cyril Ramaphosa and his cohorts need also to respond with a clear answer about extortion by the Zupoids regarding their political and personal past. Ramaphosa has to level any possible dark past to the public. For the antagonists to trust Ramaphosa the question is prominent: Can Ramaphosa afford to respond publicly?⁸²
The seasoned political and investigated journalist Barney Thombothi⁸⁹ refuses to allow Ramaphosa to escape the present political reality in which he prominently positioned himself, seemingly washing his hands in innocence. Mthombothi⁸⁹ takes justice further by postulating that accusing “uBaba” Jacob Zuma alone as the evil in state capture, fraud and stealing, is wrong and false. The truth, he writes, is^89:21: “…uBaba’s ANC-party as a whole went along with him on his looting journey, making every step with well-planning with him”. This includes Ramaphosa as MP, member of the ANC NEC and vice-president. Ramaphosa’s present brain-washing of the ordinary man on the street with the appointment of various commission, investigations, inquiries, summits and conferences to investigate Zuma should not succeed. Ramaphosa is trying to steer the mess away from him self. It is only the inquiries of Raymond Zondo and Robert Nugent that seem to be of value thus far (but they did not lead to comprehensive criminal prosecutions by the NPA).^19,89
The problem with the Zondo inquiry, as opposed to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of the 1990s, writes Mthombothi^89:21, is that the perpetrators being investigated by the Zondo inquiry are still in power. Mthombothi⁸⁹ points out this ANC contamination well^89:21:

“They decided on its mandate, and it will be up to them to act on its recommendations, almost akin to an accused who has a remit to decide whether to abide by his sentence.”

The ANC elite’s effort to attribute all wrongdoing to Zuma is a failed strategy to escape responsibility: the fact is Zuma was appointed by the ANC out of their own free will and offered a free hand. He was no autocrat who grabbed the power directly. Indeed, he could have been stopped at any time by the ANC NEC. Mthombothi⁸⁹ writes^89:21:

“They were inside the tent with him cheering him as he plundered and looted with gay abandon. So they’re not simply complicit; they’re responsible for the awful mess the country’s in.”

The prominent question is why did Ramaphosa not testify so far to the Zondo inquiry: If he is not guilty of wrongdoing, why the avoidance? His contribution can be valuable and can open a door on the doings of the inner circle of the ANC from 1994 to 2018. Mthombothi⁸⁹ is on the spot when he says^89:21:

The Zondo commission gives Ramaphosa an opportunity to level with the public. As Zuma’s deputy, there is very little that could have escaped his attention. What did he know, and why didn’t he do anything about it? He should therefore be leading all ministers who served under Zuma to give evidence, mea culpas included, to the commission. These things took place under their noses. They must tell us what happened. We will be all ears.

With the above heavy baggage Ramaphosa is carrying, very few antagonists see Ramaphosa as an independent executive leader or futurist who is serving every citizen and community. Many see him as a person politically contaminated by his pre-1994 exposure to revolutionary “radiation”, still driven rigidly by this contaminated past.⁸⁹ The inclination to misuse power and radical autocratic behaviour and disrespect for rules and traditions is well-illustrated by the fact that Ramaphosa openly ignored the parliament’s decision first to test the public’s sentiment on land expropriation without compensation. He started-up the process of land expropriation without official permission of the Parliament. Mthombothi⁸⁹ reports on this as follows^89:21:

It reduced the entire process to a sham: the currency was knocked off its stride and it’s continued its inexorable slide since.

Ramaphosa seems to be too contaminated to appear before the Zondo commission.
The request of the antagonists to the Ramaphosa regime is: Be honest with South Africans before the Zuptoids tell “their secrets” first to the outside-world.^90,91,92 Look what happened with Nene after the Guptas “started to walk” again in daylight! Bruce⁹⁰, like Mtombothi⁸⁹, says^90:12:

“Do it now, before the 2019 election. Opening up is not a sign of weakness. To the contrary, it may strengthen Ramaphosa’s and his intimate men’s positions. Trust is an important component in leadership. It can bring only confidence to the Ramaphosa regime, and most of all: to himself.”

Coming back to the failed and corrupted ANC period of reign between 1994 and 2019 and any constructive change possible to its reign in the near future, many political analysts rightly see very little change in the post-Zuma hundred days and more of Cyril Ramaphosa and that of Jacob Zuma. The antagonists describe it as an ongoing Zupta-ANC-NEC regime, which is still run direct and indirect by many controversial figures, the likes of Anoj Singh, Bruce Koloane, Mark Pamensky, Rajesh Naithani, Faith Muthambi, Fikile Mbalula, Lynne Brown, Daniel Mantsha, Des van Rooyen, Mosebenzi Zwane, Tom Moyane, Jonas Makwakwa, Supra Mahumapelo, Arthur Fraser, Shaun Abrahams, Brian (not Popo) Molefe, Matshela Koko, Malusi Gigaba, ACE Magashule, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, and others. Anti-Zuma and non-corrupt persons in the ANC of the calibre of Vusi Pikoli, Senzo Mchunu and Pravin Gordhan are just too few in number to assure a positive governmental overhaul and the taming or cleansing of the corrupted Zuma-ANC-NEC. The spooky networks of dirty tricks (Bell Pottinger), rogue spying (governmental) and propaganda (Infinity Media, The New Age, ANN7) are still too involved in the Ramaphosa reign.^{53,76,79,84,93-105}
The antagonists see a shadow hanging over the heads of some of Ramaphosa’s intimate political cronies. In this regard Mthombothi² writes^2:3:

Let’s look at Ramaphosa’s own record. In David Mabuza, he has a deputy who, as premier of Mpumalanga, turned that province into a den of thieves, where whistle-blowers are killed with impunity. The ANC head office is headed by Ace Magashule, who’s left the Free State in a shambles and who’s personality involved in enabling the Guptas to benefit in the Estina scandal.
This week it emerged that an ABC employee at Luthuli House has been arrested for involvement in cash-in-transit heists. One ANC apparatchik was heard to express shock at this, but such delinquent behaviour is par for the course. There are many upstanding people in the ANC, but sometimes it’s hard to escape the conclusion that the party has become a criminal syndicate.

