WHAT THEN ABOUT

LAND EXPROPRIATION
WITHOUT COMPENSATION?

THE NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION

MUST RESOLVE THE INTIMATELY INTER-CONNECTED
LAND AND NATIONAL QUESTIONS!

September 2018.

PREFACE

We recognise and acknowledge the fact that the matter that has been raised
of “land expropriation without compensation” has generated a lot of debate
throughout our country.

We fully support the determination firmly and effectively to act on the Land
Question, among others to redress the injustices of the past, as called for by
our National Constitution.

In this context, speaking as members of the ANC, we fully agree with the
decision taken at the 54th National Conference of the ANC that such ‘land
expropriation without compensation’ should become one of the policy
options available to the Democratic Government to address the Land
Question.

However, in addition, it is vitally important that the ANC should locate such
action within the context of its larger ideological and political perspective,
and openly account to the people for all steps it will take in this regard,
bearing in mind this perspective.

This pamphlet is intended specifically to explain this ideological and political

perspective.

In this context we will firmly underline the view, which derives from this ANC
perspective, that this matter of ‘land expropriation without compensation’ is
entirely a tactical and operational matter and should not be raised to the
level of principle and strategic importance, as has happened!

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In this regard we state this openly that the perspective and values we
express are of immediate relevance to members and supporters of the ANC,
with no assumption or argument that other South Africans are not free to
adopt their own different or contrary views.

INTRODUCTION

The decision taken by the 54th National Conference of the ANC in December
2017 on “land expropriation without compensation” has posed important
strategic Challenges with regard to many issues which relate to the very
character of the ANC. This pamphlet will try to address at least some of
these Challenges which are actually of strategic importance to the future of
the ANC, the National Democratic Revolution and democratic South Africa.

The reason for this is that the ANC is our country’s governing party, and
may continue to play this role for some time to come. Accordingly this
makes its views on any issue a matter of national interest.

In this regard it is critically important for all members and supporters of the
ANC, as well as all other South Africans, to understand what the ANC
actually is, regardless of whatever might have happened during the recent
past.

The definition of the character and historic mission of the ANC has been
developed and has evolved over a long period of time, starting in the 19th
century.

We can summarise this as the development of the extraordinary view that

the strategic task of the ANC is to position the peoples of Africa, and
specifically the indigenous South African Africans, as frontline fighters for the
creation of a non-racial, democratic, humane and humanist global human
society.

Accordingly, throughout its years, involving even its antecedents, the ANC
has never identified its principal objective as being accession to positions of
political power.

Where striving to access such political power became unavoidable because

of the 1994 victory of the Democratic Revolution, the ANC has sought to
explain that it would use such political power to transform South Africa into
the kind of entity we have sought to define.

In essence, responding to the racist, colonial domination of the indigenous

African majority which characterised politics and governance in South Africa
and virtually the entirety of the rest of Africa as it was formed in 1912, the
ANC took exactly the opposition view – i.e. that it stood for the freedom of
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all humanity, black and white, including the colonial oppressors, and much
more besides!

Established in 1912 as a “Parliament of the Black Oppressed”, pursuing the

strategic objective we have just stated, the ANC came to be accepted
especially by the indigenous African majority as virtually their only true
representative and defender of their interests.

Accordingly, successive generations among this indigenous African majority

have consistently accepted and treated the ANC as their political home
exactly because of how it has defined its historic mission over the decades,
and what it has done to accomplish this mission.

What this means is that the view advanced by the ANC, for instance that all
South Africans had an obligation to accept that our country had become a
multi-racial entity and therefore that it must respect the principle and
practice of unity in diversity, became the view of the indigenous majority
which had come to accept the ANC as ‘virtually their only true representative
and defender of their interests!

Thus such notions as building a “non-racial” South Africa as a central

objective of the liberation struggle became a property of the majority of the
African oppressed, not merely the ANC.

This is why all political formations which sought to challenge the ANC on this
matter of a “non-racial” South Africa failed. This was because the matter to
ensure that the successful liberation struggle remained loyal to the task to
build a “non-racial” society had become an objective shared by the majority
of the African oppressed, regardless of political affiliation.

This was exactly why, accepted as a ‘parliament of the oppressed’, the ANC
produced leaders who were accepted by the black oppressed as their true
national leaders!

We have advanced the foregoing argument to help explain what the ANC is
as well as its standing among the indigenous African majority.

It now remains for us to cite specific examples to illustrate and justify why
the ANC, as endorsed by the majority of at least the majority of the
indigenous Africans, is a ‘frontline fighter for the creation of a non-racial,
democratic, humane and humanist global human society’!

The very founding Constitution of the ANC, adopted in Bloemfontein in

January 1912 said that the Objectives of the Native Congress were, among
others:

Ø to promote unity and mutual cooperation between the Government

and the Abantu Races of South Africa;

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 Ø to promote the educational, social, economic and political elevation of
the native people in South Africa;
Ø to bring about better understanding between the white and black
inhabitants of South Africa; and,
Ø to safeguard the interests of the native inhabitants throughout South
Africa by seeking and obtaining redress for any of their just
grievances.

Before the adoption of this Constitution, the principal organiser of the

Bloemfontein Congress, Pixley Seme had delivered the 1906 speech on the
‘Regeneration of Africa’, and said:

“The regeneration of Africa means that a new and unique civilization is soon
to be added to the world. The African is not a proletarian in the world of
science and art. He has precious creations of his own, of ivory, of copper and
of gold, fine, plated willow-ware and weapons of superior workmanship.
Civilization resembles an organic being in its development - it is born, it
perishes, and it can propagate itself. More particularly, it resembles a plant,
it takes root in the teeming earth, and when the seeds fall in other soils new
varieties sprout up. The most essential departure of this new civilization is
that it shall be thoroughly spiritual and humanistic - indeed a regeneration
moral and eternal!”

Fifty five (55) years later, in 1961, Inkosi Albert Luthuli delivered his Nobel
Lecture in Oslo, Norway. Among other things he said:

“Still licking the scars of past wrongs perpetrated on her, could she (Africa)
not be magnanimous and practice no revenge? Her hand of friendship
scornfully rejected, her pleas for justice and fair play spurned, should she
not nonetheless seek to turn enmity into amity? Though robbed of her lands,
her independence, and opportunities – this, oddly enough, often in the name
of civilization and even Christianity – should she not see her destiny as being
that of making a distinctive contribution to human progress and human
relationships with a peculiar new Africa flavour enriched by the diversity of
cultures she enjoys, thus building on the summits of present human
achievement an edifice that would be one of the finest tributes to the genius
of man?”

