The Freedom Charter will have the final say

It is one of those sublime ironies only South Africa could engender, the toenadering of the EFF and its stated policy of land expropriation without compensation, and the Congress of Traditional Leaders of SA (Controlesa), who hold vast tracts of rural acreage in feudal thrall.

This has to be seen in the light of Zulu King Goodwill Zwelethini’s rumblings about ringfencing KwaZulu-Natal and taking the province out of the control of central government – a consequence which would surely hark back to the dark days and heresies of the apartheid-fuelled Bantustan fragmentation of a nation still stumbling along the often impassable road to democracy and the ideals on non-racialism.

The Zulu king and the EFF would, on the face of it, seem uncomfortable bedfellows but such is the nature of politics – especially in this country. But recent history has highlighted that pacts between competing ideologies are fraught with inherent problems as the DA have found to the party’s aggravation in any number of instances.

It has to be asked when – no if – this friction will start to fester within this latest attempt at an all-encompassing agreement that surely blurs several ideological edges. It appears that the major sticking point will be the strict interpretation of the Freedom Charter.

Officially adopted on June 26, 1955, at a Congress of the People in Kliptown, the oft misquoted document spelling out civil liberties includes two phrases which reach back to the socialist core of its drafting: “the heritage of all South Africans shall be restored to the people”, and “restrictions of land ownership on a racial basis shall be ended, and all the land redivided among those who work it”.

Taken at face value, neither rider makes specific reference to unrestricted land distribution, nor to a paternalistic unbundling of the view of traditional rule on land delivery.

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