THERE was palpable but understandable anger from the Western media and white commercial farmers in South Africa over President Jacob Zuma’s announcement last Friday that his country would take over land without compensation.
The most important message from President Zuma was that South Africa is finally on the road to eradicate one of the reasons behind the seemingly unending problem of xenophobia that has once again reered its ugly head in the past few weeks.
At the centre of the chronic problem of xenophobia in South Africa has been the failure by South Africans to locate the enemy within; poverty and failure to control land and natural resources caused by systematic exclusion from the levers of the economy by the whites.
President Zuma has clearly stated the problem and the real struggle begins.
There will be resistance from white farmers.
There will be a backlash from Western capitals. There will be sanctions.But the great Kwame Nkrumah in his book titled The Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare, published in 1968, points out that it is important for the peoples of Africa to know who their enemies are and what imperialism is actively seeking to achieve. 
According to Nkrumah: 
“A number of external factors affect the African situation, and if our liberation struggle is to be placed in correct perspective and we are to ‘know the enemy’, the impact of these factors must be fully grasped. First among them is imperialism, for it is mainly against exploitation and poverty that our peoples revolt. It is therefore of paramount importance to set out the strategy of imperialism in clear terms:
l The means used by the enemy to ensure the continued economic exploitation of our territories.
l The nature of the attempts made to destroy the liberation movement. 
Once the components of the enemy’s strategy are determined, we will be in a position to outline the correct strategy for our own struggle in terms of our actual situation and in accordance with our objectives.”
It was no surprise that leading the charge against President Zuma’s land reform proposal was The Telegraph and the Daily Mail, both principal agitators against Zimbabwe’s Land Reform and Resettlement Programme of 2000.
That was understandable given how scare-mongering, malicious propaganda as well as outright threats were used against President Robert Mugabe’s Government when it embarked on the Land Reform Programme.
As it turned out for Harare, what the Western media were issuing were not only veiled threats but were in fact promises that would come to pass through the imposition of illegal economic sanctions against Zimbabwe by the US on December 21 2001 and the EU on February 18 2002.
So, SA and President Zuma must brace themselves for a non-benign response from both the white commercial farmers and the West.
In his land reclamation speech last Friday, President Zuma was forthright, saying he wanted to establish a ‘pre-colonial land audit of land use and occupation patterns’ before changing the law.
“We need to accept the reality that those who are in Parliament where laws are made, particularly the black parties, should unite because we need a two-thirds majority to effect changes in the Constitution,” he said.
Predictably, The Telegraph was furious in its response, attacking the person of the SA President
It said:
“Mr Zuma, who has lurched from one scandal to another since being elected to office in 2009, has adopted a more populist tone since his ruling ANC party suffered its worst election result last August since the end of apartheid in 1994.
The party lost the economic hub of Johannesburg, the capital Pretoria and the coastal city of Port Elizabeth to the moderate Democratic Alliance party, which already held the city of Cape Town.”
On the other hand, the Daily Mail was daring.
The publication dangled the Constitution knowing fully well that South African benches are filled with whites who will protect their own.
Zimbabwe had a similar problem until the recently retired Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku came to the fore.
The Daily Mail claimed the move would spark a racial war, adding that the ‘controversial move would require a change to the Constitution’.
Other pro-white movements in South Africa were also in tow and ‘warned’ President Zuma against giving blacks land!
The Institute of Race Relations, an independent research body, said providing a racial breakdown of South Africa’s rural landowners was ‘almost impossible’.
“In the first place the state owns some 22 percent of the land in the country, including land in the former homelands, most of which is occupied by black subsistence farmers who have no title and seem unlikely to get it any time soon,” the group said.
“This leaves around 78 percent of land in private hands, but the race of these private owners is not known.”
The Boer Afrikaner Volksraad, which is believed to have 40 000 members, said its members would take land expropriation without compensation as ‘a declaration of war’.
“We are ready to fight back .We need urgent mediation between us and the Government. If this starts, it will turn into a racial war which we want to prevent,” said Andries Breytenbach, the group’s chairman.
But there has not been clear statistics in terms of land ownership in South Africa
A State Land Audit, carried out by the office of SA’s Chief Surveyor-General and published in 2013, found 79 percent of South Africa’s landmass was in private hands.
It, however, said that includes land owned by individuals, companies and trusts, and all urban real estate as well as agricultural and mining land in South Africa. 
A report by Africa Check lays bare the anomalies associated with who owns what land in South Africa.
“The data was compiled by the Development Bank of SA in 1991. (According to the department’s spokesperson, Makenosi Maro, updated data was to be released towards the end of 2016). 
The 1991 dataset shows that 100 665 792 hectares – or 82,3 percent of South Africa’s surface area – consisted of farmland. Of this, 81,9 percent (or 86 186 026 hectares) was considered commercial agricultural land. The rest – situated in what were formerly ‘black homelands’ established under the auspices of the apartheid state – remains classified as ‘developing agriculture’. 
The KwaZulu-Natal Agricultural Union did not publicly release their audit so it cannot be independently assessed. Its chief executive, Sandy la Marque, forwarded Africa Check a copy of a presentation, which put white ownership at 15,4 percent of the province’s surface area with the ownership of a further 23,11 percent listed as ‘unknown’.” 
Whatever, direction that SA will take onwards, the beautiful thing is that South Africa knows what needs to be done, the land must be returned to its owners, the blacks, and if that is done one of the causes of xenophobia would have been dealt with.