South Africa

President Trump tweeted on August 22 that he has directed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to “closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures” and the “large scale killing of farmers.” In his tweet, the president quoted Fox News host Tucker Carlson that “South African government is now seizing land from white farmers.” Carlson had interviewed Marian Tupy, a senior policy analyst at a conservative Washington think tank, who recently penned an article calling on Trump to “warn South Africa on land expropriations,” comparing the new South African policy with that of Zimbabwe. Among a number of rebukes from South African media, civil society, and government, Deputy President Mabuza stated that, “as the leadership of the ANC and government, we are clear that the implementation of land reform measures must not result in social fractures and racial polarization.” The widespread killing of white farmers is a trope of AfriForum, a predominately Afrikaner organization opposed to land reform on the basis that it is a threat to South Africa’s white population. In June, an AfriForum delegation visited Washington, D.C., and met with, among others, think tanks, the office of Senator Ted Cruz, USAID, and appeared on Carlson’s show. However, the far more credible AgriSA, an industry group, indicates that farm murders are at a nineteen-year low. With respect to the land issue as well as the murder rate, statistics are generally poor. Nobody really knows how many white farmers there are, nor is there a consensus definition of "farmer" or "farm worker," which clouds the data. Furthermore, statistics as to the racial distribution of land ownership in South Africa are also in dispute. That being said, that white South Africans own a majority of land and account for an outsized proportion of economic activity is clear. There is a general consensus in South Africa on the need for land reform, but less over what it should look like. The governing African National Congress has called for constitutional amendments that could broaden or clarify the government’s current ability to expropriate land without compensation, which already exists in the constitution as it is. President Cyril Ramaphosa has stated that land reform will follow the rule of law, and that its implementation must not adversely affect economic growth or food security. The issue of land reform is being dealt with in a transparent political process now underway. Reform will likely incorporate both the “release” of public or tribal trust land for redistribution, as well as “expropriation” without compensation from private individuals.  For outsiders, the South African debate over land reform is distorted by the experience of Zimbabwe. The Mugabe regime expropriated without compensation private land using vigilante violence and ignoring the rule of law and the rulings of the judiciary. By contrast, South Africa is a constitutional democracy with a record of following the law. The constitution limits what parliament can do and acknowledges the right to private property. Whatever the outcome of the current political process, the results will likely be challenged in the courts, which have a history of standing up to the government. Its decisions cannot be ignored by the government. A recent example clearly illustrates the fundamental difference between South Africa and Zimbabwe. The political transition in South Africa from former President Jacob Zuma, accused of hundreds of counts of corruption, to current President Ramaphosa occurred within legal and constitutional bounds and even followed ANC party procedure. In Zimbabwe, by contrast, President Robert Mugabe was deposed by his deputy, Emmerson Mnangagwa, with the help of the military in a thinly-veiled coup. For the umpteenth time, South Africa is not Zimbabwe.  

On August 6, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board compared South Africa’s Ramaphosa government to the dictatorships in Venezuela and Zimbabwe and their seizure of private property. The focus of the editorial board's ire is proposals within the governing African National Congress (ANC) for constitutional changes that allegedly would facilitate the confiscation of land without compensation. This is an overstatement. The Ramaphosa government is not going down the Zimbabwe or Venezuelan path. More credibly, however, the Journal also attacks the oft-cited claim of those who support expropriation that blacks own a miniscule proportion of land in South Africa.  The ANC's proposed legislation would clarify the constitutional provisions that already provide for the government to take ownership of land, but not expand them. Ramaphosa and the ANC acknowledge that the constitution’s property clause already “enables the state to effect expropriation of land with just and equitable compensation and also expropriation without compensation in the public interest.” State President Cyril Ramaphosa had opposed a constitutional amendment as unnecessary. It is likely that the ANC has adopted the proposal for a constitutional amendment that will do little or nothing to outflank the left opposition Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) on the land question in the run-up to the 2019 national elections.  The EFF has become the third largest party in parliament largely because of its advocacy of “expropriation without compensation” of white wealth in general, farmland and mines specifically. Even so, it is easy to exaggerate the importance of the EFF because of the media attention it gets; it won only 6.35 percent of the total vote in the 2014 elections and 8.19 percent in 2016. This should also be seen as the context for the ANC’s statement that it has identified “139 farms” to be test cases for expropriation without compensation. But, such “test cases” would take years to work their way through the courts. Unlike Venezuela or Zimbabwe, South Africa is a constitutional democracy conducted according to the rule of law with a strong judiciary, civil society, and free press. Hence, Ramaphosa appears to be looking for other ways to increase black ownership of land. Up to now, ANC governments have allotted a miniscule percentage of the budget to land reform, reflecting the traditional urban base of the party and the reality of very rapid urbanization of the country. (The ANC’s base became predominately rural only during the Zuma administration.)  