There was a devastating exposé in August 2018 in The New York Times (arguably the world’s most respected English newspaper) with specific reference to Ramaphosa’s deputy president David Mabuza’s alleged corrupt activities and mismanagement while he was Mpumalanga premier, write Imraan Buccus¹⁰⁶ and Asha Speckman¹⁰⁷. Buccus¹⁰⁶ reflects on these controversies in the intimate Ramaphosa inner circle as follows^106:17:

From this point on he will, at best, be seen as the head of a divided party and of a government that includes the worst dregs of the Jacob Zuma era.
On the international circuit any talk of a “New Dawn” or a “crackdown on corruption” will now be immediately followed by the question: “Yes, but what about Mabuza, and his ilk?
If Ramaphosa cannot remove Mabuza and others like him from the party and the government, his presidency will be paralysed.

The New York Times (NYT) foregrounds the incompetence and lack of insight on Ramaphosa side to involve persons with clean hands into his cabinet and into the ANC NEC, together with his lack of political insight to understand the consequences of land grabbing on the human and economic components of the country^107:10: “…saying South Africa needed [looking seemingly to Ramaphosa, the failed statesman] another ‘enlightened leader like Nelson Mandela but keeps electing imitations of Robert Mugabe’.”
In this context the NYT clearly pinpoints Ramaphosa’s failure as an executive leader and tears his foolish argument that land restitution without compensation would unlock economic growth, into pieces. The fact is, as the antagonists also see it: the emperor is naked and sadly he does not know it.¹⁰⁷
For the antagonists poor quality of political decisions, supported by other condemning evidence, seems to be cemented into the Ramaphosa regime from day one.^{2,53,57,76,79,84,93-100,102-105}
The antagonists are more than justified to say that it seems more and more as if the ANC (and South Africa) and Ramaphosa are all still stuck in the Zuma syndrome of delinquency and that South Africa will be stuck with this negativity as long as the ANC forms the regime of the day.^{2,53,57,76,79,84,93-100,102-105}
The propagandists’ argument that Ramaphosa’s way of governing by consensus and the use of tactics in negotiation the ANC internal politics, has required him to put some of his key opponents into powerful ANC positions, like the national spokesman Pule Mabe and secretary-general Ace Magashule, is laughable. These decisions are part of Ramaphosa’s radical political ideology. Even if the strategy approach to Ramaphosa was true, it is just a repeat of the earlier failed version in 1994 by Mandela with Ramaphosa as his adviser when they placed political opponents in the cabinet. As Ferial Haffajee¹⁰⁸ puts it^108:2: “It didn’t work then, and it’s not working now”. It just points to a lack of political insight.^{2,53,57,76,79,84,93-100,102-105}
Ramaphosa’s political baggage is just too heavy, packed with old, stinky and infectious clothes and inadmissible goods. The antagonists are looking forward to what will happen in 2019 when he tries to make a border crossing.

3.6.2. A Ramaphosa utopia versus a Ramaphosa dystopia

Cyril Ramaphosa chooses his words carefully — very carefully. Certainly, he is genial and relaxed, but he is too good a politician to allow himself to get carried away in his pronouncements.
And so, like a skilled artist trying hard not to give away too much, he culls his words most adroitly while also managing to remain warm and engaging.^109:15

Is the above a description of an interview with Cyril Ramaphosa after his election as the president at the 54th National Conference of the ANC in December 2017? No, the words were uttered by Ramaphosa 25 years earlier in 1994 in an interview with the former political editor of The Star, Kaizer Nyatsumba.¹⁰⁹ In 2019 he is the same seasoned and unchanged politician with the same political enigma: encircled by unpredictable thinking and behaviour and mysterious agendas.
One thing is clear: Ramaphosa did not change his political disposition; it is still embedded in radical African liberation and ANC revolutionism, and still not political finessed. The only obvious change between 1994 and 2019 is that he was 43 years old in 1994 and is now 69 years in 2019!¹⁰⁹
Cyril Ramaphosa, like FW de Klerk, entered as Number One as the man of the moment, but like De Klerk’s auk! (greatness), Ramaphosa’s aura also has started to wash out: just much faster. In Ramaphosa’s case it started after only 100 days. The antagonists point out that Ramaphosa made initially a dramatic impact on the ANC and the country’s politics. In retrospect, his actions are bathed in controversy, basically aimed at overcoming and outliving his insecurity and endangering as leader of the disorganised and disunited ANC. This negativity is spilling to his presidency. Two dramatic, suddenly outcomes (totally unexpected for Whites) are prominent: 1) his intention to change Section 25(2)(b) of the Constitution to implement land expropriation without compensation, and 2) his intention to estrange the White part of the population from the Black community and the greater African community.¹¹⁰
Critics of the intended land reform initiative of Ramaphosa and all that surrounds it lay the problems at the door of the person and politician Cyril Ramaphosa himself. Analysts see the sudden political radicalism of Ramaphosa as a direct outcome of a politically impoverished president of the ANC party as well as the state South Africa. Ramaphosa may have won the ANC’s leadership battle in 2018, writes Mthombothi¹¹¹, but he’s lost the ideological one. He came out of the Nasrec conference wearing the mantle of leadership, but burdened by the opinions of a divided top six and a national executive committee of 80 members, bodies crawling with his political enemies.¹¹¹
Mthombothi¹¹¹ enlightens us^111:21:

Ramaphosa leads a party that’s pulling in different direction from where he wants to go. As one activist puts it, the head is cut off from the body. A bit extreme perhaps, but it will be interesting to see how Ramaphosa goes about stitching the two together”. To stitch the ANC-party together seem more and more impossible for the antagonists: the head is under witch-doctor’s care at Nklanda and the perfumed half-decayed body stored at Luthuli-house.

Firstly, as Mthombothi¹¹¹ says, it is becoming a question in which direction Ramaphosa and the ANC elite want to go: A Western type of capitalist democracy or a combined African-styled Chinese-Venezuelan autocratic socialism. His land expropriation intentions reflect a combined African-styled Chinese-Venezuelan autocratic socialism.
Secondly, Ramaphosa as a president is hamstringed by the leftish Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and her radical cronies (as well as the spooky Jacob Zuma who is still looking at every decision of the ANC elite, regime and party), who is still well-established in the background. The intention to oust Ramaphosa before 2019 or after the election is seemingly part of the Zuma-faction’s plan. This insecurity makes Ramaphosa the powerless head of a divided and corrupted ANC. It has gotten so out of hand that Ramaphosa, as last resort, had to appeal (not demand!) at the end of September 2018 for unity in the ANC as a prerequisite to winning the coming election. His rebuke of party bosses regarding their independent conflicting messages was clearly not successful. The fact further that Ramaphosa’s seemingly intimate friend Gwede Mantashe is also arm-in-arm with Ace Magashule (who is undoubtedly not an intimate friend of Ramaphosa), makes his present position extremely difficult. This conflict and disempowerment of Ramaphosa refer back to Ramaphosa’s possible involvement in the Zuma wrongs, or his direct knowledge of it as vice-president.¹¹² As Mthomboth¹¹² puts it precise^112:4:

“Mantashe‘s entanglement presents Ramaphosa with a challenge. It constrains his scope to act or confront allegations of corruption by the likes of Magashule and others. His chair and trusted ally is knee-deep in it. The plot thickens.”

