Thabo Mbeki accuses the ANC of becoming a ‘black party’
He made this comment by criticizing the party’s decision to expropriate land owned by whites without compensation. The ANC is attacking whites and abandoning its commitment not to run South Africa on racial grounds and considerations, warned Mr Mbeki.
The party says it is pursuing its policy of combating racial inequality in the area of land ownership. Nearly a quarter of a century after the end of the racist system of apartheid, whites ‘who make up 9 percent of the population’ own 72 percent of privately owned farmland, according to government figures.
Until recently, the official policy was to redistribute land according to the principle of seller-buyer consent, but the situation has changed since the ANC proposed and supported a plan of expropriation without compensation to end an inequality judged historical by the party.
The ANC “does not represent South Africa”
Mr. Mbeki made his comments in a document that was leaked to the local media. In this document, the former South African president recounts his party’s historic commitment to anti-racial politics, saying that it “defended the freedom of all humanity, black and white”.
Thabo Mbeki argues that taking lands from whites and giving them to blacks was a departure from this principle. “The ANC is no longer a representative of the South African people, but, as its former president Jacob Zuma said, it is a black party,” he said in the pamphlet.
The Indigenous Land Act of 1913 prohibited blacks from buying or leasing land in “white South Africa”, which led to the forced expropriation of blacks. After the end of apartheid in 1994, the ANC government declared that it wanted to return 30% of these lands to their former owners by 2014. It is estimated that 10% of commercial agricultural land was redistributed.