How much of South Africa’s surface is owned by which race is a largely meaningless question. Under apartheid, government-owned land was seen as “white-owned” Now, the government is non-racial. A significant percentage of South Africa’s land is held by tribal trusts, not by individuals. In effect, it is under the control of traditional tribal chiefs. As in the United States, big, commercial farms are increasingly owned by corporations rather than by individuals. In fact, the number of white farmers in South Africa is shrinking, even as the white population has grown by 6.8 percent since the 2001 census. The white percentage of South Africa’s total population continues to decline, largely because of a lower birthrate compared to other racial groups and migration from other African countries. The Journal cites the highly credible South Africa Institute of Race Relations’ (SAIIR) estimate that blacks “control” 30–50 percent of the land, and also correctly notes that where Africans were compensated for the loss of their land under apartheid, the overwhelming majority chose cash rather than land. If land reform would appear to be largely a red herring, why does it resonate among blacks? Part of the reason is the continued under performance of the South African economy and its slow recovery from the worldwide recession that began in 2008. Slow recovery has been exacerbated by the bad economic policies and the corruption, known as “state capture,” of the 2009–2018 Zuma administration. But, perhaps the most fundamental reason for the focus on “expropriation without compensation” is the intractable reality of black poverty. The social and economic realities for the black majority in South Africa have changed little since apartheid, while the gulf between white wealth and that of other racial groups has probably increased. The causes of black poverty range from the ongoing consequences of hundreds of years of exclusion of black Africans from much of the economy to the persistent failure of primary and secondary education for blacks since the end of apartheid. There are many other factors, including the fact that South Africa has eleven legal languages, and English—the language of the international economy—is the first language of less than 10 percent of the population. But, “expropriation without compensation” presents itself as a solution to poverty. That is a more attractive alternative explanation for poverty that more abstract discussions around economic policy or the shortcomings of the educational system.   

The centenary of the birthday of Nelson Mandela is on July 18, and the UN has therefore established it as “Mandela International Day” to commemorate the values of South Africa’s first “non-racial” president and his service to humanity. It is a major public holiday in South Africa. Among other celebrations, the Nelson Mandela Foundation sponsors an annual address. Former President Barack Obama will give this year’s address in the presence of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. The venue will be a Johannesburg stadium, with an audience of fifteen thousand expected. Nelson Mandela is associated with democracy, the rule of law, racial reconciliation, social justice, and an outward looking South African foreign policy that has a strong focus on human rights. Far from trying to hang on to power, he served only one term as president. However, some African radicals, notably Zimbabwean tyrant Robert Mugabe, have accused Mandela of “selling out” the country’s black majority to the white minority, thus preserving white economic privilege. President Obama is widely popular in South Africa though he faces criticism for not having devoted enough attention to Africa during his presidency. Mandela’s democratic values and the rule of law were severely tested during the presidential administration of Jacob Zuma, which lasted from 2009 to 2018. Zuma's administration was tarnished by accelerating public corruption, personal corruption scandals, and an authoritarian style of governance. Under Zuma, South Africa followed an increasingly inward looking forward policy with a greatly diminished focus on human rights. The former president is currently facing corruption charges in court. His son, a business associate of the notorious Gupta brothers, is now under arrest for corruption. The Guptas are widely accused of “state capture”—exercising undue influence over the Zuma administration—and are currently sought by the police. Cyril Ramaphosa, president of South Africa since January, was a close colleague of Nelson Mandela and regularly associates himself with the Mandela legacy, seeking to restore the late president’s values as South Africa’s lodestar. Domestically, overcoming corruption and cronyism is difficult and progress is slow. With respect to foreign policy, however, Ramaphosa appears to be moving quickly to reinstate Mandela’s values and to reassert South African leadership. Ramaphosa has successfully secured one of the “Africa” seats on the UN Security Council, and has already signaled that protection of human rights will be a theme. His foreign minister, Lindiwe Sislulu, is the daughter of Walter and Albertina Sisulu, two major icons of South Africa’s struggle for non-racial democracy. Ramaphosa was a close partner of Mandela. He was the leading negotiator for the African National Congress at the Congress for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA), the forum where South Africa’s transition to “non-racial democracy” was negotiated. He was also actively involved in framing South Africa’s constitution, which has among the most sweeping protections of human rights of any constitution in the world. Mandela privately wanted Ramaphosa to succeed him as president, but he deferred to ANC party cadres that supported Thabo Mbeki, who had been in exile during the anti-apartheid struggle. 