The antagonists feel that the radical economic transformation (RET) narrative has won at Nasrec and that the Zuma group of the NEC is arm-in-arm with the EFF ideology (Economic Freedom Fighters). The ANC’s unexpected radical metamorphosis (undoubtedly a driver of Ramamania specifically) was described well by Mthombothi¹¹¹ in March 2018^111:21:

“Early last year the ANC in Parliament voted against an EFF motion to expropriate without compensation, but almost days later Zuma started campaigning for exactly the same thing. The call was taken up by many branches of the ruling party, especially those supporting Dlamini-Zuma.”

On Ramaphosa’s sudden pliancy to the Zuma and Dlamini-Zuma inclinations of land expropriation without compensation, Tabane¹¹³ writes^113:6:

“It is fascinating that President Cyril Ramaphosa seems to be very much alive to the possible chasm that may be an unintended consequence of the wild and generalized approach to the issue. Earlier this year he even sought to assure the Afrikaner community that the constitution will not be amended.”

The belief of the antagonists is that the Zuma group of the ANC NEC’s radical classic Marxist view is becoming cemented into the ANC base. It is echoed more and more by Ramaphosa himself since July 2018 with his public declaration that “we” (ANC) are going to take land without compensation. This was followed by his very provocative challenge, although indirectly, to three specific role players, namely the South African Whites, Donald Trump and the UN to do something about his (Ramaphosa) intended land expropriation. For a leader like Ramaphosa, with a built-in segment of radical liberation coming from the old ANC, these kinds of announcements and decisions are not recallable outcomes. It’s a final decision by Ramaphosa, without deviating one inch from his old radical political ideology. This Black radicalism, antagonists argue, includes the belief that White monopoly capital captured the entire South African economy and that the only panacea for this is radical economic transformation (RET), which includes dramatic and radical land reform to cleanse the country of socio-economic apartheid and the presence of the inequality and poverty of Blacks solely at the costs of the Whites (who Ramaphosa identified as the sinners). The status of the Whites seems more and more to be second-class citizenship, stripped from its traditional common law rights.¹¹¹
The opponents of land expropriation are of the opinion that although it initially seemed as if Ramaphosa does not subscribe to land grabbing from the Whites in his heart, he, in line with his liberator’s instinct, has become part and parcel of the “new” ANC’s radical view on the “colonists Whites” and their “stolen land”. This is a direct outcome of the Ramamania and Ramaforia that forced Ramaphosa to stay empowered inside the current ANC NEC and ANC regime.¹¹¹
What makes Ramaphosa so dangerous in the minds of the antagonists is that it is seemingly important to Ramaphosa to hold the office of president by underwriting the mantra of the Zuma group in the NEC (and indirectly the Malema faction) at all cost, ignoring sound political justice and nationhood. Many of the antagonists doubted his half-hearted assurances that the ANC’s planned land seizure will happen in such a way that it does not jeopardise economic growth or food production from the start. The meaning and possibilities of this rhetoric is so wide that an ox wagon can turn in it! The antagonists see this kind of “presidential testimony” as just safeguarding the ANC regime’s “good” image. The same goes for Ramaphosa’s vague assurances that land reform does not mean full capture. For the antagonists the potential for extreme land grabbing is great. Ramaphosa is clearly not satisfied with the present land ownership and the favoured position of Whites.¹¹¹
Ramaphosa showed his radicalism on White land in an interview with the journalist Kaizer Nyatsumba of The Star as far back as 1994 when he voiced his disagreement with the 1994 dispensation by pointing out that the major two challenges facing the ANC then were: 1) a clear future political strategy; and 2) the setting of tactics to prosecute the next phase of the struggle, like countering the favouring of White business communities at the expense of Blacks.^86,109,111 Revolutionism has not diminished in his mindset, as his 2017 inaugural speech at Nasrec clearly confirms, where Ramaphosa⁸⁶ said^86:15:

“We serve them [principles of the ANC] because we [revolutionary democrats] have chosen, each one of us, to become selfless agents of revolutionary change.”

Antagonists view the present hamstringing of Ramaphosa as a president by the Jacob Zuma and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma gang as a failure to get rid of the corrupted and crooked ministers and high-level officials of the Zuma government. Political analysts refer to this mustering of renewed power by Jacob Zuma against Ramaphosa as a very dangerous political rebirth, coming from KwaZulu-Natal, one which can intensify in 2019 just before the election. The journalist Ranjeni Munusamy¹¹⁴ describes it as^114:22:

“War drums in the political battlefields of KwaZulu-Natal will echo throughout the ANC and the country”.

The “angst” that Ramaphosa showed after King Goodwill Zwelithini’s threat to take up arms if his trust land becomes part of land reform, is good evidence in this context. Is he in fear of his life, seeing that political murders are already a permanent fixture in KwaZulu-Natal? Are the various Zuma reappointments by Ramaphosa in other ministerial or governmental positions or in the ANC executive leadership part of this fear of Ramaphosa? His willingness to pay Zuma’s immense court costs from the state’s fund is not only absurd, it reveals his fear. (Note: Zuma’s estimated legal bill per day is R290 000; the number of fraud, corruption and racketeering charges against Zuma is 16; while the number of payments alleged to have been paid as bribes to Zuma is 783).^115-118 Mthombothi referred to this financial support as^82:21: “…dishonesty doing by Ramaphosa, written all over, if not being patently fraudulent”.
Mthombothi⁸² posits^82:21:

“Ramaphosa’s explanation in parliament last week was evasive, and not at all in keeping with the spirit of Thuma Mina. It reeks of the very odour he claims to want to eradicate.”

