The Constitution vs nationalisation

The ANC Youth League often refers to the Freedom Charter when citing a basis upon which it relies for introducing nationalisation and land expropriation.

Bloomberg.com quotes ANC Youth League president Julius Malema as saying that “the call of nationalisation is what is required by the Freedom Charter”. He said this in an interview on Johannesburg-based SAfm radio today.

“Its interpretation is very clear. We need to nationalise. The research is not about nationalisation. The ANC is looking at the best model of nationalisation.”

This is patently wrong based upon the following :

The Freedom Charter was drawn up in 1955 and sets out the manner in which the South African Congress Alliance — comprising the African National Congress and its allies the South African Indian Congress, the South African Congress of Democrats and the Coloured People’s Congress — wanted the country to be governed.

When former president Nelson Mandela was released from prison and all South Africans gathered around a table they thrashed out a constitution that was agreeable to the vast majority of the people of the country.

I make no apology for quoting the entire explanatory memorandum of the Constitution :

The objective in this process was to ensure that the final Constitution is legitimate, credible and accepted by all South Africans.

To this extent, the process of drafting the Constitution involved many South Africans in the largest public participation programme ever carried out in South Africa. After nearly two years of intensive consultations, political parties represented in the Constitutional Assembly negotiated the formulations contained in this text, which are an integration of ideas from ordinary citizens, civil society and political parties represented in and outside of the Constitutional Assembly.

This Constitution therefore represents the collective wisdom of the South African people and has been arrived at by general agreement.”

The Freedom Charter of 1955, which represented the views of certain communities at the time, was replaced by the Constitution that contains the wishes of the country as a whole after carrying out the largest public participation programme ever.

As such not only is the Constitution representative of a far larger group but it was drafted and has been amended to drive South Africa at the end of the 20th century and into the 21st century.

The Freedom Charter was born more than 55 years ago in a world that bears almost no resemblance to the planet today — not in ideology, technology or in most material aspects of people’s daily lives.

Quoting Madiba in response to nationalisation and land expropriation is inappropriate because the challenges facing the former president a decade ago are not the same facing South Africans today.

Besides the fact that the Constitution is a legal and binding agreement for a new South Africa, which incorporates those parts of the Freedom Charter that leaders of a modern age deemed desirable going forward, it is inappropriate for the youth league to cite a document drawn in 1955 as the basis for its argument.

What did a South African living in 1955 know of the challenges facing citizens in 2011?

More importantly the giants of the ANC who were around in 1955 were at the negotiations for a constitution that is recognised as one of the finest in the world. They knew the purport of the Freedom Charter better than most and elected to amend certain points in order to make it appropriate to a modern reality.

In other words if the league wants to attack President Jacob Zuma or National Planning Commission Minister Trevor Manuel on policy then it needs to get down to explaining why its policies are appropriate at the moment.

Quoting charters or agreements that have been overtaken by time and law is not going to get its point across.

If South Africans are going to start hauling out every agreement since Jan van Riebeeck’s barber agreed to charge two guilders for a 17th century mullet — but only while on the boat — then we are quickly going to lose sight of how to approach the prevailing law of the country and land up in Constitutional Court with judges scratching their heads and asking why people are quoting from outdated agreements while a perfectly modern system of law is available to them in easy-to-understand language — available in all official languages.

1. Based upon economic principles and using examples of nationalisation and land expropriation in other countries explain why it’s the best system for South Africa.

Turn over your papers — your time starts now!