South Africa: The Land Question: Restoration of a Viable Social Economy For the African Majority

 The land question is not just a issue of correcting a historical colonial injustice. It is a life and death matter about fixing the social economy of African society that was destroyed by the racist, supremacist  and abusive dispensation over the past century or two.

The land question did not arise out of colonial settlers needing farmland, it arose out of colonial capitalists being very very desperate for cheap labour. The land question is about the violent wrenching of the African people from their agricultural-pastoral social economy to force them into job dependency.

In the late 1800s the mushrooming mining industry of the Witwatersrand was desperate for labour. The African community, then, was living in a social economy revolving around pastoral and arable agriculture. The Africans needed their time to tend their livestock and till their land. They did not have the time to work in the colonialists' mines and factories.

So dire was the labour situation that the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (Wenela) was formed in 1902, followed by the Native Recruitment Corporation (NRC) around 1912, to recruit labour from neighbouring countries and the region. The NRC recruited mainly from Lesotho and later Transkei. Wenela recruited from the north and had offices as far as Tanzania but the bulk of the workers came from the Rhodesias (Zimbabwe and Zambia), Nyasaland (Malawi) and Mozambique.

It is a topic for another day but let me briefly point out that these two organizations are the ones that introduced and cemented a culture of labour migration to South Africa throughout the region, not recent events like Mugabe's rule or the end of Afrikaner led apartheid. Apartheid was a mere interruption to the labour migration trend.

By the way these organizations still exist today in the form of TEBA Limited.

The desperation for labour eventually spawned a strategy of denying local blacks self-reliance. That is why the Native Land Act of 1913 banned Africans, not just from owning land, but from renting land in 93% of the country. Thus Africans were squeezed into tiny areas to deny them self-reliance. or forced to become tenant labourers, effectively recreating medieval English society of serfs (commoners) and lords but this time along racial lines.

The strategy of turning Africans into cheap labour has been extremely successful. Who can raise their hand and deny that the majority of today's black South Africans are just a pool of very cheap labour desperately trying to drive away competition from regional labour that was also invited by the same 1900s strategy that made locals landless.

With this knowledge at hand, it should be clear that land reform is not just a matter of grabbing land and giving it to blacks (although that will work in the very long term) but a strategy of fixing the social economy of blacks by returning them to a measure of self-sustenance on the land.

That will not work without some measure and effort to reskill Africans with some basic agricultural skills. Afrikaners only became successful farmers because of heavy subsidies, affirmative action and of course abundant cheap labour during the apartheid era.

Does land reform work? It is working in Zimbabwe. Seventy percent of Zimbabweans live in rural areas growing their own food. They have little need for a cash economy. One of the reasons why Zanu-PF regularly wins elections is that every year it provides free agricultural inputs to rural dwellers.

The Zimbabweans who are in SA are mostly former city dwellers and others who choose to be dependent on the cash economy.

To get cash, unless you have assets, you need a job. But what do you need cash for? To buy food and pay for shelter (rent). If you have access to enough land sufficient to grow your own food, you won't need much cash once you build your home on that same piece of land.

My own mother was living in Harare until 2003 when Mugabe's land reform took place. Then she got 6 hectares and access to a common grazing area on a former white owned farm. She now has 15 head of cattle and chicken runs with capacity for 1000 chickens. I depend on her for food when I am home.

What is keeping Zimbabwe's economy in the doldrums is not land reform but corruption. South Africa has got that too, plenty of corruption. The early signs of the cost of corruption on the economy (shortages and high energy prices (petrol and electricity)) are already showing in South Africa. Another sign is a dysfunctional public service (police, civil servants who are reluctant do their duty to serve you unless you pay tshotsho, or are high-profile individual).

I believe strongly strongly that the land question is not a civil rights issue. It is above all a social economy and social justice issue. Protecting the property rights of those who own too much land based on past racial and colonial abuses will not prevent revolution that is coming.

As long as the social economy is based on impoverished cheap labour, revolution will happen. It is only a matter of time.

Political blame shifting and responsibility dodging will not solve South Africa's electricity crisis.

 After reading Gordhan's response to MPs in parliament about load shedding my heart sank. It seems he and the current Eskom chief executive's belief is that load shedding is caused by poor maintenance. The poor maintenance narrative being clever way of insinuating that incompetent blacks are responsible for load shedding.

I sincerely hope that Gordhan and his team do not actually believe that the mere presence of whites in top management of Eskom is what is required to stabilize Eskom. Because if that is their thinking, it means they are clueless about the problem they are dealing with.

According to the report Gordhan said, "The bottom line, honourable member, is that until we can put a few more thousand megawatts onto the system we cannot be definite. To achieve more output, the utility would have to do better maintenance and operations."

He did not mention more power stations or sources. Yet the simple truth is the power stations South Africa currently has simply cannot generate enough power for a fully served population (not partially served like under apartheid).