These seminal Statements by Seme and Luthuli, unchallenged and esteemed

leaders of the ANC and our liberation struggle during their time and beyond,
explain exactly the noble vision of the ANC which made it possible for the
great masses of the black oppressed to accept the ANC as their true
representative and leader.

This noble vision, which fundamentally challenged imperialism, colonialism

and racism, was also communicated in other ANC policy documents.

For example the then President of the ANC, Dr A.B. Xuma, convened a
Group of African Leaders in 1943 to comment on the ‘Atlantic Charter’ which
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had been issued by US President Franklin Roosevelt and UK Prime Minister
Winston Churchill, which became the base document for the creation of the
United Nations Organisation.

The Group of Leaders established by Dr Xuma as the ‘Atlantic Charter

Committee’ produced an historic document entitled ‘The Africans Claims’
which was adopted at the 1943 Annual Conference of the ANC.

In his Introduction to this important document Dr Xuma wrote:

“On behalf of my Committee and the African National Congress I call upon
chiefs, ministers of religion, teachers, professional men, men and women of
all ranks and classes to organise our people, to close ranks and take their
place in this mass liberation movement and struggle, expressed in this Bill of
Citizenship Rights until freedom, right and justice are won for all races and
colours to the honour and glory of the Union of South Africa whose ideals -
freedom, democracy, Christianity and human decency cannot be attained
until all races in South Africa participate in them.”

Here the President of the ANC, in the context of a global response to Nazism
and the very costly Second World War, once again communicated the
historic message of the ANC in favour of ‘freedom, rights and justice enjoyed
together by all races and colours’, consistent with the ideological and
political posture of the ANC since and before its foundation!

In this context let us also quote from the 1958 Constitution of the ANC,
adopted the same year when some of the ANC Members expressed views
which led to the formation of the PAC in 1959.

The 1958 Constitution of the ANC stated some of the Objectives of the ANC
as being:

Ø to promote and protect the interests of the African people in all

matters affecting them; and
Ø to strive for the attainment of universal adult suffrage and the creation
of a united democratic South Africa on the principles outlined in the
Freedom Charter.

Thus it is clear that everything we have said in this Introduction speaks

about an ANC which has always identified and understood its historic mission
as being the heavy task to negate and repudiate the vile racism inherent in
imperialism, colonialism and apartheid.

Throughout the century of its existence, while also fully respecting its
antecedents, the ANC has therefore done everything to emphasise that it
has an historic mission both to help eradicate the legacy of colonialism and
apartheid and simultaneously to help create a truly non-racial and non-sexist
human society!

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It is therefore obvious that the ANC must proceed from this well-established
tradition, which identifies it in the eyes of the masses of the black people as
their representative and leader, as it takes action to take such action as
arises from the adoption by the 54th National Conference of the ANC of the
resolution on ‘land expropriation without compensation’.

Whatever such action might be, it can never serve, and must never serve to
destroy the noble historic ideological and political positions on the building of
united humane societies which the ANC has upheld throughout the years of
existence, including as this expresses respect for positions which had been
developed by formations among the oppressed which led to the formation of
the ANC!

It therefore stands to reason that as far as the ANC is concerned, the Land
Question in our country cannot be resolved in any manner which destroys or
negates the role of the ANC in terms of helping to create and build the new
and humane Africa of which Pixley Seme and Albert Luthuli spoke!

Therefore, among others, the ANC must understand that in the context of
the debate about the matter of ‘land expropriation without compensation’, it
has an obligation consistently to uphold the two principles:

Ø South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white; and,
Ø The land shall be shared among those who work it!

If the ANC abandons these two principled and strategic positions, it must
accept that it is turning its back on its historical position as ‘the parliament
of the people’ by repudiating views and hopes about the future of our
country which the masses of our people have held for many decades, ready
to pay any price in their defence!

Historically, for more than a century, the international left movement has
characterised the progressive struggles for the liberation of colonially
oppressed peoples as being national democratic struggles.

Necessarily these would be led by national democratic movements.

This meant that these were struggles to end the oppression of the colonised
by the coloniser, and thus, in most instances, to achieve national liberation
and independence, affirming the political and international law ‘right of
nations to self-determination, up to and including independence’.

That outcome, of practically affirming the right of nations to self-

determination, meant that this outcome would resolve or lay the basis for
the resolution of ‘the national question’, thus, at least, to free from all
national oppression of ‘the nation’ and ‘nationalities’ as might coexist within
one country.
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Thus one of the tasks of the national democratic revolution is ‘to address the
national question’, i.e. the matters we have raised above.

However it is possible both successfully ‘to address the national question’

and, for instance, create a new independent State ruled by a military
dictatorship!

This would mean that the masses of the people would have been liberated
from domination by the colonial master, but remain dominated by the new
domestic authority, the military!

Accordingly, for more than a century, the left movement has insisted that
the anti-colonial struggles should result both in the independence of the
colonised countries and governance of the newly liberated country by
democratic means.

Thus would the anti-colonial struggle result in a true emancipation of the

people – such that the people would be freed from colonial domination, as
well as, and simultaneously, gain the right to govern themselves, without
inheriting the problem of a new, now domestic oppressor!

In brief, the left movement to which we have referred, in its involvement

and support for the anti-colonial liberation struggles, has consistently sought
to ensure that the extent of the victory of these anti-colonial liberation
struggles is measured using two criteria, these being:

• to what extent does the anti-colonial victory represent genuine

independence for the formerly colonised, rather than a neo-colonial
arrangement; and,

• to what extent is the new independent State governed by the people

as a truly democratic entity, committed to serve the interests of the
people?

We too, members of the ANC, the Alliance and the Mass Democratic
Movement characterise ourselves as a National Democratic Movement,
insisting that what has and continues to bind us together as one movement
is our common commitment to achieve the objectives of the National
Democratic Revolution!

These are contained in the negotiated Constitution of 1996.

They include:

• ensuring that South Africa is a sovereign state;

• building a democratic, non-racist, non-sexist and prosperous South

Africa; and,

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 • addressing the injustices of the past, which have created the very
unequal society all South Africans inherited in 1994!

II

The very first and most fundamental historical injustice imposed on the
indigenous majority in our country by the Dutch and British colonial regimes
and the Settler population – “the original sin” - was the deprivation of that
African majority of its sovereignty, independence and freedom.

As South Africans we accept that the direct and immediate consequence of

the successful deprivation of that sovereignty was the massive land
dispossession of the indigenous people, the black Africans!