The political misbehaviour of Ramaphosa as reflected by the Zwelithini land case and Ramaphosa’s blind disregard for the sound recommendations of the parliamentary High-level Panel Report of Motlanthe for a strict but justified land redistribution programme, spells doom, making Ramaphosa a political factor to be feared in the future.^{3,82,111,119-122}
Munusamy⁷⁵ warned in April 2018 as follows on Ramaphosa, the leader and his limitations and shortcomings^75:22:

Ramaphosa might have great plans for South Africa’s recovery, but it would appear that his own organization is weighting him down.
Instead of focusing on stabilising the state and creating an optimum climate for the investment and economic growth that would hopefully result in job creation, he must fight the ANC’s internal problems
.
Meanwhile, other ANC leaders are ineffective, dogged by scandal or engaged in sideshows.
While Ramaphosa is able to send his lions on the hunt for investment, it is a pity he does not have beasts at his disposal to deal with the nuisances in the ANC.

Ramaphosa’s ongoing failures, specifically earlier in his capacity as vice-president for many years when he had to oversee the Interim Protection of Informal Land Rights Act to do justice to the poor, landless Blacks living on Black trust land are also prominent in the antagonists arguing. For the antagonists the question is that if he failed the Blacks, how can he been trusted to do good to Whites? The antagonists see him as a leader who underwrites a total pro-Black (radical) sentiment on land redistribution and rights.^109,111,112
The negativity of critics about the planned land reform under the presidency of Ramaphosa is aggravated further by Ramaphosa’s contradicting and vague remarks on the land issue, which is seen more and more as an escape route he uses out of a situation he does not understand, nor knows to handle. ^{3,82,111,119-122}
The ANC regime went down the drain from 1994 to 2019. Prominent is the rising national debt. Ramaphosa as vice-president was associated with the Zuma regime’s fraud, theft and corruption.^{3,82,111,119-122} Bruce⁷³ indicates that the country’s debt rose from $20-billion with the start-up of the Zuma regime to more than $80-billion at the closing of the Zuma regime, with Ramaphosa as the vice-president. Bruce^73:22 posits that by 2021 the interest to be paid by South Africans on the country’s debt will average more than R850 million per working day. This reflects not only failure by the ANC regime in general up to 2018 but also failure by Ramaphosa as vice-president and second-in-command of the South African state. The state capture during the Zuma regime and the failure of Black farming projects and other government enterprises were often the direct result of corruption, fraud and theft from inside the ANC elite and not so much always the inabilities or irresponsibility of Black farmers. The question for the antagonists is how Ramaphosa can improve the crooked and failed political system? Their answer is that he can’t, he is a crippled political leader. Under Ramaphosa South Africa has gone into a technical recession and so far, besides his political and emotional rhetoric, nothing constructive has happened.^{3,82,111,119-122}
Ramaphosa’s⁴¹ naivety on the present recession is further reflected by his own emotional, foolish denial of its existence and seriousness when he said^41:4: “We should not be fearful and think we are in a recession. We are not.” The ANC has failed to create income for many years, and the government simply does not have the funds for land redistribution. This dire financial situation means that the ANC has to trade confiscated White land in exchange for votes to stay in power.^{3,82,109,111,119-122}
The political week of 11 to 18 November 2018, in the view of the antagonists, reflects the truth about the ongoing Zuma corruption inside the unpredictable Ramaphosa regime after Cyril Ramaphosa’s shocking admission that an amount of R500 000 was disclosed in parliament by DA leader Mmusi Maimane was in fact to help fund his campaign. It was not for work that his son Andile had done for the Bosasa logistics group (presently known as African Global Operations), which has been named as benefactor of several other high-profile ANC figures.¹²³ Qaanitah Hunter writes^123:1:

“President Cyril Ramaphosa’s ambitious drive to rescue the ANC and the country from the state-capture debacle is facing its sternest test yet. Today, the president has been forced onto the back foot after he admitted this week a R500,000 donations from the politically Watson family.”

This condemning situation must be read together with the under-mentioned series of condemning setbacks for his presidency, writes Hunter.^123:1-2
In this context Hunter¹²³ points out the shock resignation of finance minister Nhlanhla Nene after he was exposed as having lied about his visits to the Gupta compound, the resignation of Malusi Gigaba after the public protector found that he lied in court under oath, and the admission by public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan that he met the Gupta family. There was also a slew of bad economic markers indicating that Ramaphosa’s economic remedy to fix South Africa in any way is a failure.¹²³ Critics believe Ramaphosa knows about the donation and is not forthright when he responded by saying that he “just learn now of it”. DA leader Mmusi Maimane said^123:2 “…this was no different to how the Guptas captured individuals in the government,” while the leader of the EFF Julius Malema said^123:2: “Ramaphosa ‘must take full responsibility and admit that he lied to parliament, and he knows what happens to people who lie to parliament’”. The possibility that his presidency seems to be a short-lived one, is forcing him into irrational politics in an effort to outlive his enemies inside the ANC elite. This situation can make his future actions devastating, unpredictable and untrustworthy.^{3,82,111.119-123}
Ramaphosa’s⁴¹declaration^41:4: “…we are going to take land and when we take land we are going to take it without compensation’”, is not for the antagonists a myth or a lie, nor is it meaningless and aimless rhetoric. It is a hard fact, a final outcome and a guideline to understand Ramaphosa’s future extreme political intentions with Whites. His extreme decision has a momentum of its own, writes Corrigan^110:22: “…it is not going to stop and anyone believing that Ramaphosa is going to back off from his land grabbing intentions of White-land is in for a surprise”. The antagonists now have Ramafear, a fear to go on, even after the Ramaflop at the end.^110,124
The CEO of the Altron Group and a Yale World Fellow, Mteto Nyati¹²⁵, puts the confusion in which the current ANC finds itself under Cyril Ramaphosa into words when he reflects on the abilities of the leader Ramaphosa^125:9: “Everything but vision from Cyril”. Nyati¹²⁵ points out the role of land expropriation from Whites in this political and moral besetting of Ramaphosa and his arrogance and ignorance to publicly rebuke the US President Donald Trump for his comments on the land issue, when he writes^125:9: “…it was a strategy mistake on the president’s [Ramaphosa] part. We cannot talk about growth and ignore the US. Our national interests have to inform our choice of partners”, and: “The big threat to Ramaphosa’s turnaround strategy is the lack of a unifying and compelling vision. The vision that the president had was derailed by the land issue.”
For the antagonists the reality, which Nyati does not say, is that the ANC and Ramaphosa have a compelling vision: a vision that is based on live-long national Black radical liberation, one that cannot even be derailed by delinquency such as land grabbing and that makes it clear that South Africa does not belong to all who live in it.¹²⁵
The antagonists find closure in the words of Mthombothi¹²⁶ on Ramaphosa and his intimate ANC elites, when he concludes^126:14:

“When he speaks, the words often sound as though they come from an empty space, devoid of emotions. He drones”,

and:

“Ramaphosa does not have it in his locker. His words have to be respected simply because they carry the stamp of his office.”