Gordhan and his team do not support their claim that load-shedding is caused by poor maintenance with any facts. There should be accurate reliability statistics. Figures like mean time to (MTTF) failure, mean time to repair (MTTR) and the overall availability of units as a percentage of the time the units are operating relative to total time they are expected to be  operating. Detailed reliability figures and root cause analysis are the only way of truthfully telling why units are failing too often and whether the root cause of downtime is lack of maintenance.

The poor maintenance narrative also whitewashes the simple fact that since the dawn of democracy the growth of electricity demand has far outstripped the growth of supply. The number of people supplied with electricity has grown from 14 million people in 1994 (35% of the population then) to over 51million people (85% of the population) now. That is three and a half times demand growth.

Yet electricity generating capacity has grown from 38 gigawatts to 58 gigawatts only. That is a one and half times growth in supply. You do not need to be a rocket scientist to figure that what is required is a rapid growth in supply.

While it is easy to grow the distribution network (demand side) because it is cheap and quick to add suburbs and factories to the distribution grid, growing supply is difficult. It requires massive lumpsums of money and lengthy construction periods to build power stations. That is why upfront planning must be meticulous for decades into future.

In this case upfront planning FOR THE ENTIRE POPULATION was non-existent under apartheid. When the ANC took over they focused on the easy part, growing the distribution network which can be easily dealt with in municipal budgets. Growing the supply which requires a massive national budget was not adequately funded.

It is my belief that the ANC were not correctly advised on growing the electricity supply capacity. I have mentioned before that the apartheid government had plans to tap into the hydro-capacity of the big rivers to the north.

Matimba-Insukamini 400KV transmission line (in black).

Despite then ongoing hostility with independent African countries, they built the Cabora Basa to Midrand DC transmission line. They also built the Matimba (near Lephalale) to Insukamini (near Bulawayo) high voltage transmission line which was completed in 1995. That was part of a strategy to transmit power from the north down to South Africa.

The question is how come the ANC did not follow through with the strategy? The ANC are politicians, and it would have been up to the energy experts to make the politicians understand. Did the politicians fail to listen? Or did the energy experts not offer their advice knowing that the shortage of electricity would become a political club to bludgeon the ANC with in future. Clearly in the November 2021 election that has just passed the ANC was clobbered to below 50% and load-shedding was one of the reasons cited by its voting base.

My biggest concern is the discussions going on around the electricity issue are just not correct especially since de Ruyter took charge of Eskom. There is a lot of waffling about maintenance. Yet the fact of life is that there is always scheduled and unscheduled maintenance on any power grid.

The conventional wisdom is for electricity supply security your capacity should be about 20% more than your peak demand. At the very least it should be 10% more than your peak demand.

That is where the figure of 6gigawatts more being needed in South Africa is coming from. The country has a capacity of about 58gigwatts and 10% of that is 6gigawatts. That is based on the assumption that since we are experiencing a supply shortfall at 58GW, that must be the peak demand.

Regional power transmission strategy. Power transmission lines
between countries are in red.

The second issue I have is there seems to be no coherent enunciation of where the extra electricity supply is going to come from. Especially given promises to eliminate coal in 15 years made by Ramaphosa in Glasgow.

De Ruyter keeps talking about past and current corruption. All and good, but the absence of corruption is not going to create the extra generating capacity that is lacking. The being no corruption simply means you can use what you have more efficiently.

Unless De Ruyter is a messiah who can feed thousands with two fish and five loaves there is no way he can end load-shedding in the next 2 years or so. Stopping corruption is simply stopping thieves from stealing a fish and loaf from the meagre collection, but even without the thieves, it is still not enough.

What South Africa needs to hear from De Ruyter is the vision and strategy of where the 6gigawatt shortfall in capacity is going to come from. Mind you that figure is based on an assumption that the peak capacity now is the peak demand as well.

Given that there are people who want electricity but are not even connected to the grid, actual peak demand is likely to be higher. I am going to throw bones here because I do not have reliable statistics but my guess is actual peak demand now should be around 70gigawatts.

Going back to the news reports that triggered this blog post, it is clear that Minister Gordhan and the Eskom executive are busy waffling politics. None of what has been reported as coming from them over the past few months comes anywhere close to a coherent energy strategy.

Nearly all of it is political blame-shifting tinged with insinuations that recent black executives of Eskom are incompetent or saboteurs. He is engaging in some rubber-man antics to dodge responsibility for South Africa's electricity woes. Granted he is just another jockey appointed to ride a dead horse (De Ruyter's his own words) he is not clear what his plans to acquire a live horse are. Even a donkey will do as long as it is alive.

Since the dawn of democracy South Africa has needed a strategy to expand electricity availability very rapidly. It does not look like any serious as effort has been in place and load-shedding are the chickens coming home to roost.

References

1. Increase of power transmission capacity in South Africa-Zimbabwe interconnection by means of SVC - ABB Ltd public document.
2. The Southern African Power Pool: Regional Cooperation - a slide by DR Lawrence Musaba
3. De Ruyter: It's a 'myth' that state capture at Eskom is over - News24 report
   
4. There is a plan to end load-shedding, but it will take time: Pravin Gordhan - Timelive report
   

Karanga and Kalanga are one and the same thing

In Zimbabwe there is often debate on whether the Karanga and Kalanga are different peoples. Here is my basis for concluding that they are actually one and the same thing.

