Trump’s Silence on South African Land Reform is a Sign of the Times

Since winning the South African presidency two months ago, Cyril Ramaphosa has made land reform “without compensation” a priority, breaking from the policy of the African National Congress under his predecessor Jacob Zuma. Unlike similar proposals for land redistribution from years past, Ramaphosa’s do not register as fringe politics—in part because they have materialized in the increasingly radical era of the Economic Freedom Fighters, a protracted national growth slowdown, and a burgeoning water emergency in Cape Town.

This unfortunate admixture has prompted many to question the South Africa of the last 25 years: the sentimentalism for Nelson Mandela, the prospects of a “rainbow nation,” the potential for postcolonial “constitutional order.” In a sense, South Africa has put itself and the world on notice: Radicals are not to be discounted.

The science behind land transfers at times seems more like alchemy. One author and self-styled “[l]and issues expert” recently suggested that “the state’s priority should now be on unlocking the productive potential” of new tenants. Ramaphosa meanwhile has insisted that expropriating portions of the white farming class’s land must proceed in a manner to ensure “everybody’s rights are protected.”

These approaches to redistribution belie their own motivating anxieties surrounding colonialism, apartheid, and the amorphous—but not illegitimate—thirst for justice. They also risk exacerbating the present discontent, leaving the country susceptible to formulaic fixes like Zimbabwe’s and a worsening agrarian commotion, which farmers and private security companies have already begun to observe.

Unfortunately, it seems South Africa will have to go it alone as it litigates these issues. In the bygone ages of Woodrow Wilson or John F. Kennedy ’40, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, America might have offered some sort of policy or moral guidance. But no longer in the era of President Donald Trump, Twitter tirades, and trade wars.

The contrast is stark. In the mid-nineties, then-President Clinton summoned a vision of American global responsibility that this author still finds compelling: that “we can’t respond to every tragedy in every corner of the world, but just because we can’t do everything for everyone doesn’t mean … we should do nothing for no one.”

Clinton, of course, referred to his actions in the Serbian Crisis—a catastrophe that easily eclipses South Africa’s present tensions. Nonetheless, the current dodge by Washington feels jarring, particularly when silhouetted against the president’s priorities: A visit to the site of the future border wall, a memorandum advancing the transgender troop ban, and tariffs on foreign steel. This list reads like a president’s doomsday preparations, not an agenda for global security and economic resurgence. It embodies the “do nothing for no one” philosophy which Clinton warned against.

Admittedly, Trump is not entirely to blame for this approach. The concept of a global political arbiter registers uneasily with the historical sense of many libertarians and left-liberals (including, at times, this one). It evokes an age of faux “good neighbor” policy, Third World proxy wars, and stereotypical American bravado.

An American watchman can also seem ill-suited to a world increasingly hostile to liberal democracy. Some have asked whether it is worth projecting American-style democracy, which has devolved across Eastern Europe and parts of Latin America, abroad. Others are asking whether the “free world” (perhaps an outdated concept in the Trump era) still needs a leader.

These perspectives lose sight of the failures of global anomie. In South Africa, constitutional property protections are on the line, and the liberal Democratic Alliance hasn’t the means to defend them. The rights of South African laborers are also in danger, evidenced by the recent police killing of forty-two miners. The Middle East is embroiled in new Sunni-Shiite tensions. North Korea is close to achieving a nuclear warhead with global range. These are all elements of a disturbing eschatology that must be resolved.

In South Africa’s case, U.S. silence means partial fixes are probably the best option. Two routes give South Africa a wide berth from potential calamity. The government could open up state-owned fallow land for private purchase and cultivation, or it could subsidize land purchases by black tenants, upholding the “willing buyer-willing seller” principle advocated by the Democratic Alliance. Neither option will end South Africa’s infighting, but either would come closer to a Pareto efficient solution than Ramaphosa’s land grab.

These strategies would set a fairly radical precedent, bringing into focus a concept of justice reminiscent of early American progressive Herbert Croly, who pushed increasing prosperity for an “ever increasing majority.” This legacy, more than the pseudo-science of land transfers and faux proceduralism, would mark an important milestone for a country seeking justice and order in a world after pax Americana.

Henry N. Brooks ’19 is a Social Studies concentrator in Currier House. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.