In this context, necessarily the National Democratic Revolution would and

must mean that it must work to resolve the land question resulting from the
process of colonisation, which would also address the Constitutional
imperative to address the injustices of the past!

All the preceding suggests that our National Democratic Movement must, of
necessity, define some of its historic tasks as being:

• to end the apartheid system, including the phenomenon of white

minority rule;

• to ensure that the people of South Africa together have the possibility
genuinely to exercise their right to self-determination;

• to ensure that the liberated country governs itself through genuinely

meaningful democratic processes; and,

• successfully to attend to the matter of equitable distribution of the

land to address an historical colonial injustice.

With regard to the latter, at its December 2017 54th National Conference the
ANC adopted a Policy on the land question which, among others, says:

“Expropriation of land without compensation should be among the

key mechanisms available to government to give effect to land
reform and redistribution.

“In determining the mechanisms of implementation, we must ensure

that we do not undermine future investment in the economy, or
damage agricultural production and food security. Furthermore, our
interventions must not cause harm to other sectors of the economy.”

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This was the very first time that the ANC had taken such a position – to
expropriate land without compensation - during the 106 years of its
existence!

It is therefore important that we say much more than merely report this
decision!

Naturally the task ‘to resolve the land question’ through redistribution has
been on the agenda of the ANC since its foundation.

III

More recently, to this day, the ANC has recognised the Freedom Charter as
the ultimate guide in terms of policy formation which, naturally, would take
into account the changed conditions since the Charter was adopted in 1955,
63 years ago this year.

It is therefore important to recall what the Freedom Charter says on the land
question. It says:

“The land shall be shared among those who work it!

“Restrictions on land ownership on a racial basis shall be ended, and

all the land re-divided among those who work it, to banish famine
and land hunger. The state shall help the peasants with implements,
seed, tractors and dams to save the soil and assist the tillers…”

Here the objectives of land redistribution are specific and clearly stated.
They are to:

• achieve equitable ownership of land among those who actually use the
land to farm productively;

• use such redistribution to end land hunger;

• use this redistribution to end famine/nutritional shortfalls; and,

• enable the democratic State to intervene to help the tillers who would
have acquired land because of the redistribution to become successful
farmers while addressing environmental matters concerning the land.

With regard to the foregoing it is clear that when the Freedom Charter
stated 63 years ago that ‘land shall be shared among those who work it’,
this was based on proposals made by the people, which the national
democratic movement adopted, based on the understanding that:

• there were large numbers of people among the oppressed, especially

those in the rural areas, described in the Freedom Charter as
peasants, who wanted access to land to use it for productive purposes;

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 • such access to land by these ‘peasants’ would help to eradicate the
serious national problem of poverty, which also manifested itself as
malnourishment/famine among millions of people; and,

• an important part of the process of the creation of a non-racial society,

to give meaning to the objective stated in the Freedom Charter as
‘South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white’ would be
the intervention of the State to ensure the emergence in democratic
South Africa of a numerically and economically significant group of
successful black small land holders, but not necessarily a few large
successful commercial black tillers of the land. Both black and white
‘tillers of the land’ would exist side-by-side sharing the land as tillers!

In the years since the Freedom Charter was adopted, especially during the
years immediately preceding the victory of the Democratic Revolution in
1994, the ANC adopted more detailed positions on ‘the land question’, all of
which reiterated the imperative to effect land redistribution.

We refer here especially to the following Policy Documents:

• Policy on the Restitution of Land Rights adopted in 1991;

• Ready to Govern: ANC policy guidelines for a Democratic South Africa

also adopted in 1991; and,

• The Reconstruction and Development Programme adopted in 1994.

As we would expect, even as they made more detailed comments about ‘the
land question’, these Documents kept broadly within the parameters set by
the Freedom Charter.

Given that these Documents were prepared in conditions when our country
was progressing towards the victory of the Democratic Revolution, and
therefore an end to the centuries-old system of white minority domination,
they had to make more detailed proposals towards the resolution of ‘the
land question’ to guide the interventions of the forthcoming democratic
State.

In this context, and correctly, they also brought into consideration of ‘the
land question’ the important matter of urban land, whereas the Freedom
Charter essentially focused on rural land, except as it addressed such
matters as urban housing, the abolition of ghettoes and slums and urban
infrastructure.

Similarly, and correctly, they also raised important issues about the usage,
etc, of the communal land in the ‘Native Reserves/Bantustans’, as did the
Freedom Charter.

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Without citing many extracts from the ANC Policy Documents referred to
above, the reality is that, as we have said, they accepted and were informed
by the broad framework that had been set by the Freedom Charter.

IV

Thus, until December 2017, the ANC had, for 105 years, adopted the
position on ‘the land question’ which was codified in the Freedom Charter.

Central to that historic position of our liberation movement were the

principled propositions that:

• the historical injustice of the colonial process of land dispossession had

to be addressed, through a purposeful process of land redistribution,
some of which land could be acquired by the democratic State through
expropriation;

• this would be done to address specific challenges, including satisfying

land hunger, contributing to the eradication of poverty, and achieving
development; and,

• because of its impact in terms of wealth-creation and distribution and

employment-creation, the land was central to the process to reduce
the prevalent and enormous racial and gender inequality in our
country in terms of wealth and income distribution.

Throughout the evolution of this policy, over 105 years, which has most
often included land expropriation, there had never been any decision by the
National Democratic Movement until December 2017 that such land
expropriation as might be necessary would exclude compensation.

Indeed the document “Ready to Govern…” specifically addresses this matter

of compensation and says:

“In establishing an equitable balance between the legitimate

interests of present title holders and the legitimate needs of those
without land and shelter, compensation by the state in the national
interest will have an important role to play. It will be unjust to place
the whole burden of the cost of transformation on the shoulders
either of the present generation of title holders or on the new
generation of owners. The state therefore must shoulder the burden
of compensating expropriated title holders where necessary and
subject to the provisions in the Bill of Rights. At the same time
attention must be given to ensuring that appropriate compensation
or other acknowledgement of injury done, shall be given to victims
of forced removals and other forms of dispossession.”

We draw attention to the fact that the immediate preceding paragraph

authorises both land expropriation and compensation of those expropriated

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“where necessary” and “subject to the provisions in the (Constitutional) Bill
of Rights”!

This was the official ANC policy position which informed the engagement of
the ANC representatives in the Constitutional Assembly in the post-1994
constitution-making process.

It is obvious that as the 54th ANC National Conference discussed the Land
Resolution, the delegates understood that with regard to the proposal to
expropriate land without compensation they were going outside of and
beyond then existing ANC policy, hence the heated and fractious debate
which ensued at the Conference.