The antagonists’ respect for him and his elite as good leaders is long gone.
Munusamy¹²⁷ helps to assure the antagonists that their disrespect (and fear) of the leadership of Ramaphosa and his cronies is correct when she posits^127:16:

SA’s sixth democratic poll is just six months away yet there is no coherent discourse about leadership and major national issues. Anti-corruption should have been Ramaphosa’s flagship campaign issue but there are concentrated efforts to discredit the clean-up of the state and undermine investigation into corruption. Journalists are branded enemies. There are hidden forces, including criminal syndicates, impacting on our politics. A surprise outcome in the elections is not far-fetched as we might think.

Cyril Ramaphosa is a willing but an inapt president. As PW Botha was unfit to be the king of the modern Zulus due to his White supremacist views, so Ramaphosa with his Black supremacist views is unfit to be president of modern South Africans. For the antagonists South Africa is caught in Ramaphosa dystopia.

4. Conclusions

The many perspectives of the antagonists on any change to Section 25 and their rejection of expropriation of land without market-related prices as described in articles 3 and 4 provide an overview of the political scenario of South Africa, especially for the period 1994 to 2019. The antagonists show how land expropriation is symptomatic of a gradual change in the ANC. It therefore forms, with the manifold other elements, a political unity, linking the land issue with the ANC’s political and economic management as it is primarily guided and steered by the aims of Black liberation and revolutionary politics. The antagonists see delinquent elements and role players that aim to make the political and socioeconomic system of South Africa dysfunctional.
When aiming to understand the aim and intentions of the ANC elite with their land expropriation without compensation, it is crucial to describe and to understand the post-1994 politics of South Africa. This approach was followed in putting forward the many perspectives of the antagonists. Some of their arguments are based on sound foundations while others are emotionally laden and lack depth. In the end, the antagonists want to make their case against land expropriation without compensation as strongly as possible in an effort to secure a win. From a critical vantage point it must be noted that in general the perspective of the antagonists is not representative of the total White or Afrikaner population, but mostly of the contingent of White farm- and land owners, White capitalist business groups with direct and indirect interests in agricultural economics, as well as self-appoints White “saviours and rescuers” that claim to fight unselfishly for the interests of the White farming community and for the Constitution and dispensation of 1994. The antagonists are a minority group, estimated to represent less than 10% of the White population which in reality is another minority group, more or less 8% of the total South African population. They do have immense financial influence and interest in the country’s present economics and politics and its private land ownership model. They feel threatened by and fearful of any socioeconomic and political change away from exclusive democratic-capitalism.
The antagonists know very well that they have reached a watershed in the South Africa political history. They have become easy prey for the radicals inside the ANC, not only for political disempowerment, but also to be robbed of all their assets. Louw gives guidance in this regard^6:175-176:

However, as said, criminal proceedings are not enough for many of the apartheid victims. Many of these victims want financial compensation from those who were directly involved in criminal actions, while others wish for compensation from the Afrikaner community and business sector as a whole as they have benefitted from favoured business deals, the many other interests and the jobs etc. that apartheid offered them. Prominent are certain Afrikaner and nationalist Afrikaner business leaders and magnates who benefitted greatly from the apartheid system. They were favoured for business deals, contracts and other benefits. The current battle regarding Radical Economic Transformation (RET), seen by many Blacks as the second leg (economic revolution) in continuation of the first leg of the 1994 dispensation (political revolution), are excellent indicators of the Black call for “pay-back” of White capital obtained from apartheid-incongruities.

For the antagonists the ANC is a politically bankrupt and dangerous political organisation. To say now, as some ANC elites do, like Vusi Mavimbela¹²⁸ [who worked previously as adviser to Thabo Mbeki, as director of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and as director-general in the first presidency of Jacob Zuma]^128:10: “The ANC delivered liberation. What happened subsequently is not what we wanted to see happening”, is a self-acquittal that can only be accepted from a derailed politician who lost his/her memory of the delinquent liberation and revolutionary energy unique to the ANC.¹²⁸ It was on this liberation ticket that the ANC came to power in 1994 and continuously committed corruption, theft and mismanagement. Mavimbela¹²⁸ himself admits the negative turn of the ANC in the Zuma days^128:10: “Corruption was institutionalized, state institutions were decimated and the ruling alliance brought to the brink”.
The antagonists’ objections against a change to Section 25 hold merit, making their case a strong and well-reasoned one. They believe that a total land grab is outside the reach of the ANC. The party lacks the judicial power, but their unpredictable governing since 1994 is a threat.^{18,72,129-137}
For the antagonists, the period 1994 to 2019 under the ANC regime has been a dark period of criminality, state capture, confused violence, thuggery and race-baiting. It is reminiscent of Apartheid, and it has a momentum that will not slow as long as the ANC is in power.^{126,127,138-149}
The antagonists have an unshakable belief that the general public and the parliament itself will reject any change to the Constitution or would not allow land grabbing from Whites. They also believe that the South African courts, including the Constitutional Court, will denounce any illegal and unconstitutional actions by the ANC that could lead a one-sided policy of land expropriation without full compensation. They base this on the recent failures of the ANC and their failure to do anything about the salvation of the poor. Both Julius Malema and Cyril Ramaphosa are political bluffs that will disappear from the country’s politics.^{138, 127,139-150}
The antagonists agree fully with Bruce¹⁵¹ when he describes this coming cleansing of the ANC from the South African politics, obliterating any remaining fears of land grabbing. He wrote on 16 December 2018^151:18:

But wait until Moyane gets arrested and tried, until Julius Malema, Floyd Shivambu and the ANC’s Danny Msiza and a host of others implicated in the looting of VBS Mutual Bank are arrested and tried. Wait until Ace Magashule, Supra Mahumapelo and perhaps even DD Mabuza and Malusi Gigaba and, yes, Bathabile [Dlamini], are arrested and tried for corruption. Wait until the Gupta brothers are extradited and tried. Wait until the whole slimy dough of corruption is unearthed and put on display before disappearing into jail cells around the country. Add Markus Jooste, Brian Molefe and Ben Ngubane to this list.

