South Africa’s social transformation policies: raciolinguistic ideologies and neoliberal rhetoric

ABSTRACT

South Africa has a politically and emotionally charged debate on unresolved race-based imbalances in patterns of land ownership and access to socio-economic opportunities. The main pillars of South Africa’s post-apartheid efforts to address these inherent inequalities have come to be underpinned by invocation of a predominantly neoliberal yet narrow and inward-looking approach that overlooks the discourse of previously marginalised black people. This reified and reductionist view on social transformation is evident in the framing of Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE), land reform programme and associated elements of the transformation agenda. This article seeks to uncover those neoliberal imperatives of South Africa’s social transformation agenda and how they do not sit well within the aspirations and desires of the wider South African population. The specific focus is on what the linguistic and discursive elements of land reform and B-BBEE policies hide and reveal about social transformation. I conclude by suggesting that the discourse and praxis of social transformation in South Africa needs to be conducted in a language that takes into account marginalised voices that speak from non-institutional spaces.

KEYWORDS:

• Social transformation
• B-BBEE policy
• post-apartheid South Africa
• land reform
• inequality
• neoliberalism
• discourse

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Finex Ndhlovu is Associate Professor of Language in Society in the School of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences at the University of New England in Australia. This article was written while he was on a six-month Research Fellowship at the Archie Mafeje Research Institute, College of Graduate Studies, University of South Africa.

ORCID

Finex Ndhlovu http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9263-0725

Notes

1 The 1913 Land Act defined a ‘native’ as

any person, male or female, who is a member of an aboriginal race or tribe of Africa; and shall further include any company or other body of persons, corporate or unincorporated, if the persons who have a controlling interest therein are natives.

Section 1, sub section ‘a’ of the 1913 Natives Land Act stated, ‘a native shall not enter into any agreement or transaction for the purchase, hire, or other acquisition from a person other than a native, of any such land or of any right thereto, interest therein, or servitude thereover.’ This affected millions of Africans, with its most catastrophic provision for Africans being the prohibition from buying or hiring land in 93% of South Africa. In essence, Africans despite being more in number were confined to ownership of only 7% of South Africa’s land (South African History Online http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/natives-land-act-1913).

2 Under the 1936 Natives Land Act, the land set aside for black people was extended from 7.3% to almost 13%. However, ownership and/or purchase of land by ‘Natives’ outside the stipulated reserves were still forbidden (Nelson Mandela Foundation 1936, https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv01538/04lv01646/05lv01784.htm).

3 Section 25 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa contains the Property clause, which stipulates that the acquisition of land for purposes of resettlement has to done following the principle of ‘willing seller willing buyer’, and that the ‘manner of payment must be just and equitable’ (Republic of South Africa 1996). The South African Parliament resolved on 27 February 2018 to set up a review Committee of Section 25 of the Constitution to make it possible for the state to expropriate land in the public interest without compensation. The Committee was mandated to propose the necessary Amendments to the Constitution, where necessary.

4 ‘Jambanja’ is a Zimbabwean slang for violence or chaos that was popularised after year 2000. Politicians, government officials and members of the general public used the word to describe the violent and chaotic farm invasions under the auspices of the Third Chimurenga.

5 In late 2006, the Chinese Association of South Africa filed suit to have Chinese South Africans recognised as having been disadvantaged under apartheid, to benefit from Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE). In June 2008, Chinese South Africans were fully recognised as having been disadvantaged and entered the B-BBEE ethnic groups if they arrived before 1994 (Park 2009). However, this change in the status of Chinese South Africans is not reflected in the B-BBEE definition of ‘black people’ as it currently stands.

6 For separate political reasons, the apartheid government had classified Taiwanese, Japanese and South Koreans, as honorary white, and thus were granted more or less the same privileges as whites, except that they could note vote (Braithwaite 1975).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by University of South Africa (VSRP 2019).