In this regard it is important to recall that this matter had been discussed at
the July 2017 ANC Policy Conference. With regard to Land Redistribution the
Report of this July 2017 Policy Conference said, among other things:

“A radical land redistribution process is needed to correct South Africa’s

unjust and racially skewed ownership patterns, which are based on a long
history of colonial dispossession and white domination that is yet to be
reversed. This programme must be directly linked to the radical social and
economic transformation objectives of increased employment creation, and
reduced poverty and inequality particularly in rural areas.

“Government’s approach to land reform is based on three pillars: tenure for

farmworkers, restitution, and redistribution. The programme of land
redistribution has been inadequate. Not enough productive land has been
transferred into the hands of black farmers and producers. Support
programmes for new farmers have also been ineffective.

“The Expropriation Bill that is before Parliament should be finalised during

the course of this year in order to provide impetus to the land reform
process.

“The Commission looked at the best means to achieve a more radical

programme of accelerated land reform. Two approaches were identified:

“a. Option 1: The one view in both commissions was that the Constitution
should be amended to allow the state to expropriate land without
compensation.

“b. Option 2: Others were of the view that the s25 of the Constitution did
not present a significant obstacle to radical land reform, and that the state
should act more aggressively to expropriate land in line with the Mangaung
resolution, based on the Constitution’s requirement of just and equitable
compensation.

“The ANC must develop a set of proposals that radicalize the redistribution
programme to restore land to the people without placing an undue financial

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burden on the state. In pursuit of these objectives all options should be on
table including legislative, constitutional and tax reforms and a set of
concrete proposals should be presented to the 54th National Conference of
the ANC.”

The July 2017 ANC Policy Conference visualised ‘a radical redistribution

programme to restore land to the people without placing an undue burden
on the state’.

It stated that such land redistribution would have to be ‘directly linked to the
objectives of increased employment creation, and reduced poverty and
inequality particularly in rural areas’.

As we have said, the December 2017 ANC National Conference opted for
what was described in the ANC Report of the July 2017 Policy Conference as
Option 1, which Option was not adopted by the July Policy Conference.

The decision of the Policy Conference was consistent with the historic
position of the ANC.

This was that the Movement insisted on the absolute imperative to address
the Land Question, and therefore ensure the necessary land redistribution.
Nevertheless the Movement also insisted on a synchronised resolution of the
related Land and National Questions.

Accordingly, during its 105 years the ANC had never put forward the
proposal adopted at the December 2017 ANC National Conference of ‘land
expropriation without compensation’.

However, unfortunately and strangely, the published ANC Land Resolution as

adopted at the December 2017 54th National Conference contains no
explanation as to why the ANC felt it necessary to effect such important
policy change as was intended by prescribing a general principle of ‘land
expropriation without compensation’!

We have therefore had to depend for this explanation on public speeches

made by the leaders and representatives of the ANC.

The argument these have advanced to explain why it was necessary to

adopt the particular section of the Land Resolution we are discussing is that:

‘The European settlers who colonised our country expropriated the

land they came to own from the indigenous people using force and
without paying any compensation. Accordingly the ownership of the
land by the descendants of these settlers is illegitimate. To correct
this historical injustice it is necessary to reverse what happened
during the process of colonisation, including the apartheid era, by

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expropriating this very same land without compensation and
returning it to the formerly dispossessed, the Africans! During the
implementation of this policy, care must be taken not to discourage
investment in the economy, to make a negative impact on
agricultural production, etc.’

Understood literally, this explanation means that the ANC formally adopted a
policy which said that it was correct, “to address an historical injustice”, to
expropriate without compensation one national group for the benefit of
another national group!

[We use the category of “national group” in the sense in which it was used in
the Freedom Charter.]

With regard to this matter, and in the context of the history of our national
liberation struggle, it is impossible not to recall the circumstances of the
formation of the PAC in 1959!

A central issue which led some members of the ANC at the time to break
away and form the PAC was their objection to the idea stated in the
Freedom Charter in these words – ‘South Africa belongs to all who live in it,
black and white’, as well as everything else which derived from this principle.

This break-away group considered this a betrayal of the national liberation

struggle and countered with the slogan – Africa for the Africans!

However the ANC and the broad democratic movement defended the
positions stated in the Freedom Charter as the correct and progressive
posture to take in the context of our national reality.

That this was part of a continuing challenge that related to the very
character of our liberation movement was confirmed by some developments
just over a decade after the PAC breakaway.

These involved the occurrence of another breakaway after the 1969

Morogoro Conference when there emerged within the ANC ranks in exile a
group which ended up being called “the Gang of Eight”.

This Gang of Eight formed itself into a faction and put forward more or less
the same positions as had been advanced by the PAC.

Efforts by the ANC leadership over something like two years to engage this
group to persuade it to return to the established policies of the ANC,
including involving comrades from the other national groups in senior
structures of the ANC, short of the NEC, failed.

The Gang of Eight was subsequently expelled from the ANC early in the
1970s.

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In the context of the immediate foregoing, we would argue that it was
necessary for the ANC openly to explain the matter of ‘land expropriation
without compensation’ relative to the fundamentally important position
adopted by our Movement since its foundation that, as stated in the
Freedom Charter, ‘South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white’!

VI

This principled position is an important part of what, in our country, must

constitute the progressive ‘resolution of the National Question’!

Ours is essentially the only formerly colonised African country where millions
of the descendants of the former Colonial Settlers remained as resident
citizens after the country’s liberation from colonial and apartheid) rule.

Of the African countries, colonial Algeria had the second largest Settler
population after South Africa. At independence in 1962, this settler
population amounted to 1.6 million persons, the overwhelming majority
being French. This entire Settler population left Algeria after the country’s
independence!

Accordingly there was no need for the Algerian national liberation

movement, led and represented by the FLN, to consider how the indigenous
Algerians should coexist with what had been a Colonial Settler population. In
essence the end of French colonial rule meant ‘the resolution of the national
question’ as this concerned the relations between the indigenous Algerian
population and the French colonial settlers.

To the contrary, in our case ‘the resolution of the national question’

necessarily meant and means that the National Democratic Movement had
to ensure that:

• the (colonially) black oppressed, the dominated under apartheid white

minority rule, were liberated from such oppression; and,

• the matter of the relations between this formerly oppressed black

majority and the erstwhile oppressor white minority is addressed.