The antagonists see South Africa as just another failed “liberated” African country, experimenting time after time with failed “visions” and driven by failed leaders.¹⁵⁰
Mthombothi¹⁵⁰ describes the failed ANC leaders well and calls them to book for their political and criminal delinquency^150:17:

Africa is let down by its [Black] politicians. They’ve been an obstacle to its people’s progress. Whichever way one looks, whichever problem one may think of, whichever boulder or ditch that’s ever been a bar to its advancement, the politicians have in the main been responsible for it. They are the authors of our misfortune.
While Mandela sought a better and humane way for Africa, Thabo Mbeki, his successor, in his desire to be the spokesman for the continent and its diaspora, decided not to rock the boat. He turned a blind eye to its misconduct. And he would brook no criticism of its wrongdoings. One, however, suspects that he knew better.
Jacob Zuma had no time to either think or defend anybody else. He descended into some of worst corrupt practices of his fellow African leaders. And he dragged the country [South Africa] from the young and promising democracy that it was to one of probably the most corrupt countries on Earth. Quite an Achievement.
But it should begin with us: we should be brutally frank and intolerant of the misdeeds of our leaders.

The antagonists take this failed leadership of the present-day ANC, as identified by Mthombothi¹⁵⁰, back to the founding of the Union of South Africa in 1910 and the White rulers categorising Blacks one-hundred and eighteen years ago as too incompetent and uncivilised to run the country South Africa. Prominent is the dooming testimonies of two well-known White politicians and leaders of that time who attended the Cape Convention in 1908 to design and to establish the Union Act.⁷¹ The historian MS Geen, in his book, The Making of the Union of South Africa. A brief history: 1487–1939, reflects^{71: 54,60}:

1) General Christiaan de Wet of the Free State Colony^{71: 60}:
Providence has drawn the line between Black and White and we must make that clear to the Natives and not instil into their minds false ideas of equality. To his mind, the greatest kindness and the greatest justice the Convention could do to the Blacks were to inform them that they are unequal to Whites.
2) Sir Frederick Moor of the Natal Colony^71:54:
… White and Black races in South Africa could never be amalgamated. The history of the world proved that the Black man was incapable of civilization and the evidences were to be found throughout South Africa today. Almost every race in the world could point to its stages of civilization but what traces of Black civilization could South Africa produce though the Native people had been brought into contact with civilization for ages?…Sir Percy Fitz-Patrick has spoken of a test of civilization. What was a civilized man? Was it not a man who proved himself adaptable to a civilized community? The Native were incapable of civilization because they were incapable of sustained effort.

However inhumane these comments may seem within the modern context of human rights and political correctness, the events of the past year cause the antagonists to consider for a minute whether these persons were correct.⁷¹
The antagonists have two prominent questions at this stage:

1. Can the ANC regime really erase the remnants of the Black-White struggle by taking revenge by means of land grabbing from Whites, in the process perpetrating the same crimes as their own oppressors?
2. Can the ANC regime really better South Africa for all its people with land grabbing after they have mostly failed in every category of political, social and economic sphere from 1994 to 2018?

The pertinent question for an objective and seasoned judge will be if the arguments of the antagonists are well founded enough to be heard and to be considered. In considering this question, the counter arguments, opinions and viewpoints of the propagandists should first be considered.
The next two articles (5 and 6), titled: “The propagandists arguments, opinions and viewpoints on changing Section 25 (2)(b) of the South African Constitution to make land redistribution without compensation possible: Parts 1 and 2”, examines the perspectives of the propagandists and their efforts to turn the public’s sympathy to win the case for the ANC regime to change Section 25(2)(b) to implement a policy of land grabbing without compensation.

