Policy Shifting Amidst Political Threat: South Africa and the Radicalization of Adopted Land Reform Policy

Abstract

During South-Africa’s 1994 transition from apartheid to a multiracial democracy, greater land access for black South Africans was a key part of the political settlement between white and black leaders. This key issue of debate stemmed from the lasting negative effects of a system known as apartheid that gave whites power over all elements of society, including citizenship, free movement, political speech, and property. One of the main rights affected by this racialized power over citizens was access to land. While land rights for black South Africans were already compromised before apartheid’s onset in 1948 due to Dutch colonialism, apartheid itself established a more official system for government to strip blacks of their right to own land, force them off land on which they worked, and resettle them on generally less profitable terrain. Consequently, to reverse the historical damages apartheid caused black communities, a series of land reform laws passed during the 1994 transition called for three main criteria—restitution of black-owned land previously expropriated by whites, redistribution of state-owned land to black citizens, and greater tenure security. However, despite the passage of these laws, nearly 25 years after the transition, whites still owned about 75% of the land compared to the approximate 10% of the population they represent. As such, the failure of these land reform laws culminated into a motion passed by the African National Congress (ANC) in 2018 allowing for the expropriation of land without compensation. Because this legislation would reverse previous Constitutional requirements such as compensation at fair market value, the motion sparked intense debate among South Africans. Consequently, this thesis explores the causes of this governmental shift towards a more radical approach to land reform. Overall, I argue that the ANC’s shift in policy is mainly explained by its desire to prevent further gains in the radical Economic Freedom Fighters Party’s vote share in the National Assembly. It was not until the ANC’s traditional political hegemony was under a serious perceived threat that the party shifted toward the more radical position of land expropriation without compensation, doing so in order to win back aggrieved constituents and sustain its political hegemony in the National Assembly. In light of this hypothesis, this thesis explores different theories about political party behavior in order to help understand why the ANC shifted its position when it did.