The highly credible Stockholm International Peace Research institute (SIPRI) has identified sixty-three multilateral peacekeeping operations throughout the world. Africa hosts the largest number, with twenty-five missions. For perspective, there were eighteen in Europe, nine in the Middle East, six in Asia, and five in the Western Hemisphere. African peacekeeping missions accounted for some 75 percent of all peacekeeping personnel, with African countries accounting for the majority of those troops. Either immediately or over time, almost all peacekeeping missions involve the UN Security Council. Furthermore, over 60 percent of all Security Council resolutions, beyond just peacekeeping, concerned Africa at one point. The predominance of African peacekeeping operations and Africa in general is a central argument among those who advocate for a permanent African seat on the Security Council. At present, the permanent members of the Security Council are China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, a roster that has not changed since the end of World War II. The “Permanent Five” each have the power to veto proposed Security Council actions. The other ten seats are allocated among regional blocs but without veto power. The African bloc is the largest and currently comprises Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, and Equatorial Guinea, but South Africa will replace Ethiopia in 2019.   It is fair to say that among politically aware Africans, support for a permanent African seat on the Security Council is nearly universal, as is, though to a lesser extent, support for the abolition of the veto as a step toward a reformed UN Security Council. However, Africans are by no means in agreement as to which African country should hold a permanent African seat. The two largest African economies, Nigeria and South Africa, are the leading contenders for the seat. But, were there to be a real prospect for an African permanent seat, other rivals would likely emerge. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov’s apparent expression of support for an African permanent seat produced some African excitement. From time to time, other political figures from the Permanent Five have paid lip service to a Security Council reform agenda that could include a permanent African seat. However, in general, the Permanent Five appear to be dead set against the diminution of their power within the UN system that would almost certainly result from Security Council reform.  

The African National Congress (ANC) has governed South Africa since the inauguration of Nelson Mandela in 1994, which formally brought about an end to apartheid. It supported and actively participated in the drafting of the 1996 constitution, which included some of the most sweeping human rights provisions in the world. Based on that constitution, the independent South African judiciary has, among other things, eliminated capital punishment and sanctioned gay marriage. The constitution also has sweeping provisions against discrimination based on race, gender, or religion. The ANC has a long history of strongly supporting gender equality, and many ANC ministers have been women. In the 2017 race for the party leadership, a leading candidate was Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma. Though defeated by Cyril Ramaphosa, her gender was a source of political strength for many party delegates who believed it was time for a female party leader and, ultimately, chief of state. The constitution is largely sacrosanct in urban, modern South Africa, but this is less true in rural areas, which are often still dominated by traditional rulers and ethnic customs. Discrimination against women is widespread, allegedly sanctioned by traditional custom and contrary to the letter and the spirit of the constitution. The clash between the modern and the traditional is illustrated by the “reed dance.” Performed by “maidens” in the semi-nude, it is a widespread custom among the Ndebele people, including Xhosas and Zulus, in southern Africa. It is perhaps best known in Swaziland, where the king chooses a new wife every year—he now has fourteen—following the annual reed dance (pictured). Reed dance performances often attract tourists and are seen as folkloric. In South Africa’s Eastern Cape province, the New York Times reported on a reed dance performance organized by a choirmaster in celebration of “Xhosa tradition” that went viral on social media. According to the choirmaster, it was to celebrate “Xhosa heritage.” (The Xhosas are the second largest ethnic group in South Africa, after the Zulus, and are the majority in the Eastern Cape.)  The minister of basic education, Angie Motshekga, has publicly denounced the performance. She characterized the performance as “completely inappropriate” and that teachers “should know better than to expose teenage girls to this form of exploitation.” She went on: “There is absolutely nothing wrong with being proud of your culture and heritage. But there was absolutely no need for these children to perform completely naked. That indignity goes against the values of our culture.” (According to the New York Times, the performers wore small aprons.)  Motshekga has been minister of basic education since 2009. She has agitated for more resources for rural schools and for basic female education. She seeks the introduction of the compulsory study of history as part of the curriculum. But she is also the public face of the poor quality of South African primary education, especially in the rural areas and for the black majority more generally. She holds multiple university degrees, including from the highly prestigious University of the Witswatersrand (“Wits”) where she was also a lecturer. She is from Soweto, outside of Johannesburg, and is a veteran of the struggle against apartheid. Like many urban South Africans, she mentions no ethnic affiliation in her standard biographic notes. It is no surprise that she would oppose a “traditional” ceremony that demeans women. She is a former president of the powerful ANC Womens League (ANCWL), and former President Jacob Zuma appointed her to her current post. The controversial Zuma was chief of state from 2009 to 2018. Especially toward the end of his tenure, when criticism of his crony style of government became widespread in the country’s major cities, Zuma turned to rural areas for political support. He often participated in Zulu traditional ceremonies, including reed dances. As early as 2015, Motshekga’s husband, an ANC member of parliament, called on Zuma to step down. In the 2017 ANC party convention, Motshekga broke with the ANCWL and supported Ramaphosa, rather than Dlamini-Zuma, who was Jacob Zuma’s preferred candidate (and former wife). Ramaphosa was an architect of South Africa’s constitution and in style, he is a modern, attractive figure. He is unlikely to be as sympathetic to South African traditional rulers and their customs as Zuma. 