5. References

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28. Savides M. Home occupiers hit back at city over housing allocation. Sunday Times (News). 2018 July 15; p. 10.
29. Schreiber L. Zuma and Jesus aside, the future does not belong to the ANC. Sunday Times. 2018 Apr. 29; p. 17.
30. Bruce P. Integrity and boldness must be Ramaphosa’s strategy. Sunday Times. (Opinion), 2018 Apr 29; p. 16.
31. We have waited long enough for Ramaphosa to axe Mahumapelo. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 Apr. 29; p. 16.
32. Leon T. On expropriation, let’s not be glad to settle for half a loaf. Sunday Times. 2018 May 27; p. 18.
33. Malema J. Land restoration began five years ago with the birth of the EFF. Sunday Times. 2018 July 22; p. 3.
34. Fuzile B. Not yet the promised land for MK vets. Sunday Times (News). 2018 July 8: p. 6.
35. Collins F. ‘No vacant land in city is safe from occupation. Sunday Times (News). 2018 Apr. 1; p. 4.
36. Nombembe P. Cyril’s word seen as land grab go-ahead. Sunday Times (News). 2018 Apr. 1; p. 4.
37. Nair N. MK veterans arrested for South Coast house grab. Sunday Times (News). 2018 Apr. 1; p. 4.
38. Umraw A. True voice of the people on the land question is being drowned out by a politicachorus. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 Aug. 12; p. 18.
39. Jansen J. ‘Besetting gebeur net te glad en gou’. Rapport (Nuus). 2018 Aug. 5; p. 4.
40. Umraw A. State identifies farms for expropriation test cases. Sunday Times (News). 2018 Aug. 5; p. 4.
41. Nair N. Take us or leave us – Cyril on land reform. Sunday Times (News). 2018 Sept. 9; p. 4.
42. Cele S, Rooi J. 139 plase op ANC-lys. Rapport (Nuus). 2018 Aug. 5; p. 2.
43. Hleko TM. Insecurity of tenure hinders farm productivity. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 Aug. 26; p. 20.
44. Cele, and all the South Africans, must end this carte blanche for crime. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 May 20; p. 16.
45. Shocking revelations at Zondo inquiry must lead to prosecutions. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 Aug. 26; p. 20.
46. Looting a disgrace in the nation or neighbourhood. Sunday Times Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 Sept. 2; p. 24.
47. Child K, Masweneng K. ‘Risky-food’ hysteria fuels looting. Sunday Times (News). 2018 Sept. 2; p. 12.
48. Masweneng K. ‘Spoilt SA locals loot on any pretext’. Sunday Times (News). 2018 Sept. 2; p. 12.
49. Munusamy R. We are stuck with the same old problems because we are stuck with the same old leaders in the same old electoral system. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 Sept. 30; p. 22.
50. Jonas M. The work of saving democracy requires us to focus on the people, not the political party. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 Sept. 30; p. 22.
51. Mthomboth B. Mbeki’s intervention on land collides head-on with the direction of the new greed ANC. Sunday Times. 2018 Sept. 30; p. 21.
52. Tabane OJJ. Mbeki’s take on land is a necessary provocation. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 Oct. 7; p. 6.
53. Leon T. A sober, if small, voice amid the trumpeting herd. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 Sept. 30; p. 22.
54. Van der Walt S. ‘Gwede se perk is nie rasioneel’. Beeld. 2018 Aug. 16; p. 1.
55. Botha R. SA regering se gevry na China is ‘n verleentheid. Rapport (Sake). 2018 Sept. 23; p. 4.
56. Cyril’s stimulus can help our economy – and our sovereignty. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 Sept. 23; p. 20.
57. Galetti D. Mahlobo’s nuclear deal or Ramaphosa’s Deal: Let the delegates decide. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2017 Dec. 10; p. 22.
58. Van Zyl O. Grondhervorming in SA móét geprivatiseer word. Rapport (Weekliks). 2017 Dec. 24; pp. 8-9.
59. Bruce P. EFF’s Dr Charming pulls a fast one on TV. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 May 20; p. 16.
60. Speckman A. Little consumer relief in GDP data. Sunday Times (Business). 2018 Sept. 2; p. 3.
61. Tomlinson South Africa. Unie van Suid-Afrika. Samevatting van die verslag van die Kommissie vir die Sosio-Ekonomiese Ontwikkeling van die Bantoegebiede binne die Unie van Suid-Afrika. Pretoria: Government Press; 1955.
62. Joffe H. Urgency needed in fixing problems that fed into recession. Sunday Times (Business). 2018 Sept. 9; p. 2.
63. Barron C. Tread carefully on new land reform. Sunday Times (Business) 2018 Aug. 26; p. 9.
64. Makgoba T. Community needs, not politicians, should lead the redistribution debate. Sunday Times. 2018 Sept. 23; p. 21.
65. Hafffajee F. Judging the ‘Cyril effect’ after 100 days. Sunday Times (Business). 2018 May 27; p. 8.
66. Haffajee F. Who owns the land? It’s not all black and white, audits reveal. Sunday Times (Business). 2018 Aug. 12; p. 6.
67. Pelser W. EFF-steun verdubbel. Rapport. 2018 Sept. 23; pp. 1-2.
68. Derby R. Instead of swelling social grants, why not a basic income for all? Sunday Times (Business). 2018 Sept. 2; p. 2.
69. Speckman A. Debtors’ free pass is hard for creditors to swallow. Sunday Times (Business). 2018 Sept. 2; p. 10.
70. Govender S. Paying in blood for a shack to call home. Sunday Times (Insight). 2018 June 3; p. 14. .
71. Geen MS. The Making of the Union of South Africa. A brief history: 1487-1939. New York: Longmans and Green; 1947.
72. Bruce P. With Zuma reduced, Ramaphosa needs to get cooking. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 Apr.8, p. 18.
73. Ferguson N. The War of the World. London: Penguin; 2006.
74. Munusamy R. No further delay needed in bringing to book the state capture criminals who plundered with impunity. Sunday Times. 2018 May 27; p. 18.
75. Munusamy R. It’s a pity Ramaphosa’s “investment lions” can’t kill the destructive beast in his own party. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 Apr. 22; p. 22.
76. Mthombothi B. Gupta heist was an inside job, but the insiders are about to get away with it. Sunday Times. 2018 May 20; p. 17.
77. Mthombothi B. Cyril needs a bit more swagger and a bit less schmoozing to put Julius in his place. Sunday Times. 2018 Apr. 22; p. 21.
78. Derby R. Black business bears brunt of the excesses of ruinous Zuma era. Sunday Times. 2018 Apr. 29; p. 2.
79. Eisenberg G. A shadow regime has hijacked control of SA’s borders. Sunday Times. 2018 May 20; p. 17.
80. Nyatsumba K. Patience is key as Ramaphosa plays by the rules before ousting the lazy and corrupt. Sunday Times. 2018 May 27; p. 18.
81. Shoba S. Alarm in ANC over possible 2019 disaster. Sunday Times. 2018 May 13; p 4.
82. Mthombothi B. Ramaphosa has sacked most of the lickspittles but Zuma himself will be harder to banish. Sunday Times 2018 Mar. 25; p. 21.
83. Ramaphosa C. Dit is wat Cyril gesê het. Beeld (Nuus). 2017 Dec. 22; p. 6.
84. ANC finally wakes up to the fact its grip on power is slipping. Sunday Times. (Opinion). 2018 May 13; p.16.
85. Mokone T, Makinana A & Deklerk A. Cyril takes over North West. Sunday Times (News). 2018 May 13; p. 2.
86. Ramaphosa C. ANC will serve the people. The Star (Inside). 2017 Dec. 22; p. 15.
87. Steenhuisen J. The ANC certainly has a case to answer on state capture. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 Sept. 2; p. 24.
88. Maimane reasserting his leadership to steer his party on a new course. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 June 3; p. 16.
89. Mthombothi B. Jacob Zuma was no autocrat – the party went along with him on his looting spree. Sunday Times. 2018 Sept. 9; p. 21.