Prior to 1929 missionaries were trying to invent writing systems for the regions they operated in. The writing systems were largely based on the 26 letter English alphabet, with different combinations of letters chosen for different syllables.

For example the Mogenster missionaries used bgo resulting in name spellings such as Zvobgo and Dangarembga. In the unified Shona agreed upon after 1930 this became Zvobwo and Dangarembwa but respective families did not change their name spellings.

Similarly Dadaya mission used Tj in names such as Tjolotjo (changed after independence to the Nguni spelling).

In 1929 missionaries hired Clement Martyn Doke, professor of Bantu languages at the University of the Witwatersrand to conduct a study and come up with a unified writing system. This was motivated by the need to try and print one bible version for the whole of Karanga speaking areas Mashonaland, Manicaland and Victoria Province. A version that did not have to take into account the different dialects of Karanga.

After Doke's paper was presented at a conference at Dadaya the missionaries settled upon a unified writing system for different Karanga dialects.

There was a huge debate on what to call the unified writing system, with contention between the names Karanga and Shona. The missionaries eventually settled upon the name Unified Shona. Later in the 1960s through the work of George Fortune the government of Southern Rhodesia modified the writing system slightly and called it Standard Shona.

However in 1930 a crucial decision was made that results in people in Mashonaland and Matabeleland thinking that they are different people when they are actually the very same people.

The missionaries decided that everyone in Matabeleland would be taught to read and write using the Nguni alphabet imported from South Africa (that is how Tjolotjo becomes Tsholotsho) which included groups that did not speak Ndebele at the time such as Venda, Tonga and yes the group now named Kalanga.

Everyone in the rest of the country would be taught using the new Unified Shona alphabet (including the Tsonga/Shangani group).

As you know the Nguni alphabet does not have R and the new unified 'Shona' alphabet did not have L.

Thus the name of an ethnic group was written differently by those Matabeleland in those in the rest of the country.

While those in Matabeleland were taught to write Kalanga, it meant exactly the same thing as Karanga which those in the rest of the country were being taught to write.

Now throw in European mainly British missionaries and officials who did not speak the local languages very well. They pronounced what they saw written down as they would in their own language.

Thus Kalanga instead of sounding "Kalanka" was given a soft G sound from English as in "being", "doing", etc.

Kalanga was not the only victim of such mispronunciation. Another notable example is Buhera which is actually Uhera or Vuhera. The neighbouring Botswana and its capital Gaborone are also examples of victims if Anglicized mispronunciation.

So the bottom line is Kalanga and Karanga are exactly the same thing written differently then pronounced differently due to Anglicization of the pronunciation.

The Israeli-Palestinian Broken Record Needs to End

When the bombing of Gaza by Israel began the aim was to crudely force Palestinians to capitulate into silence. A period of quiet they called it.

Realizing how crude that sounded, the spin has shifted to the bombing being about destroying "Hamas military capabilities"

Israelis of all people should know, from the lessons of history, that the road to removing the fighting capability of people who are already militarily over-whelmed and socially severely oppressed eventually ends at extermination.

Be it Lothar von Trotha against the Herero of Namibia or Hitler and his gas chambers, at some point the oppressor will shift to thinking that instead of just making life unbearable the only way to deal with what they perceive a "problem" is use might to wipe it off the face of the earth.

Despite all the Goebbelsque speak out there, what Israel really wants is to take Palestinian land and homes, build settlements without so much as a whimper of protest from anyone. Certainly none is forthcoming from the cowards in Riyadh, Cairo, Amman and other Arab capitals who have been co-opted into what at its core is a project to take land from Arabs.

The sustained quiet that Israel is seeking the the freedom to undermine the right of Palestinians to a homeland without a fightback of any sort. Israel wants to evict Palestinians from their homes, which is where the current round of violence started, restrict their movement and displace them some more without anyone protesting.

Israelis of all people should realize that, as long as they have breathe in their bodies and no matter how mighty the oppressor is, an oppressed people will fight back be it in Ramallah, Jericho, Gaza or the Warsaw ghetto. For centuries military might has never extinguished the ambers of hankering for freedom.

Peace can never be achieved by oppression and subjugation. All that Benjamin Netanyahu is achieving is ensuring that there will be an aggrieved population living next to Israel for generations to come.

He is playing Russian roulette with history - spin the chamber and hope that at no point in future will the aggrieved population be capable of launching an effective fightback. A man who takes such a gamble does not love his grandchildren, or simply lacks the intelligence to have a proper long term vision of the consequences of his actions.

It is a very simple wisdom to realize that Israel can never achieve peace without achieving dignity and equality for Palestinians. On a personal level, I fervently believe a two state solution is a nonsensical impracticality. Only a single state with equal rights for all human being who live in it is the ultimate solution for the former British Palestinian mandate.

A solution that hankers to the racist colonial mentality that led to the British proposal in the first place, where a superior race lords it over a perceived inferior race of Palestinians, will never ever work in the long term.