A devastating drought that has placed severe restrictions on water usage in South Africa—particularly in the Western Cape province, its capital Cape Town, and the neighboring Northern Cape—has captured U.S. attention. There are several reasons for this, among them the fact that Americans are more familiar with South Africa than with other parts of Africa due to tourism as well as business and cultural links. The drought also is evidence of the deleterious effects of climate change. With regard to climate change, Cape Town is almost a dress rehearsal for what rapidly growing American cities in the Sun Belt, such as Los Angeles or Phoenix, could face in the future. In 2017, Western Cape Premier Helen Zille declared her province a disaster area because of the drought. In March, the ruling African National Congress’ minister for cooperative governance, Zweli Mkhize, declared a national state of emergency. However, with the arrival of winter rains, Mkhize decided not to renew the state of emergency when it expired on June 13. The weather is finally improving. In May, South Africa’s late autumn, more cold fronts than usual pushed across the Western Cape, bringing rain. The South African Weather Service expects “slightly above normal” rainfall this winter season. Water levels in dams around Cape Town are also improving. In early June they were at 32.1 percent of normal capacity, compared to 29.8 percent the week before and 20.9 percent a year earlier. The largest dam in Western Cape, Theewaterskloof, is at 21.5 percent of capacity. Weather experts caution that the welcome rain has not officially broken the long drought. According to the National Drought Coordinating Committee, however, the acute phase of the drought in Western, Eastern, and Northern Cape has ended. It suggested the region is now entering a “resilience building” phase, where officials will focus on adapting to water scarcity exacerbated by climate change. Like the Los Angeles and Phoenix metropolitan areas, Cape Town’s population has been growing steadily over the past decade and a half, adding over a million people from 2001 to 2016 to reach just over four million. The city is wealthy, with a per capita income close to $16,000, and there has been improvement in the quality of township housing, albeit from a low base. However, the city’s water use has increased as precipitation levels have decreased—this is the new reality to which Cape Town, and many other cities around the world, will need to build “resilience.”

South Africa has the most extensive legal protection of human rights of any country in Africa, and more than most other parts of the world. Those protections include gay rights. A recent episode provides an example of how the South African constitutional, judicial, and legal system works against discrimination and hate speech. It also demonstrates that there are boundaries to the use of religion as a defense against discriminatory language, even if the extent of such limits are still unknown.  Section nine of South Africa’s constitution guarantees equal rights to all South Africans and outlaws discrimination, including that based on ethnicity, gender, religion, as well as sexual preference. Pursuant to that provision, Parliament passed the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act (PEPUDA) in 2000. In turn, PEPUDA led to the creation of Equality Courts to adjudicate infringements of equality such as unfair discrimination and hate speech. In 2013, the South Africa Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), an independent agency with jurisdiction derived from the constitution that monitors human rights complaints, laid a complaint before an Equality Court. It alleged that a pastor in Cape Town named Oscar Bougardt engaged in hate speech against the LGBT community. The case was ultimately resolved through arbitration. Under its terms, the pastor signed an agreement in which he acknowledged, among other things, that his words were “likely to encourage hatred and cause emotional, psychological and physical harm to members of this [gay and lesbian] community.” He promised to refrain from making such statements in the future.  Nevertheless, he continued to do so. For example, in 2015 following the report that the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria had executed nine men and a boy for homosexuality, Bougardt commented online that, “we need ISIS to come to countries that are homosexual friendly. ISIS please come rid South Africa of the homosexual curse.” In response, the SAHRC asked the Equality Court to hold Bougardt in contempt of court for violating the 2013 agreement. While Bougardt did not deny the statements attributed to him, he did deny having invited ISIS to come to South Africa or that he was encouraging violence against gays and lesbians. Instead, he claimed that he was expressing his constitutionally protected religious views. In May 2018, the Equality Court found that Bougardt violated the agreement he had signed in 2013 and that he had failed to show how freedom of religion protected his comments. When the Court began to consider an appropriate punishment, Bougardt promised to refrain from online comments about gays and lesbians, to apologize to gays and lesbians, and to end his relationship with an American pastor, Steven Anderson, known for his homophobic preaching. The judge ultimately sentenced Bougardt to thirty days of imprisonment, along with five years of suspension. Despite the case against Bougardt, the South African courts have not addressed the broader question of whether religious views can be a defense against charges of discrimination against LGBT persons. However, this Equality Court judgement sets a precedent, increasing the likelihood that such a claim will fail. 