With regard to the latter, the ANC could have adopted a position which could
have said:

‘The white settlers came to our country uninvited by the indigenous

people and are here by virtue of the military conquest of our
country. The continued stay of their descendants is therefore
illegitimate. They must therefore return to where they came from.
Those who stay must know that they do so at our pleasure and as
guests!’

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A dramatic expression of this approach was exemplified, for instance, by the
then PAC slogan – ‘One settler, one bullet!’

VII

In December 1960 the journal ‘Fighting Talk Vol 14, No 7’ published an

article by the now late and well known Professor Jack Simons entitled “The
Pan-Africanists”.

Among other things Jack Simons drew from different speeches made by PAC
representatives “to convey the general tone” of these speeches. Prof Simons
used these speeches to elaborate this composite policy statement which
communicated the views of the PAC at that time:

“There is no room for Europeans in Africa. We do not want to chase

whites away from here. If we chase them away from here we will
have no servants. Their wives will work for our wives. The days of
the Whites are numbered. We shall apply Section 10 to them. If the
Whites accept Africanism, that is good. Let them stay. If not, they
must pack up and go. If any European or Coloured wants to join us
he must first see the native commissioner and declare himself as a
native and pay the £1.15s tax. Let him rub out his name as a
European. The Coloured or European can join the PAC providing that
he admits that he is an African not a European.”

Bear in mind that with regard to this matter, which related to the post-
apartheid relations between the black indigenous majority and the
descendants of the original Settler population, the ANC and the rest of the
Congress Movement had already taken the positions that, as expressed in
the Freedom Charter:

“South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white;…our
people have been robbed of their birthright to land, liberty and
peace by a form of government founded on injustice and
inequality;…our country will never be prosperous or free until all our
people live in brotherhood, enjoying equal rights and
opportunities;…only a democratic state, based on the will of all the
people, can secure to all their birthright without distinction of
colour, race, sex or belief;…we, the people of South Africa, black and
white together, equals, countrymen and brothers adopt this Freedom
Charter;… and,

“All National Groups shall have equal rights;…all national groups

shall be protected by law against insults to their race and national
pride;…the preaching and practice of national, race or colour
discrimination and contempt shall be a punishable crime; all
apartheid laws and practices shall be set aside.”

16
The March 1961 edition of ‘Fighting Talk Vol 15, No 2’ carried a response to
the earlier article by Jack Simons we have cited.

Entitled “Looking for Allies is a Slave Habit”, it was written by a PAC

representative who signed him/herself “Terra”, and said, inter alia:

“(The ANC) deceived the Africans by saying it was going to divide

the land equally among the workers and not amongst Africans;
deliberately the ANC preached a warped form of nationalism
christened “progressive nationalism” and not African nationalism.”

Over two years earlier, the November 1958 edition of ‘Contact Vol 1, No 20’,
the Liberal Party journal, had published comments of one of the leaders of
the PAC, the late Potlako Leballo, who took the place of Robert Sobukwe
when the latter was imprisoned. Potlako Leballo said:

"The African people in general do not want to be allied with the

[white] Congress of Democrats. They know these people to be
leftists and when we want to fight for our rights these people
weaken us... We also oppose the ANC’s adherence to the Freedom
Charter. The Charter is a foreign ideology not based on African
nationalism."

The same ‘Contact Vol 1, No 20’ of December 1958 published comments

made by the late Duma Nokwe, then Assistant Secretary General of the
ANC, and said:

“One of the chief arguments of the Africanists is that the ANC has
not adhered to its 1949 Programme of Action. But this Programme is
merely a set of activities. It lays down no policy whatsoever…The
programme does not define the content of African nationalism. It
does not say that the brand of African nationalism to be followed is
narrow, racialistic and chauvinistic. And the content which has been
developed through the years is the progressive African nationalism
which is in fact the policy of the ANC today…embodied in the
Freedom Charter.”

In this regard the document on Strategy and Tactics adopted at the ANC
Morogoro Consultative Conference in 1969 said:

“Our nationalism must not be confused with the chauvinism or

narrow nationalism of a previous epoch. It must not be confused
with the classical drive by an elitist group among the oppressed
people to gain ascendency so that they can replace the oppressor in
the exploitation of the mass. But none of this detracts from the
basically national context of our liberation drive. In the last resort it
is only the success of the national democratic revolution which — by
destroying the existing social and economic relationships — will
bring with it a correction of the historical injustices perpetrated

17
against the indigenous majority and thus lay the basis for a new —
and deeper internationalist — approach.”

It was exactly to express this “progressive African nationalism”, against a

“narrow, racialistic and chauvinistic nationalism” that the ANC and the rest
of the Congress Movement adopted the positions on ‘the resolution of the
national question’ contained in the Freedom Charter paragraphs we have
cited.

Among others, the 1969 Morogoro Conference also discussed the ‘land
question’. The decision it adopted stated in part:

“The Africans have always maintained their right to the country and the land
as a traditional birthright of which they have been robbed. The ANC slogan
"Mayibuye i-Afrika" was and is precisely a demand for the return of the land
of Africa to its indigenous inhabitants. At the same time the liberation
movement recognises that other oppressed people deprived of land live in
South Africa. The white people who now monopolise the land have made
South Africa their home and are historically part of the South African
population and as such entitled to land. This made it perfectly correct to
demand that the land be shared among those who work it… Restrictions of
land ownership on a racial basis shall be ended and all land shall be open to
ownership and use to all people, irrespective of race.”

VIII

It was with regard to this context that statements made by the leadership of
the ANC after the December 2017 54th National Conference, that land would
be expropriated from one national group, without compensation, and handed
to another national group, came across as representing a radical departure
from policies faithfully sustained by the ANC during 105 years of its
existence!

This was a radical departure not because of either the notion of

‘expropriation’ or the adoption of the concept of ‘without compensation’!

It was a radical departure for an entirely different reason.

That reason has to do with the extremely fundamental question of the very
definition of the nature, character and objectives of the National Democratic
Movement in our country, as led by the ANC!

As explained by the leaders of the ANC, the policy of land expropriation

without compensation means that we should, for instance, now say:

‘South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, except as
this relates to land; and,

18
‘All national groups are equal before the law, except as this concerns
land!’

In other words, the victorious National Democratic Revolution must define

the constituencies it serves within a context of ‘winners and losers’
among our country’s national groups.

This would be based on the thesis that ‘for these, the erstwhile
oppressed who were losers, it is strategic that the democratic State
intervenes to ensure that the erstwhile oppressors lose, to make it
possible for the formerly oppressed to succeed’!

