Hi, welcome to my Poliseries: an exploration of the vision each parliamentary party has for South Africa’s future. The topic I explore in this regard is land reform. In this report, I discuss the United Democratic Movement (UDM); ANC’s half-bastard in that it was formed by ex-members of the ANC after they joined ‘forces’ with ex-members of the national party. Both sides, led by Bantu Holomisa and Roelf Meyer respectively, decided to form the UDM following a meeting between their parties [Bantu’s National Consultative Forum (NCF) and Roelf’s New Movement Process (NMP)] in 1997 during which matters of common interest e.g., strategy, time scale, policy and funding were ironed out.
Although consisting of ex-ANC members and led by Bantu Holomisa, the UDM is not your typical ‘black’ party – if it is at all. The National Party (or white interest) influence within it is easily discernible in the position it has taken on land reform: all expropriation is to be done with compensation, even for restitution purposes. Despite the divisive history (which the UDM acknowledges) upon which the land issue is founded, the UDM believes that, to learn from the past so as to not repeat it, South Africans must, now going forward, let go of it and focus on the future. This will involve upholding the constitution concerning individuals’ rights to land ownership. That is, to avoid the political conflicts inherent in a necessary confrontation with the truth: that Black people must be duly ‘compensated’ for past injustices, the past must be forgiven without being resolved, traumatically speaking. This, in the hope that future success in this regard will eventually cancel out and heal old wounds to render facing the truth unnecessary.
A black-led party that undermines the Black community’s trauma? A notion that brings into question the basis for the intercourse between the NCF and the NMP. Consider this: expropriation without compensation is meant to make right what is now wrong; to reset economic inequality to its natural default by giving back what was taken and redistributing that which was subsequently accumulated upon the gains of injustice. All forms of correction are painful and inconvenient, a pain necessary for progress truly sustainable and free from the past’s future threats. Any other form of progress will be short-lived as the unresolved past comes back to haunt it. The position on expropriation with compensation taken here echoes that of other, white, parties discussed before; this makes me feel like Bantu, having been the leader of this party since ‘97, is the original from which Mmusi Maimane, with respect to the DA, is a copy. Considering the UDM’s position as tantamount to dodging conflict by sweeping the truth under the rug, I think the very formation and future of the UDM, being based on a fundamentally false compromise, is respectively problematic and questionable, to say the least.
Alongside problems concerning corruption and the lack of efficiency of the land reform process in its current form, which it shares with many a party previously discussed, the UDM deems the politicising of this issue via unproductive, unending ideological debates that do not provide any practical solutions as another aggravating factor. Its practical solutions include protecting the land ownership of those who already own it and verifying the validity of claims for land by those who do not. Effectively, the status quo is to remain unchanged except for the promised increase in efficiency of the land reform process. The fundamental systemic and systematic inequality resultant from our history will not be resolved in any way direct to avoid conflict; rather the party pins its hope on implementing its Planned Sustainable Development programmes (its re-branding of the land reform process - PSD) to, effectively, propel the ‘evolution’/development of black people: the previously disadvantaged, to catch up with those previously and currently advantaged. The catching up of Black people in this way represents the literal healing of the communal trauma that is the developmental gap between them and currently advantaged races/social groups – at least as the party sees it.
“These constitutional provisions lay the foundation for equitable land ownership in South Africa that, with proper implementation, can heal the wounds of the past.”
The UDM aims to deliver this promised increase in efficiency using methods already noted by some of the other parties already discussed, including digitising the PSD for increased efficiency and instituting tighter management controls to curb corruption. Opening up the finance sector to include those previously excluded is another important piece of this puzzle; assuring land tenure via individual deeds of land ownership is key for this access to finance. Previously excluded landowners will, under the UDM government, be able to access financing using their deed of land ownership as collateral for the first time; that is, after the undeveloped areas in which they currently reside are first face-lifted by that government via infrastructure projects to imbue those deeds with value. In rural areas, said projects will focus on agricultural business development e.g., farming support services and related funding etc. similar to ideas posed by the DA whereas those in urban areas will focus more on housing (to be discussed further shortly) and more generalised business development.
With its focus on uniting all stakeholders to minimise the impact of necessary change on them, thereby mitigating political conflicts, the UDM’s please-everyone (as opposed to a ’benefit everyone’) approach, concerning land tenure in communal areas, aims to balance the interests of traditional leaders with those of their ‘subjects.’ Vertically integrating individual land tenure into communal tenure systems: that is, enabling those living on their chief’s land to put it up as collateral for their financial ambitions exclusive of those of the chief seems to me a tricky proposition at best. I imagine one of the terms/conditions under which traditional leaders may agree to such an arrangement as that involving them gaining, monetarily, from the said transaction between the individual land ‘owner’ and intermediate financial institution. A ‘traditional land tax’ so-to-speak over-and-above other already established taxes to be paid which, if I understand it correctly, increases costs hence risk for investors (financial institutions), making said transactions less competitive in the markets considering the comparative value of the collateral thus ‘returns’ either way. A less competitive return on investment which may price these new entrants to the financial markets, out of those markets.
The constitutional democracy, exemplified by UDM’s proposed Economic Indaba at which all stakeholders of South Africa’s winning future will convene, is the foundation upon which the structured debates around an economic development framework that will guide the party’s economic and public works policies will be held. A housing strategy is one amongst others respective to their areas of governance that will result from said policies but in this regard, although still to be deliberated at the indaba, the UDM promises to standardise a larger, serviced stand of allocated land upon which recipients will be expected to build their housing. They are to receive assistance from the UDM government by way of housing subsidies and ‘mobilised,’ that is, incentivised support from the financial markets e.g., investor tax breaks which would neutralise my competitiveness argument made earlier. Also, providing rental accommodation e.g., family units converted from hostels, I assume at below-market rates only to those not eligible for the other forms of support. A strategy that seems fit to eradicate poverty by integrating informal settlements/townships with urban areas. For this foundation to be strong thus sustainable, it cannot be enforced from above but must be enculturated by winning over the buy-in of all stakeholders.
Another party that seeks to build a future on fear – a fear of conflict, in this case, I would say ‘of confrontation.’ The current economic paradigm is no different to that which facilitated Apartheid; the latter overtly stratified society based on race upon which economic advantage was duly distributed; while the former inverts that dynamic by overtly classifying people on economic advantage with respect to employability, e.g. education, through which, more covertly, racial biases often filter further the distribution of economic advantage. Both paradigms fall under capitalism as shown by their dependence on inequality for their optimal performance. The UDM promises to maintain the current form of inequality albeit with a few tweaks here and there. It differentiates its socio-economic vision from the current one under the ANC based on these tweaks: accelerating the advancement of the disadvantaged so they end up ‘better off’ by making more efficient the process of delivering promises made to them. All-in-all, appease the disadvantaged, not by permanently uplifting them through structural economic change, but by making them more comfortable in their position as modern slaves.
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