In parts of Africa where governments are weak, corrupt, and lack popular legitimacy, individuals seek to avoid paying their taxes. Motivation for tax non-payment ranges from being a form of protest to there being a government with little or no ability to enforce penalties. Instead of taxes paid by individuals, states often rely on revenue that is easy to collect, such as customs and excise duties, sales taxes, and from taxes owed by big corporations that are engaged in extractive industries, often in partnerships with the government. The general willingness of people to pay individual taxes is a useful marker of the perceived legitimacy of a government and the state. In apartheid South Africa, few non-whites paid taxes, other than value added taxes (VAT), a form of sales tax that falls disproportionately on the poor. Similarly, in the townships there was an unwillingness to pay electric and other utility bills. Then again, few outside of a portion of the white minority perceived apartheid South Africa as a legitimate state. After the 1994 transition to “non-racial” democracy and the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as president, the popular legitimacy of the South African state dramatically improved among all racial groups. So, too, did compliance with tax law. According to a recent article by the New York Times, post-apartheid tax collections rose year after year, “eventually surpassing some benchmarks in much richer, more established democracies, including the United States.” The Times, citing government statistics, reports that the number of South Africans paying taxes quadrupled between 1994 and 2010, and the post-apartheid South African Revenue Service (SARS) won international praise. Because income distribution in South Africa is probably the most unequal in the world, with whites much wealthier than blacks, personal income tax is mostly paid by the wealthiest one percent of the population, which is largely white. During Jacob Zuma's presidency between 2009 and 2018, particularly during his second term, scandal and corruption deeply damaged the image and capacity of SARS and its parent agency, the National Treasury. Critics credibly accuse Zuma of seeking to destroy the independence of both institutions to facilitate his personal corruption, that of his family, and that of his cronies, notably the Gupta brothers. The latter are of South Asian origin and business partners of at least one of his children. The Times reports extensively on Zuma’s personal waffling on the payment of his own taxes. Zuma allegedly fired well-respected leaders of both agencies and replaced them with political allies and cronies. The Times reports wholesale exodus of career civil servants and their expertise. The scandal eventually involved—and tarnished—institutions ranging from the Sunday Times (the newspaper with the largest circulation in South Africa) to the international accounting firm KPMG. International confidence in South African financial institutions eroded, the value of the Rand against the dollar fell, and South Africa’s credit rating dropped. The scandal is still playing out in court. The legal and financial issues are highly complex and may be difficult to follow for South African voters, who go to the polls in 2019. The governing African National Congress (ANC) rid itself of Zuma as party leader in December 2017, and Cyril Ramaphosa, the new leader, maneuvered Zuma out of the state presidency in February 2018. The ANC, some of whose leaders were thoroughly complicit with the assault on SARS and the Treasury, concluded that Zuma was too great an electoral liability because of his association with corruption. Ramaphosa has set about trying to restore the credibility of SARS, the Treasury, and other institutions of government. However, Zuma and his allies remain powerful within the ANC, and Ramaphosa can move only with care. There are signs that South Africans are reverting to not paying their taxes. The Treasury estimates that half of the revenue shortfall in 2017 resulted from personal income taxes that the government had budgeted for but were not paid. The shortfall is compelling Ramaphosa to raise the VAT. The question must be whether South Africans are losing confidence in their government, and whether Ramaphosa can restore it. It is encouraging that Zuma is now being tried in a South African court on personal corruption charges.

Tyler McBrien is a research associate for education at the Council on Foreign Relations. The land reform debate in South Africa has recently reached a fever pitch following parliament’s passage of a motion that opens the door for land expropriation without compensation through a constitutional amendment. Much of the country’s right wing, notably Afrikaans-speaking white descendants of early Dutch settlers known as Afrikaners, have mobilized against the February motion.  Parliament's actions come on the heels of growing discontent over the extreme disparity in wealth between white and black South Africans, which remains virtually unchanged two decades after apartheid. Land ownership, though only part of the poverty story, has emerged as a potent symbol of this racial inequality. Called South Africa’s “original sin” by President Cyril Ramaphosa, the dispossession of black-owned land and continued disproportionate white ownership features prominently in policy agendas and newspapers alike. AfriForum, a self-described Afrikaner rights group, has positioned itself as an especially vocal critic of land expropriation, which the group views as an existential threat to white South Africans. In their campaign against expropriation without compensation, AfriForum has launched appeals abroad, raising the specter of the murder of white farmers and stoking fears of “white genocide” among American, European, and Australian leaders and media outlets.  AfriForum can be convincing. On their trip to Washington, DC, in May, AfriForum heads Kallie Kriel and Ernst Roets visited, among other people and places, the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank. Following their visit, one senior policy analyst concluded that the “explicitly racist” policies of the current South African government echoed those under apartheid. Thousands have petitioned President Donald Trump to accept white South Africans as refugees to the United States. Australia’s home affairs minister urged his government to issue emergency visas to white farmers who needed protection from a “civilized country.” AfriForum’s activism has led to headlines like Newsweek’s “A White Farmer is Killed Every Five Days in South Africa and Authorities Do Nothing About It, Activists Say” and a Fox News segment that was accompanied by “White farmers are being brutally murdered in South Africa for their land. And no one is brave enough to talk about it.”  Due to unreliable or unavailable data, calculating the farm murder rate is a tricky business, and ascribing a racial motivation even trickier. Nevertheless, AfriForum regularly presents a misleading narrative and ignores data that undermines their claims. Numerous fact-checkers have explained in detail why their numbers do not tell the whole story. Caveats to the data notwithstanding, and though horrific farm murders do happen, a recent report based on police statistics, original research, and media reports from AgriSA, a South African agricultural industry association, found that farm murders are at a twenty-year low. Even beyond their spread of questionable statistics, AfriForum members routinely engage in apparent apartheid revisionism. Its leaders have argued apartheid was not a crime against humanity and have defended apartheid symbols. Despite AfriForum’s almost three-hundred-thousand-strong membership and self-portrayal as a civil rights organization, U.S. policymakers and foreign governments in general would do well to be cautious of AfriForum’s characterization of the “plight” of white South Africans.