Put simply and directly, the decision taken by the ANC at its December 2017
54th National Conference on ‘the Land Question’ raises the question – whom
does the contemporary ANC represent, given its radical departure from
historic positions of the ANC on ‘the resolution of the National Question’!

It may very well be that that the ANC leadership is perfectly capable of
answering this question in a satisfactory manner.

IX

This very same question arises because through its 54h National Conference
decision on our country’s historic ‘the Land Question’, the ANC has presented
the people of South Africa, black and white, with a challenge very new to our
National Democratic Movement, which they have therefore never had to
confront and consider.

The 54th National Conference of the ANC adopted a Resolution on ‘the Land
Question’ which:

• prescribed that the resolution of ‘the Land Question’ must be based on

correcting the outcomes of the armed colonial conquest and land
dispossession which occurred in the period encompassing the period
from the 17th to the 20th centuries;

• decided that with regard to the matter of the land, it would divide the
South African population into two Sections, these being:

(i) the white descendants of the colonists of the emigrant

Europeans who settled in our country from 1652 to date, and,

(ii) the original African population which had occupied particular

territories since and even before 1652; and,

• would redistribute the land through expropriating without

compensation of those defined under (i) above for the direct benefit of
those defined under (ii) above!

19
At the centre of the argument to justify this entirely new approach of the
National Democratic Movement, including the ANC, is the assertion that:

• as part of its strategic task to address ‘the National Question’, it is

imperative that the National Democratic Movement must address the
challenge posed by the fact that one of the distinguishing features of
the process of colonisation was the land dispossession of the
indigenous majority!;

• as much as the colonial land dispossession process meant land

expropriation without compensation, so must the National Democratic
Revolution respond by effecting land expropriation without
compensation; and,

• the victorious National Democratic Revolution must define the

constituencies it serves within a context of ‘winners and losers’, based
on the thesis that ‘for these, the erstwhile oppressed who were losers’,
it is strategic that the democratic State intervenes to ensure that ‘the
erstwhile oppressors lose, to make it possible for the formerly
oppressed to succeed’!

It is only in this context that there can be any meaning to the December
2017 Resolution of the 54th ANC National Conference which talks today
exclusively and only about land redistribution in historical and racial terms,
with absolutely no reference to the important class elements of this matter,
among others!

By definition political revolutions are about a decisive transfer of power from

one social formation to another.

It must therefore stand to reason that the political victory of our own
National Democratic Revolution meant such a transfer of power.

Our NDR did indeed address this question, to discuss the transition from
apartheid to democracy, and based on the historic statement contained in
the Freedom Charter, stating that – The people shall govern!

Correctly, the ANC has been asserting that it has historically acted as a
representative of the people of South Africa, black and white, and is
currently working to correct past mistakes so that it can, once again,
legitimately and practically, re-occupy this position.

At the same time, the position the ANC has taken in the context of ‘the land
question’ raises important questions about exactly this matter – which is the
matter of the very strategic definition of the ANC as a representative of the
people of South Africa!

20
Certainly, the argument that has been advanced by the ANC leadership since
the 54th National Conference about the Land Question communicates the
firm statement that the ANC has changed in terms of its character. It is no
longer a representative of the people of South Africa.

Rather, as its former President, Jacob Zuma, said, it is a black party!

In this regard, as reported by the newspaper, City Press, when ANC

President Zuma addressed the National House of Traditional Leaders on
March 3, 2017 he called on “black parties”, including the ANC, to unite to get
the two-thirds majority to amend the Constitution to allow for land
expropriation without compensation!

Earlier, when he addressed Parliament in February 2017, Zuma had said:

“Historically disadvantaged people must unite on these matters so that we

have sufficient majority in Parliament to take these decisions…We must use
our majority to correct the wrongs of this country within the law and within
the Constitution…The time has come that all of us should unite, speak in one
voice…No one will help us but ourselves.”

Jacob Zuma was advancing a perspective about ‘the resolution of the

National Question’ radically different from the long established an historic
position of the ANC, which he led at the time.

As part of this, he also made bold to change the very nature of the ANC,
characterising it as a “black party”.

It might be that at that time many in the ANC did not understand that what
Zuma was advancing was, in fact, a fundamental redefinition of both what
the ANC is and its historic mission.

Further to clarify his mission, during 2018, even after he had left
Government, Jacob Zuma said that South Africa should no longer be a
‘constitutional democracy’ but must become a ‘parliamentary democracy’!

In this regard Zuma was returning to what he had said in February 2017
that the ‘black Parliamentary majority’ must have the freedom to determine
the future of our country with none of the constraints imposed by our
Constitution!

It is very obvious that this Zuma position fundamentally repudiates the

historic positions of the ANC not only on the National Question, but also on
the matter of the protection of the masses of our people by putting in place
Constitutional guarantees and mechanisms which protect these ordinary
people, and therefore the very weak, from abuse by powerful holders of
political power!

21
By seeking to remove Constitutional power and restraint, Zuma seeks to
assert the possibility for mere parliamentary majorities to be abused as
legitimising authoritarian rule by any party which would gain a parliamentary
majority, including as this would have been achieved through corrupt
means.

XI

To return specifically to the matter of issues generated by the decision of the

54th ANC National Conference on the Land Question, the former member and
leader of the ANC, and current leader of the Congress of the People (COPE),
Mosioua Lekota, publicly posed an appropriate question after that
Conference.

He asked – given that the ANC had resolved to expropriate land and transfer
it to those the ANC described as ‘our people’ - who in this equation were not
‘our people’ in terms of long established ANC policy?

The truth is that the ANC leadership has not answered this very legitimate
question, except through heckling Lekota to silence him.

In this context we must state that in reality the 54th National Conference of
the ANC accepted the leadership of the EFF on this matter when it adopted
its resolution of the Land Question!

It is therefore very interesting that whereas the ANC leadership seemed

incapable of answering the question posed by Mosioua Lekota, the leader of
the EFF, Julius Malema, made bold publicly to answer this question.

At the National Assembly in February 2018, Malema responded to Lekota

and said:

“You can’t ask - who are your people? - because the National Democratic
Revolution answers that question. It says the motive forces which stand to
benefit from the victories of this Revolution – those are our people. The
motive forces of the National Democratic Revolution which you went to
prison for – the motive forces of the National Democratic Revolution are the
oppressed, the blacks in general and the Africans in particular.”

It is therefore very plain that what the EFF considers to constitute ‘our
people’ with regard to the Land Question are ‘the blacks in general and the
Africans in particular’!

Obviously this means that those who are not ‘our people’, according to the
EFF, whose land must be expropriated without compensation, are the white
sections of our population!

