President Donald Trump’s executive order on Friday offering to resettle Afrikaner “refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination” invites the question: Is there a violin small enough? White South Africans are roughly 20 times richer than black South Africans, on average, which in a way explains why AfriForum’s response to Trump was, “Thanks, but no thanks”.
Trump’s offer has, I suspect, a lot more to do with US domestic politics than a real desire to import Afrikaners, and that is visible in the last paragraph of the executive order, which says: “This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.”
Okay, so no promises then, even though apparently thousands are inquiring about the offer.
What the order does do is bring to the fore issues that are currently polarising both South Africans and Americans, highlighting the different approaches the respective governments are taking: not only is affirmative action ended in the US, there is now positively a war on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes.
For SA, the direction is the opposite. SA is busy intensifying BEE, which is moving on from what might be described as first-wave BEE to second- and third-wave BEE. The change the new US administration is bringing is pretty significant because at least, at an ideological level, SA’s affirmative action programmes did get some of their international credibility from previous US efforts. People around the world will be asking, “Since it didn’t work in the US, why are you persisting with it, given all the unintended consequences?”
Just to focus on farming, for example, I think it’s often assumed that the ANC’s land redistribution programme has failed because of the usual incompetence and theft associated with government intervention programmes. But it’s possible that the ANC has come up against something even more powerful than corruption: mathematics.
Just to recap, the numbers on land reform look something like this:
The total land area of South Africa is 122 million hectares and, in 1994, about 78 million hectares was owned by white farmers and about 15 million hectares was under communal ownership. Land restitution efforts have brought about 6.7 million hectares under black ownership, at the cost of about R22-billion. (Some estimates put it much higher than that: Anthea Jeffery in her book “BEE, Helping or Hurting?”suggests that way back in 2013 it was already R69-billion in real terms.)
Anyway, the influential piece by Stellenbosch University director of the Bureau for Economic Research, Johann Kirsten, and Senior Fellow at the university’s Department of Agricultural Economics, Wandile Sihlobo, estimates that, in addition, government land redistribution efforts account for about 7.55 million hectares.
Additionally, black people buying land commercially probably accounts for another 2 million hectares, although this could be much more because you are not required to record your race at the deeds office. Then there was the project called Proactive Land Acquisition Strategy (Plas) in which the government buys land and leases it to black farmers, with about 2.54 million hectares under that scheme.
The result is that about 25% of the original 78 million hectares has been transferred, which, you know, is not nothing. If you add the 6.7 million hectares of communally owned land, the majority of which is cultivated or partially cultivated, the proportion goes up a bit more.
The problem is, where do you go from here? There are only 36,000 commercial farmers in South Africa, who own more than 1,000 hectares of land (some own a lot more than 1,000 hectares by the way). Anyway, if SA adds another 25% of SA’s farm land to Plas or some other scheme and pays commercial rates, then by my calculations, it will cost around R85-billion.
That might be worth paying, but the thing ordinary people don’t always appreciate and economists do appreciate is that every government payment is a trade-off. That R85-billion might be worth paying, but it would massively reduce what SA could add to the education or health budget, for example.
There is another bit of maths: If SA were to spend that R85-billion, how many South Africans would actually gain? Let’s be generous and say a quarter of the existing commercial farmers would sell and move to the US – that would be roughly 9,000 people. Is it really worth benefiting 9,000 people, as opposed to doubling the access to healthcare for all users of government healthcare?
One last thing about land and maths, there is the exhaustively cited argument that whites “stole our land”. That might be a historical fact, but it’s also an actual fact that around 60% of SA farm land is currently debt financed. What that tells you is that the current generation of SA farmers generally bought their farms; they are not hand-me-downs from three centuries ago. But in some ways, and more importantly, if their land is rendered worthless by the state confiscating land without compensation, then what happens to the debt? Then there is a good chance you have a real financial crisis on your hands.
This is exactly how the Zimbabwean financial crisis meltdown began; it wasn’t just politicians arriving on farms tossing the white farmers off at gunpoint. The bigger problem, which hasn’t gone away 20 years later, was the consequent financial implications. This is something no politicians, Zimbabwean or South African, seem to even vaguely consider when they get carried away about land reform.
Here is another sad number. When the Financial and Fiscal Commission did a report on land reform in 2016, it found that many farms exhibited little to no agricultural activity, with significant decreases in crop production and employment. Numerically, crop production decreased by 79% since conversion to land reform, and job losses averaged 84% across surveyed provinces.
I actually live in a farming area, and I can’t tell you how aghast local farmers I have spoken to are when they see the disastrous results of a farming BEE effort gone wrong. Brand-new pumps lying idle, new pipes lying loosely around the place, tractors unused, all that kind of stuff. This is a conservative community and this level of waste in a community which is barely holding home and hearth together is just abominable to them. Farming is a complicated, difficult, tortuous effort, not least because it is not actually about land; it’s about water.
Here is another sad number. When the Financial and Fiscal Commission did a report on land reform in 2016, it found that many farms exhibited little to no agricultural activity, with significant decreases in crop production and employment. Numerically, crop production decreased by 79% since conversion to land reform, and job losses averaged 84% across surveyed provinces.
I actually live in a farming area, and I can’t tell you how aghast local farmers I have spoken to are when they see the disastrous results of a farming BEE effort gone wrong. Brand-new pumps lying idle, new pipes lying loosely around the place, tractors unused, all that kind of stuff. This is a conservative community and this level of waste in a community which is barely holding home and hearth together is just abominable to them. Farming is a complicated, difficult, tortuous effort, not least because it is not actually about land; it’s about water.
But you know, one lives and learns. In the Western Cape, a 2023 research report by Phuhlisani Solutions found that 83% of land reform farmers who received post-settlement support from the Western Cape Department of Agriculture considered themselves successful agri-businesses. What was the difference? The difference was effective extension services, training, financial support, and mentoring provided by the department and its industry partners.
Obviously in the early part of land reform, the department of land felt under pressure to do some actual land transfers, and it all happened too fast, and ended up a disaster. But later efforts have learnt from those mistakes. Did into the Phuhlisani report, and you see something interesting; the most successful farmers bought their farms with bank loans. They have skin in the game, they don’t only want to succeed, they need to succeed.
I have no doubt that ultimately SA’s land imbalance will be solved if embarked on with caution, effort and intelligence. As my podcast mate Mark Barnes says: “When you apply force to achieve an objective, and not persuasion, you end up with a fight and not a result”.
To the politicians, I would say this: Trump or no Trump, tread gently here – and do the maths. 💥
First published in Daily Maverick. Get Daily Maverick newsletters here:
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