The Trump administration’s foreign policy moves with respect to Iran and Jerusalem can have consequences, perhaps unintended, for U.S. bilateral relations elsewhere. John Stremlau, an American academic based at South Africa’s prestigious University of the Witswatersrand (“Wits”) in Johannesburg, has published an article on the impact of Trump’s foreign policy on South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s efforts to repair the damage to his country’s governance by former President Jacob Zuma. He argues that the U.S.-South African bilateral relationship is likely to deteriorate further. Stremlau cites South African resentment of U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley’s statement that countries that do not support U.S. policies at the UN will somehow be punished. In 2017, South Africa voted with the United States only 18 percent of time. From Ambassador Haley’s perspective, the South African record is among the ten “worst.” President Ramaphosa has also publicly opposed the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement, and he is pursuing stronger economic ties to Iran that are likely to collide with new U.S. sanctions there. With respect to the U.S. move of its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the Ramaphosa government has recalled its ambassador to Israel over the killing of Palestinian protesters in Gaza by Israeli security forces. Stremlau also points out that South Africa is likely to take one of the “African” seats on the UN Security Council at the upcoming session. Stremlau is calling on the many “entrenched networks” of cooperation between the United States and South Africa to “shield South Africa from Trump’s bullying.”  According to Stremlau, the bilateral relationship faces a rocky road ahead. Under President Zuma, the relationship was no better than “correct,” despite protests by both sides that it was friendly and warm. Ramaphosa is a businessman and one of the architects of South Africa’s “non-racial” democracy. Many of South Africa’s American friends had hoped that there would be a reset in the bilateral relations once Ramaphosa was in office. That appears unlikely for the time being. While on the UN Security Council, South Africa is likely to adopt positions on issues ranging from Iran to Palestine and Israel that will be opposed by the Trump administration. There are also tariff and trade issues that will set back the relationship.

Much of the current conversation in South Africa around black poverty links it to the disproportionate white ownership of the commercial agricultural sector. Simply put, the narrative within the governing African National Congress (ANC), the radical Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), and many others, is that enduring black poverty is a result of the white domination of land ownership, itself the result of colonialism and apartheid. The EFF’s Julius Malema and the ANC’s Jacob Zuma highlighted that the disproportionate ownership of the land by white South Africans was an historic injustice and its perpetuation a moral outrage. Indeed, much of the public conversation about land ownership is conducted in moral, rather than economic terms. However, if the goal is the reduction of poverty, there should be more focus on education and labor policy and less on land reform, which is increasingly irrelevant to most South Africans. About half of South Africa’s population is poor by most standard measurements, and the poverty rate is not decreasing. Most, but not all, of the poor are part of the 90 percent of the population that is black or "coloured," while the white minority of 9 percent by and large enjoys a standard of living comparable to that of the developed economies of eastern Europe. South Africa’s Gini coefficient, a standard measure of inequality, is among the highest in the world.  Certainly white ownership of most of the productive land shaped the modern history of South Africa, just as the potato famine shaped modern Ireland, the highland clearances modern Scotland, and the forced expulsion of Native Americans the westward expansion of the United States. In the twenty-first century, however, white land ownership would seem to be increasingly marginal as a cause of black poverty. South Africa is predominately an industrial, information, and market-driven economy. The country is already about 60 percent urban and urbanizing rapidly. Few who migrate from rural to urban areas appear to wish to return to the land. In fact, most of those indemnified by the post-apartheid state for the seizure of their land under apartheid opted for a cash payment rather than the land itself. Experiences elsewhere show that the establishment of small holders through land reform requires the state to provide significant technical and financial support if they are to succeed, which successive post-apartheid South African governments have been unable or unwilling to do. Furthermore, while both Zuma, Malema (ironically fierce personal enemies), and like-minded politicians have sought to build political support by advocating “expropriation of land without compensation,” it is not clear that there is still substantial demand for such a change in the rural areas. There is, however, demand for security of tenure from black farmers, especially those working in tribal trust areas where fee-simple ownership of land is absent. Moreover, there is real land hunger in urban and suburban areas, where new arrivals from rural areas too often find land unavailable, resulting in squatter settlements in which residents have little security of tenure. Much of the political discourse surrounding the subject is largely irrelevant to  the kind of land reform demanded by much of the public. There appears to be a correlation between poverty and unemployment. The country’s unemployment rate is usually estimated to be around 25 percent, rising to 50 percent among males in the townships. Female unemployment in rural areas is similarly very high. Meanwhile, potential employers complain about a shortage of workers. Unemployment is exacerbated by the failure of the educational system to prepare students to participate in the modern economy. The issue is not government funding—in some years, South Africa spends up to 25 percent of the government’s budget on education. Rather, education innovation and reform is held hostage by the political power within the ANC of the teachers unions, poor teacher training and discipline, and the multiplicity (eleven) of legal languages, among others. English—the international language of business—is the first language of only 9 percent of the population, and they are mostly white. Elementary education of black children is too often is in African languages or Afrikaans rather than in English. South African labor policy has long favored a high-skilled, high-wage work force. That approach is strongly supported by organized labor, an important part of the ANC’s electoral base. Unsurprisingly, a large percentage of the unemployed and the poor are unskilled because the economy has too few low-skilled and low-wage opportunities, and there is little space for organized labor in that respect. The bottom line is that, in order to address the drivers of poverty in a meaningful way, there should be more focus on education and labor policy and less on the distraction of land reform. 

