“Land Expropriation without Compensation:” Populist Political Charade and Electioneering Slogan in South Africa’s 2019 National Elections

Abstract

Land expropriation without compensation in South Africa has dominated the political landscape for the 2019 national elections. The African National Congress (ANC), as the ruling party, jumped onto the radical land policy bandwagon devoid of pragmatism, whilst being aware of the complexities attended to the implementation of such a policy framework. Whereas the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) was radical and populist in its approach, the ANC merely exploited “land expropriation without compensation” in order to arrest electoral underperformance. This paper argues that the ANC’s adoption of this electioneering stance was an absurd charade that sought to create a respectable appearance as a former liberation movement that reserved ownership of the Freedom Charter and the National Democratic Revolution (NDR). Inevitably, there was controversy surrounding political electioneering plagiarism between the ANC and the EFF, which was not surprising because the latter’s leadership was schooled within the former’s ideology. The EFF could afford to be reckless in its land policy whilst the ANC had to be moderate and sensible in order to preserve food security and the economy. This paper demonstrates that the radical land policy appears to have increased the EFF’s share of national votes in May 2019 whilst the ANC continued to experience a downward spiral of its electoral performance, with its national votes count dropping below 58%. The paper argues that the ANC took notice of this historical trend of electoral underperformance and usurped the EFF’s radical land policy for 2019 campaign, only to revert back to its moderate approach when confronted with the requirement for constitutional amendments. Using a literary analysis approach, the paper demonstrates that the ANC’s 2019 electioneering platform was a political charade that papered over the years of the governing party’s failure to achieve respectable land reform. The paper concludes that the ANC’s drop to below 47% in the national vote count during the November 01, 2021 local government elections is the clearest evidence that its fiddling with the EFF political agenda will not arrest its trend of electoral underperformance.