The EFF position concerning the matter of who ‘our people’ are, as explained
by Julius Malema as quoted above, is of course a vulgar and gross

22
misrepresentation of the historic positions of the ANC on the National
Question.

Nowhere in any of the policy documents of the ANC since our liberation,
including the documents on Strategy and Tactics as adopted at the ANC
national Conferences, has the Movement departed from the basic positions
on the National Question as stated in the Freedom Charter.

XII

Obviously Malema and probably others in the EFF have not been exposed to
such ANC documents as the 1996 Discussion Document entitled “The State
and Social Transformation” – hence the patently evident failure to
understand the tasks of the democratic State to the people as a whole.

In this regard, as an example, the document “The State and Social

Transformation” says, among other things:

“It is the task of this democratic State to champion the cause of (the
majority who have been disadvantaged by the many decades of
undemocratic rule) in such a way that the most basic aspirations of this
majority assume the status of hegemony which informs and guides policy
and practice of all the institutions of Government and State. However, there
is a need to recognise that the South African democratic State also has the
responsibility to attend to the concerns of the rest of the population which is
not part of the majority defined above. To the extent that the democratic
State is objectively interested in a stable democracy, so it cannot avoid the
responsibility to ensure the establishment of a social order concerned with
the genuine interests of the people as a whole, regardless of the racial,
national, gender and class differentiation. There can be no stable democracy
unless the democratic State attends to the concerns of the people as a whole
and takes responsibility for the evolution of the new society.”

Thus, contrary to what Malema argued about the democratic State having a
responsibility only to ‘the motive forces of the national democratic
revolution, and therefore the blacks in general and the Africans in particular’,
the preceding paragraph from a 22-year-old ANC Discussion Document
explains the actual positions of the ANC on the National Question after the
victory of the Democratic Revolution.

What is said in this paragraph represents what Duma Nokwe characterised

60 years ago, in 1958, as “the progressive African nationalism which is in
fact the policy of the ANC today…embodied in the Freedom Charter”, as
opposed to what he described as “the brand of African nationalism…(that) is
narrow, racialistic and chauvinistic”.

However, the challenge that now faces the ANC is that the Resolution on the
Land Question it adopted at its 54th National Conference, which, as explained
by the leaders of the ANC pursues exactly the positions advanced by the

23
EFF, and therefore does precisely what Malema argued for – that the white
section of our population should be excluded from the definition ‘our people’,
reserving it for ‘the blacks in general and the Africans in particular’!

The ANC leadership in particular has an obligation to explain to the masses

of the people of South Africa:

• when the ANC decided to change its fundamental position on the

National Question;

• what reasons have been advanced to explain and justify this change;

• how this change relates to the principle and practice that South Africa
belongs to all who live in it, black and white; and,

• what the regression of the ANC on the National Question to positions

advanced in 1958 by what became the PAC means in terms of the
policies and programmes of the democratic State.

As we said earlier in this document, the resolution of the Land Question has
always been one of the important elements on what the ANC described as
the Agenda of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR).

In this regard the ANC has always recognised the fact that the process of
colonisation in our country has also meant and resulted in the vast land
dispossession of the indigenous African majority.

Accordingly, and obviously, one of the tasks of the NDR would be to address
the Land Question to ensure equitable access to the land, in a manner which
also addresses the historic grievance among the black majority about the
colonial and racist process of land dispossession.

XIII

As we indicated earlier in this document, the Freedom Charter provided the

principal guidelines for what the victorious National Democratic Movement
should do about both rural and urban land.

As we all know, with regard to agricultural land, the Freedom Charter said
that – The Land Shall be Shared Among Those Who Work It!

Under the theme – There Shall be Houses, Security and Comfort! – the
Freedom Charter listed objectives which address the matter of urban land.

It is correct that the ANC should have been challenged publicly, as has
happened, concerning what it has done about the Land Question after more
than twenty (20) years as the Governing Party.

24
It would have been important that the ANC responds to this challenge
honestly and with all due seriousness, given the importance of the issue.

Accordingly the ANC would have had to engage in a serious Internal Review
process of what it had done to address the Land Question.

In this context it would presumably have agreed that:

Land is required for different purposes, these being:

(i) agricultural production;

(ii) urban housing and human settlements;

(iii) location of commercial enterprises;

(iv) recreation and National Parks;

(v) location of Government and State institutions;

(vi) location of public service institutions;

(vii) environmental objectives; and,

(viii) settling historic land claims as defined by law.

Having made this determination, the ANC would then have to make an
assessment as to what needed to be done in each and all these categories to
address the Land Question as understood in the context of the NDR.

Thus the Internal Review would pose to itself such questions as:

(ix) how many of the formerly oppressed want to be farmers, and therefore
how much land should be acquired to meet such land hunger;

(x) how much urban land should be acquired, among others to change the
spatial requirements to end the pattern of the apartheid human settlements;

(xi) what land should be set aside, and where, to facilitate the establishment
by the formerly oppressed and other investors of their commercial
enterprises;

and so on.

As a result of such an Internal Review, various questions would arise, such

as:

(xii) how many people among the formerly oppressed actually want to
become tillers of the land, both as active farm owners and farm workers;

25
(xiii) how many among the formerly oppressed need urban land for purposes
of building their own houses and establishing their own communities;

(xiv) how many among the formerly oppressed need land to establish their
own enterprises;

(xv) in essence what is the extent of ‘land hunger’ among the formerly
oppressed, and for which land use does this ‘hunger’ yearn?

The Internal Review would have considered all the matters we have raised
above bearing in mind that access to land and its use in our country must be
considered in the context of addressing other important national objectives
such as:

(xvi) increasing agricultural production to ensure food security;

(xvii) using agriculture significantly to reduce especially rural poverty and

unemployment;

(xviii) using agriculture to achieve women’s development and empowerment

in the rural areas; and,

(xix) ensuring the modernisation of agriculture using modern technologies,

which require much less land for some crops and provide for radically
reduced volumes of water.

Again taking into account all the preceding, the Internal Review would have
had to consider the impact on the implementation of NDR policies on the
Land Question of such global social tendencies, which also manifest
themselves in South Africa; as:

(xx) the historic process of rural-urban migration which empties rural areas
of people and very often concentrates significant sections of the population
in urban slums;

(xxi) the reduction of the share of agriculture in the Gross Domestic Product,
making Agriculture a very small player in terms of national wealth creation,
with this figure currently being between 2% and 3%;

(xxii) the fact therefore that the citizens will continue to look for jobs in the
other sectors which contribute much more to the GDP, all of which are urban
based; and,

(xxiii) the reality that nevertheless agriculture remains important because of

essentially four reasons, which are that (a) our country needs an agricultural
sector which guarantees our food security, (b) despite the important
technological advances in production methods, agriculture continues to be a
major employer in terms of the rural population, (c) agriculture produces

26
important raw materials for various industrial processes, and (d) agriculture
produces commodities which are important in terms of our exports and
therefore foreign exchange earnings.