In response to the U.S. State Department’s annual report to Congress on member voting practices in various UN venues, Nikki Haley, U.S. Ambassador to the UN, has likely set back efforts to improve the U.S.-South African bilateral relationship, not to mention countless others. Ambassador Haley seems to be saying that if a country consistently votes against the United States in the UN, its bilateral U.S. assistance will be in jeopardy.  The report has been prepared annually since 1984. This year, it concludes that other UN member countries voted with the United States an average of 31 percent. This represents a drop of 10 percent since Donald Trump became president, likely reflecting the international unpopularity of the administration’s “America first” foreign policy.  Ambassador Haley is running a transactional riff on the data. She states that the United States pays 22 percent of the UN’s costs and that therefore, the 31 percent of the UN’s membership that votes with the United States “is not an acceptable return on our investment.” After the report’s release, Ambassador Haley said, “President Trump wants to ensure that our foreign assistance dollars always serve American interests, and we look forward to helping him see that he American people are no longer taken for granted.” In December 2017, shortly before the UN General Assembly voted against the United States with respect to the Trump administration’s decision to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Ambassador Haley warned that she would be “taking names” of countries that voted against the administration. The UN Voting Practices report, now published, makes that easy to do.  It identifies those countries that were least likely to vote with the United States. In order, they are: Zimbabwe, Burundi, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, North Korea, Turkmenistan, Cuba, Bolivia, and South Africa. Threat’s by Trump and Haley aside, South Africa finds itself in bad company, a reality that should give many South Africans pause. Every other country on the list is to a greater or lesser extent a tyranny, which South Africa (and Bolivia) emphatically is not. Of course, South Africa does not set out deliberately to thwart the United States in its UN votes, even if some South African politicians might wish to. Rather, South Africa’s votes reflect the policies and goals of a democratically elected government in Pretoria at a particular moment in time on a particular issue. South Africa is the only multiracial country in sub-Saharan Africa and it has the continent’s most developed economy. It is a multiparty democracy conducted according to the rule of law and with among the most developed guarantees of human rights in the world—it is the only African country to permit gay marriage, for example.  There are myriad ties between the United States and South Africa involving civil society, academia, and a plethora of other human endeavors, but with respect to the official relationship, spokespersons on both sides are careful. They use words like “cordial,” diplomatic shorthand for “cool,” while insisting with little credibility that the bilateral relationship is good. The reality is that the official, bilateral relationship is not warm or close. This is mostly the result of history, unrealistic expectations on both sides, and the personalities of their past and present leaders. These deeper issues often exacerbate smaller questions, such as South Africa’s eligibility to take part in African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), an arrangement that provides participants with nearly unfettered access to the American market. The foreign policies of South Africa and the United States are also often out of synch because of different goals. For example, the South African government strongly objected to the NATO operation in Libya that led to the demise of tyrant and dictator, Muammar al-Qaddafi.  Nevertheless, the emergence of pro-business Cyril Ramaphosa as chief of state in January 2018 raised the possibility of improving the bilateral relationship. In fact, irrespective of veiled American threats to cut assistance to South Africa, Zuma's ouster alone could very well result in significant change to South Africa’s UN voting behavior. However, Ramaphosa has not reached out to the Trump administration, at least publicly, and Trump has not yet appointed an ambassador in Pretoria.  Altogether, the United States provides less than $500 million in assistance to South Africa, mostly to the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR), a few other health programs, and small amounts of assistance to basic education and small enterprises. The amount is not large, and South Africa has been assuming a larger share of the costs of PEPFAR. Despite Ambassador Haley’s saber rattling, it would be difficult for the administration to cut drastically PEPFAR assistance; the American public would not respond well to pictures of South African children dying because they lost access to antiretroviral drugs. Serious cuts to U.S. bilateral assistance to South Africa are therefore unlikely. Nevertheless, South Africans are likely to resent deeply the Trump administration’s rhetoric holding bilateral assistance hostage to votes in the UN. For a government that is a descendant of an anti-apartheid and “anti-colonialism” liberation movement, the Trump administration’s threats have more than a whiff of neo-imperialism about them. If Ramaphosa does want a better official relationship with the United States, which he likely does, Trump’s transactional approach to UN voting makes it more difficult for him to muster public opinion within his party but also among the larger South African public.   

