Key topics:
- ANC’s shift to socialism mirrors EFF’s radical stance.
- Expropriation Bill legalizes land expropriation without compensation.
- BELA and NHI Bills centralize state control over education, healthcare.
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By Ayanda Sakhile Zulu*
Contrary to popular belief, the ideological gap between the African National Congress (ANC) and its political offshoot, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), is narrow. The ANC, unlike the radical EFF, just believes in a more gradual shift towards socialism.
The evidence for this Is encapsulated in a key objective known as the National Democratic Revolution (NDR), which encapsulates the ANC’s phased vision of building a society based on socialist principles. Given that the party assumed power in 1994 and successfully democratised the state thereafter, the first phase of this revolution, which concerns itself with state power, is complete.
The ANC is well into its second phase of the revolution, which concerns itself with the “commanding heights of the economy”. While this dimension of historical NDR texts largely cover the nationalisation of the mining sector and other key industries, an important point worth noting relates to the question of land. The following extract from The Path to Power (SA Communist Party, 1989).
“This applies equally to land distribution: there is an imperative need to restore land to the people. This will take a variety of forms, including state ownership of largescale farms, redistribution of land among the landhungry masses and state assistance to them, the setting up of cooperative farms, and guaranteeing the freedom of movement and settlement.” This point speaks to the state playing an integral role in acquiring land through a variety of means for the purposes of ownership and redistribution.
In this regard, while the ANC government has purchased over 3 million hectares of farmland in the past three decades, it has openly supported the confiscation of land and the abolition of property rights for partisan reasons. From 2018, it and the EFF supported a bill that sought to amend Section 25 of the Constitution. The intention of this bill was to enable the state to expropriate land without compensation and place it under its custodianship.
Ultimately, in 2021, the ANC failed to adopt the bill because the EFF withdrew its support on accusations of the former’s excessive moderation. Other parties, like the Democratic Alliance (DA), objected to the undermining of property rights.
Three years later, the ANC-led Government of National Unity (GNU), has managed to sign the Expropriation Bill into law. This decision has provoked a response from US President Donald Trump, who signed an executive order that suspends aid to South Africa and prioritises the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees.
The GNU insists that Trump’s decision is based on the misinformation of forces that are misrepresenting the Expropriation Act, but it is yet to allay legitimate concerns surrounding the principle of nil compensation. It also cannot erase the public record of the ANC and EFF being openly hostile to property rights, in word and deed.
There is also the broader issue of communal/tribal land that remains unresolved. Millions of black people in rural and urban areas still live under a feudal-like system because they don’t have secure tenure. The first obvious explanation for this relates to incompetence and self-serving comprises that the ANC reached with traditional leaders. The second explanation, which is less obvious, speaks to the party’s intention to cement its control over the state and society as conceived in the NDR.
Beyond the land question, President Cyril Ramaphosa signed the contentious Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Act into law in September 2024. One of BELA’s stated objectives is to broaden access to education by giving education officials greater power over the admissions and language policies of schools. The rationale for it is that some schools (particularly Afrikaans-medium schools) have been using the Afrikaans language as a tool to exclude students who come from different cultural backgrounds.
This is not true. Successful attempts have been made to promote inclusivity and diversity in the country’s education system. This is evident in the existence of dual medium schools, which cater for the diverse language needs of students. Instead, it can be reasonably argued that the true intention of the bill is to disempower school governing bodies (SGBs) and centralise power with the state, thus enabling certain elements in the GNU to target Afrikaans-medium schools for purely partisan reasons.
The National Health Insurance Bill (NHI), which was signed into law in May 2024 and allegedly seeks to address existing inequalities in the country’s healthcare system, is a thinly veiled attempt to nationalise healthcare. If this is not the case, why does the fund it proposes to create restrict beneficiaries from accessing private healthcare?
All the aforementioned pieces of legislation form an integral part of the ANC’s broader objective of realising the NDR. While the gradual implementation of the socialist project over the past three decades has served to deceptively project the ANC as a moderate party, its acceleration in recent months and the past year has unmasked the daunting truth.
Only time will tell if other parties in the GNU will allow the ANC to lead us down a path of tyranny and unimaginable suffering. Initial signs are not good.
Read also:
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- 🔒 John Matisonn on ANC’s ‘compromise’ reshuffle: A half-baked fix for a party in freefall
*Ayanda Sakhile Zulu is a writer and researcher. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of Pretoria and is an Associate of the Free Market Foundation.
