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therealmidnite wrote

Your understanding is better than most people who would rather talk over us than to us... but it still requires some correction.

The EFF is most certainly a populist party - but there's absolutely nothing radical about them, or even really leftist. (More on them later when I talk about Abahlali BaseMjondolo).

This bill doesn't just affect some farmland - or even only farmland owned by whites. It affects a whole range of land owned by a diverse set of people - from private farmers to tribal trusts. The "deportation of whites" is a narrative that is being pushed outside South Africa, not inside - not even by the home-grown white far-right - because it simply doesn't make sense in an African context.

The "bubbles" a lot of white South Africans live in are no different than the neoliberal ones a lot of white people in the US live in - they simply don't have the luxury of being a "majority" (racial or otherwise) to sustain that bubble without retreating further into it. Counter-narratives that make sense in a South African context are rare, and it must be understood that the vast majority of white South African's understanding of the way things work were shaped by a thoroughly entrenched fascist regime a mere 25 years ago (I know, because I grew up in it).

It may surprise a lot of people to hear this, but up until very recently, nobody really had any real hard data on what the racial divide when it comes to the private ownership of land actually was (the numbers were mostly just educated guesses). With "white-owned land" becoming such a hot-button issue for political and corporate elites (in stark contrast to the majority of South Africans they supposedly "represent"), suddenly every organisation has thrown their hat into the "land audit" ring, with a lot of the research that has hurriedly been performed now confounding all parties involved (including one of the government's own studies, which showed that only a minority of the country's land is actually privately owned). It's simply far more complicated than "whites own x% of land!" (which, of course, would be the case in any country if anyone stopped to think about it). This is the reason why the instigator of this new movement, Cyril Ramaphosa, has been at pains to take (publically, at least) a very open-ended and varied approach to the land issue. However, as anyone can tell, this didn't stop either the neoliberal hysteria or the alt-right (who has already been using white South Africans as props to push their "white Genocide" narrative) from vulturing in on the matter. Whether the majority of it is being driven from inside South Africa or outside it is difficult to tell.

As for Abahlali BaseMjondolo (AbM)... I am really glad that this fraccas at least has one very small good thing to it - and it is that a certain amount of leftists has now been exposed to this remarkable organization (I am a fan). But it must be understood that the Shackdweller's Movement (that is essentially what Abahlali BaseMjondolo means) doesn't actually form a part of this "hot button issue" - simply because they aren't politicians vying for power. Their approach to what land "is" and how it should be "owned", therefore, doesn't even show up in the debate. The vast majority of the land they've "invaded" (to use the parlance the local mainstream media here uses) isn't the "white-owned land" politicans talk about, but unused municipal lands they need to build their homes on. It's because their narrative cannot be co-opted into serving the political establishment's aims that they are repressed by not just government, but also the so-called political "opposition".

They are not the type of organisation one simply "joins"... they actually do not approve of people joining them simply out of ideology (though they do welcome researchers and journalists to stay with them for a while), because they kind of reject politics based on theories and activism that isn't built on actual and/or shared experience (even though they've created quite a lot of it themselves). There are white people in their organisation - something the EFF and other third-worldists politickers have lost no time in using as a propaganda-tool to try and discredit Abahlali BaseMjondolo amongst poor black communities.

A note on the EFF, since this vile bunch of political vultures will no doubt be showing up in any discussion on the "land issue" - here's something S’bu Zikode (leader of the Unemployed People's Movement, an organisation allied to AbM) had to say about this lot that shows how this bunch of fake socialists try to co-opt actual grass-roots leftist movements among poor black people in South Africa. This is from AbM's site, too, so feel free to read some of their stuff. It's pretty good.

http://abahlali.org/node/9996/

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An_Old_Big_Tree OP wrote (edited )

I will try to hide my excitement to be not the only person from this region of the world on raddle.

Yes, perhaps I wasn't clear enough, (I thought it would be expressed in the words populist and party that) I didn't think they were substantially radical. I didn't go into talking about Malema/Shivambu and the EFF leadership and actually deleted paragraphs on other topics because I wanted to keep things short.
However, I would not discount genuine radicalness of people on the ground and organising at that level for the EFF, even though it's not the shape of my own.

I'm aware also that Abahlali doesn't make up the conversation, I didn't mean to imply that it did - I was trying to point out directions where someone with a political preference for direct action would want to send their attention.
It was nice to read more about the details involved with joining them.

Nice first post! :)

Edit: Oh, and it'd be great if you could link to some reading around what's actually getting expropriated because I haven't come by it. It's useful info!

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therealmidnite wrote

It's difficult to tell which land exactly is going to be nationalized - it's all up in the air, with no details. But the Zulu "King" is already threatening civil war about this (the trust that keeps his over-moneyed arse in luxury cars owns something like 26% of the land in KZN province).

I'm certain there are very sincere but deluded people in the EFF that actually believe they are doing the right thing... Malema wouldn't be the first fake messiah in this part of the world.

Which part of here are you from?

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