South Africa became a “non-racial” democracy in 1994, twenty-three years ago. Nelson Mandela, who has always firmly been identified with the African National Congress (ANC) and the end of apartheid, died five years ago in 2013. Winnie Mandela, his wife during his imprisonment and the transition to non-racial democracy (he was married three times), died this year. She was a radical activist in her own right and was for many in the liberation movement the “Mother of the Nation.” Shortly before her death, Cyril Ramaphosa became the ANC leader and then chief of state. His ascension to power came in the wake of the quasi-criminal ANC administration of President Jacob Zuma, which lasted from 2009 to 2018. Together, the juxtaposition of Ramaphosa’s pro-business presidency with the death of the Winnie Mandela and the prospect of national elections in 2019 are encouraging some opinion leaders and others on the left to question the Mandela legacy with a new vigor. Zuma’s corrupt administration has also contributed to the declining prestige of the ANC and, by extension, Mandela. Since 1994, formal apartheid structures have been dismantled. The ANC government sponsored the construction of more than three million houses and put in place a safety net for the very poor. For the first decade or so, rates of economic growth were respectable, but over the past decade, the country has still not completely recovered from the worldwide recession of 2008-2009. For almost twenty years, economic growth fostered by government policy based on the “Washington consensus” of a free-market economy promised to be the tide that would lift all boats. Confidence in that system is waning, however, and can no longer be taken for granted. The persistence of black poverty highlights that there has been little fundamental social transformation, even if the material conditions of the black majority has improved. Access to education and health services among black South Africans remains poor, and, according to the 2013 South Africa Survey, blacks on average live sixteen years less than whites did in 2010. Most of the white minority live as pleasantly as they would in the developed world, while black South Africans, 80 percent of the country, live as they would elsewhere in Africa, with only a few exceptions. South Africa’s Gini coefficient—a measure of inequality—is by some accounts the worst in the world. Almost from the beginning, critics accused Mandela of “selling out” to the whites in 1994, whereby the latter could retain their wealth and control of the economy in exchange for ceding political power to the black majority. Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe bitterly resented his replacement by Mandela as the African liberation icon and increasingly berated him over continued white privilege. Mugabe also supported financially Julius Malema and his Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), who broke off from the ANC and called for a radical restructuring of South Africa’s economy and society, including expropriation without compensation of white property. Winnie Mandela’s death led to an outpouring of affection and nostalgia for a figure associated with black power and justice for the poor (and credibly accused of being a murderess), similar to Julius Malema and his EFF party. Nelson Mandela, on the other hand, is associated with democracy and racial reconciliation. In the wake of Winnie’s death, commentators on the left and advocates for black power are now openly challenging the compromise made by Nelson Mandela because of the persistence of gross inequality and poverty largely defined by race. As I argued last week, these critics tend to overestimate the strength of Nelson's leverage at the time and overlook the role cronyism and corruption has since played in exacerbating racial disparities.  

Each year, Reporters Without Borders (RWB) publishes a list of 180 countries rank-ordered according to the degree of freedom the media enjoys. RWB uses objective criteria, which it outlines on its website. It cautions that it is measuring media freedom, not media quality. Its list is divided into five bands, from best to worst.  The top band consists of seventeen countries, mostly in Europe but none from the African continent. The second band consists of thirty countries, five of which are African. For comparison’s sake, it includes countries like Canada (no. 18), France (33), the United Kingdom (40), and the United States (45). The African countries are as follows: Ghana (23), Namibia (26), South Africa (28), Cape Verde (29), and Burkina Faso (41). In these African countries, freedom of the media is roughly equivalent to that of the United States and big NATO allies. In fact, they all actually rank higher than the United States and, with the exception of Burkina Faso, the United Kingdom.  The third band runs from Botswana (48) to Bolivia (110). There are twenty-one African countries, including Senegal (50), Liberia (89), and Kenya (96). Others in this band include Hong Kong (70), Mongolia (71), and Israel (87).  The fourth band runs from Bulgaria (111) to Kazakhstan (158). This band includes seventeen African countries, including most of the large ones: Uganda (117), Nigeria (119), Angola (121), Ethiopia (150), and the Democratic Republic of Congo (154). This band also includes India (138), Russia (148), and Turkey (157).   The fifth and final band, representing the countries with the worst media freedom, runs from Burundi (159) to North Korea (180). It includes five African countries in addition to Burundi: Somalia (168), Equatorial Guinea (171), Djibouti (173), Sudan (174), and Eritrea (179). This band also includes Cuba (172), China (176), and Syria (177). The bad news is that the twenty-eight African countries in the bottom half of the list outnumber the twenty-one in the top half. Further, Africa’s largest states by population are in the bottom half: Nigeria, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The good news is that the top half includes almost all of the states of the southern cone (Namibia, South Africa, Botswana, and Lesotho), Ghana, and several francophone states around the continent, such as Senegal, Madagascar, Niger, and Ivory Coast. Other good news is that the five African states comparable in media freedom to the United States include two large, important ones: Ghana and South Africa. The RWB index provides a useful tool for comparing media freedom around the continent. It also provides yet another example of the diversity of the African continent. With respect to media freedom, Ghana and South Africa, for example, are far removed from Sudan and Eritrea.