90. Bruce P. Careful moves as the endgame begins. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2017 Dec. 31; p. 12.
91. De Groot S. The politics of perspective and the power of dissent. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 Apr. 15; p. 16.
92. Tshabalala M. Beware, the snake myth be dead but these who share its secrets can still bite. Sunday Times. 2018 Jan. 7; p. 13.
93. Haffajee F. Gordhan’s Gornado shakes up public enterprises. Sunday Times. 2018 May 27; p. 2.
94. How leaks foiled the king’s gambit. Sunday Times (News). 2017 Dec. 31; p. 4.
95. Deklerk A, Hunter Q. ANC moves to keep Supra in post. Sunday Time. (News). 2018 Apr. 15; p. 4.
96. De Lange R. Nog taks wink vir SA se rykstes. Rapport (Sake). 2018 Apr. 15; p. 1.
97. Henderson R, Anetos P. Moyane to answer for SARS decay. Sunday Times (Business). 2018 May 6; p. 1.
98. Hunter Q. Youth brass rap Maine for Gupta ‘confession’. Sunday Times (News). 2018 Apr. 15; p. 4.
99. Modak AR. ANC stuck in Zuma syndrome. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 May 13; p. 16.
100. Munusamy R. The Guptas may be heading for the dock, but there is other like them lying in wait. Sunday Times (Opinion).2018 Jan. 21; p.18.
101. Pauw J. Now is the time to clean the spy agency rot. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 Apr. 22; p. 22.
102. Roodt D. Wat gedoen kan word aan ongelykheid in SA. Rapport. 2018 Apr. 29; p. 4.
103. Light is being shone in dark, festering places all over the country. Sunday Times. 2018 May 27; p. 16.
104. Chambers D, Jika T. SA set to put the moves on the Guptas. Sunday Times (News). 2017 Dec 31; p. 4.
105. Mthethwa B. State goes easy on Nklanda scapegoats. Sunday Times (News). 2018 Apr. 29; p. 2.
106. Buccus I. Only the Left can save us from crisis of EFF and Zuma populism. Sunday Times. 2018 Aug. 12; p. 17.
107. Speckman A. Business needs to wake up – and speak up. Sunday Times (Business) .2018 Aug. 12; p. 10.
108. Haffajee F. No more Mr Nice Guy, Cyril. Sunday Times (Business). 2018 July 15; p. 2.
109. Nyatsumba K. Ramaphosa reveals his thoughts in 1994. The Star (Inside). 2017 Dec. 22; p. 15.
110. Corrigan T. There’s madness in the land debate, but not in pointing out the risks. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 Aug. 26; p. 22.
111. Mthombothi B. Ramaphosa may have won the leadership battle but he’s lost the ideological one. Sunday Times. 2018 Mar. 11; p. 21.
112. Mthombothi B. Plot thickens as Mantashe’s involvement presents Ramaphosa with a challenge. Sunday Times. 2018 Sept. 23; p. 21.
113. 113.Tabane OJJ. Mbeki’s take on land is a necessary provocation. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 Oct. 7; p. 6.
114. Munusamy R. War drums in the political battlefields of Kwazulu-Natal will echo throughout the ANC and the country. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2017 Sept. 17; p. 22.
115. Matiwane Z. ANC’s predicament is to keep Zuma at arm’s length while embracing his supporters. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 July 29; p. 20.
116. Maughan K. Zuma hires top silks in spite of Cyril’s squeeze. Sunday Times (News). 2018 July 22; p. 4.
117. Mnguni L. ANC needs a political solution in KZN rather than a legal one. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2017 Sept. 17; p. 22.
118. Shoba S. Zuma’s hidden hand in ANC’s KwaZulu-Natal crisis. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2017 Sept. 17; p. 20.
119. Shoba S, Mthetwa B. Ramaphosa bends the knee to Zulu king on tense land issue. Sunday Times (News). 2018 July 2018; p. 4.
120. Cousins B. Your land rights may be trampled every day if you’re an ordinary black South African. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 Mar. 11; p. 22.
121. Is Ramaphosa willing to sacrifice our rights to the Zulu king’s blackmail? Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 July 8; p. 22.
122. Munusamy R. Amid high theatre and spectacular blunders, it’s up to the Zondo inquiry to gauge the full extent of the rot. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 Mar. 11; p. 22.
123. Hunter Q. Dodgy cash turns up heat on Cyril. Sunday Times. 2018 Nov. 18; pp. 1-2.
124. Kgosana C. ANC seeks China’s help to win votes. Sunday Times (News). 2018 July 29; p. 4.
125. Nyati M. Everything but vision from Cyril. Sunday Times. 2018 Nov. 11; p. 9.
126. Mthombothi B. When MPs treat parliament as a shebeen, Cyril must remind them where they are – and lead. Sunday Times. 2018 Nov. 11; p. 14.
127. Munusamy R. The misreading of Trump led to his reactionary regime…might the same happen in SA, where dark forces hover over politics? Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 Nov. 11; p. 16.
128. Kgosana C. The struggle and all that jazz. Sunday Times. 2018 Nov. 11; p. 10.
129. Tabane OJJ. Calling the ANC’s dangerous bluff on land reform. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 June 3; p. 18.
130. Deep in unbanked country, a sophisticated heist relies on political cover. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 Oct. 14; p. 20.
131. Munusamy R. Despite VBS scandal, Malema will continue to fill the leadership vacuum and concoct bogeymen. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 Oct. 14; p. 22.
132. Munusamy R, Kgosana C. NO, NO NENE! Sunday Times. 2018 Oct. 7; pp. 1-2.
133. Stadler H, Malherbe P, Essop P, Selebano B. EFF rooi in die gesig. Beeld. 2018 Oct. 12; p. 1.
134. Leon T. TV expropriation debate enters realm of Neverland. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 July 29; p. 20.
135. Joshua 11:14, 11:16 and 11. 23; pp. 325-326. In: Life Application Bible. The living Bible. Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers; 1988.
136. Bruce P. A better way to reach for the promised land. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 Mar. 4; p. 14.
137. Munusamy R. Cyril plays nice while Julius seizes moment to change game. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 Mar. 4; p. 16.
138. Derby R. ‘Sober’ ANC must step up if Cyril is to salvage SA’s fortunes. Sunday Times (Business). 2018 Nov. 4; p. 2.
139. Don’t confuse violent thuggery and race-baiting with vibrant politics. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 Nov. 11; p. 10.
140. Extreme measures for desperate times. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 Nov. 11; p. 14.
141. Gordhan P. How to rescue a state that been pillaged by the corrupt and greedy. Sunday Times. 2018 Oct. 28; p. 5.
142. Hunter Q. ‘Not ill’ but Mabuza in Russia on sick leave. Sunday Times. 2018 Nov. 11; p. 1.
143. Kgosana C. Big firearms to protect VBS looting kingpins. Sunday Times (News). 2018 Nov. 4; p. 6.
144. Kgosana C. Minister purges ‘slush fund’ spies. Sunday Times. 2018 Nov. 11; pp. 1, 4.
145. Kgosana C, Hunter Q. VBS looting: ANC got R2m. Sunday Times. 2018 Oct. 28; pp. 1-2.
146. Matiwane Z. Zuma cronies lobby against KZN chair. Sunday Times (News). 2018 Nov. 4; p. 4.
147. Mokone T. Maimane to move on Andile deal. Sunday Times. 2018 Nov. 11; p. 4.
148. Munusamy R. Bank honcho gloated over Treasury visit. Sunday Times. 2018 Oct. 28; pp. 1-2.
149. Naidoo L. Time for bold leadership to rid SA of the scourge of corruption. Sunday Times. 2018 Nov. 4; p. 21.
150. Mthombothi B. Africa is being betrayed by its leaders – now it’s up to us to hold them to account. Sunday Times. 2018 June 3; p. 17.
151. Bruce P. Due process, grinding slowly, will be exceedingly fine. Sunday Times (Opinion). 2018 Dec. 16; p. 18.
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.