What we are arguing is that it was and remains necessary for the ANC to
undertake the Internal Review process we have been discussing, to ensure
that the NDR addressed the Land Question taking into account all the
considerations we have listed above in the propositions numbered (i) to
(xxiii).

XVIV

The matter of whether the land required to address all the objectives
indicated immediately above is acquired through expropriation without
compensation, or otherwise, is entirely an operational or tactical question
and should not be elevated into a strategic issue.

With regard to agricultural land, bearing in mind all the foregoing, we argue
that the ANC must return to its historic positions according to which it dealt
with the Land and National Questions as an integrated whole, therefore
ensuring that at all times they are considered together within one process.

Accordingly, with regard to the immediate foregoing, it is absolutely

imperative that the ANC confirms, unequivocally, that it remains firmly
committed to the view expressed in the Freedom Charter that - The Land
Shall be Shared Among Those Who Work It!

Equally, it must reaffirm its determination to address the objectives stated

under the call in the Freedom Charter expressed as - There Shall be Houses,
Security and Comfort!

One of the strategically important results of the confirmation of attachment

to these Freedom Charter positions by the ANC would be that the ANC would
walk away from the very unfortunate claim it has made, reflecting the
‘narrow, racialistic and chauvinistic African nationalism’ which Duma Nokwe,
on behalf of the ANC, denounced in 1958, that it supports land expropriation
without compensation because it must correct an historical injustice, thus to
punish the descendants of the European Settler populations of the 17th, 18th
and 19th centuries and theoretically reward those who were disadvantaged
by these Settler populations!

There can be no doubt that more land should be made available to the black
majority in our country, for various purposes.

Equally, there is no doubt that to achieve this objective, the democratic

State must have the possibility to expropriate land without compensation in
the public interest.

27
That public interest obviously includes redressing the imbalances of the past,
as specifically provided for in our Constitution.

Accordingly we strongly assert that all the controversy about the principle
and practice of land expropriation without compensation has been misplaced
because even our Constitution allows for this to happen, and has authorised
the approval of legislation which would make this possible through approved
Statutes.

The principle and strategic matter at issue is therefore not about the manner
of acquisition of land to address the Land Question in the context of the
NDR.

Rather, the matter at issue is and has been how our country should properly
address the Land Question, bearing in mind the simultaneous challenge also
to address the National Question.

The question is what should be done to acquire the required land without
communicating a wrong principle that such Land acquisition is being
conducted because sections of our population must surrender land they own
to others who are allegedly properly South African, whereas such land
owners are, in effect, not accepted by Government as being fully South
African, enjoying equal rights with all other South Africans, black and white?

XV

Before we conclude, there is one other important strategic matter we must

address.

This is that essentially ours is a capitalist economy, which largely operates

as any other capitalist economy does.

However, despite what we have just said, the fact is that capitalism in our
country has “South African characteristics”, to borrow a Chinese expression.

It is perfectly obvious that for any democratic Government in our country

successfully to lead a process which in the immediate and medium term,
among others, leads to:

• sustained high economic growth;

• a significant reduction in wealth and income inequality; and,
• meaningful progress towards meeting the Sustainable Development
Goals;

it would have to take very serious steps to mediate the impact of capitalism
“with South African characteristics” on the major strategic structural
objectives our country must pursue to achieve the goal of “providing a better
life for all”, a goal which the ANC has presented to our electorate since
1994.

28
What we are proposing would not be easy.

This is because the entire capitalist system both domestically and globally
would resist any attempt to regulate its operation, beyond what our country
is already doing.

The fact, however, is that no major socio-economic objectives pursued by

our Government can be achieved without the active and conscious
cooperation of the private owners of capital!

Accordingly whatever our Government does to implement the Resolution on

the Land Question as adopted at the ANC 54th National Conference, including
meeting its attached conditions, requires the conscious involvement and
support of private capital.

So far, unfortunately, the ANC has said very little about what it will do to get
private capital to cooperate in the process to ensure the success of the
Government’s Land Policy, even as stated by the 54th ANC National
Conference.

XVI

The ANC must fully discharge its responsibilities on the Land Question as our
country’s Governing Party.

In this regard it must explain in public and in detail what it intends to do

relating to all major issues relating to the Land.

In this context it must explain the relationship of its Land Policy relative to
the National Question in our county.

All the preceding means that the Government must put in place a credible,
affordable and detailed Programme of Action (PoA) on the Land Question to
encourage popular ownership of this PoA.

Such PoA must be integrated with the perspective which seeks to ensure
that the spatial differences with regard to Land use are resolved so as to
accelerate the process towards the deracialisation of our system of human
settlements, especially in our urban areas!

XVII

All genuine members and supporters of the ANC must understand that
whatever their interpretation of what was decided at the ANC 54th National
Conference, and what has happened since, correctly to represent the historic
ANC Policies they must hold firmly to the view that:

29
 • all decisions of the ANC about the Land Question must respond
simultaneously to the National Question, with these considered
together;

• whatever decisions the ANC takes must never negate the historical
responsibility of the ANC to unite the people of South Africa to build a
common non-racial society, as well as address the grievances of those
who were disadvantaged by the systems of colonialism and apartheid;

• whatever the decisions on the Land Question, the ANC members must
create the necessary space for everybody to understand that in reality
the matter of access to the Land must be addressed and resolved in
the context of rational agricultural and human settlement policies and
programmes, focused on achieving a better life for all our people on a
sustainable basis. [This is not a process equivalent to the important
challenge to bring a just resolution to the injustice of the forced
displacement and exile of the Palestinian refugees!]

Surely the debate on the Land Question has served to underline the
imperative that the ANC has the historic responsibility to lead the complex
process towards the achievement of the objectives of the National
Democratic Revolution (NDR)!

That leadership role cannot be discharged by an ad-hoc and fragmented

response to the tasks and challenges of the NDR.

At all times, as was the case in the past, the ANC must exercise its
leadership understanding that it has to deal with a dialectically
interconnected and complex social reality. This demands a comprehensive
rather than a fragmented approach to the pursuit of the goals of the NDR.

That, in any case, is what characterises all truly revolutionary political

formations!

ends

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