Africa Up Close

South African agricultural workers plant cabbage seedlings on a farm in Rustenburg. Photo courtesy of Solidarity Center via Flickr Commons.

South Africa has emerged as the African continent’s preeminent economic powerhouse by making laudable strides in addressing the social, political, and economic remnants of apartheid. However, the tacitly polarizing issue of land-ownership has, once again, reopened the nation’s old wounds. As outlined in Section 25 of South Africa’s constitution, the state maintains constitutional rights to expropriate land “for a public purpose or in the public interest.” Recent deliberations on amending Section 25 to allow land confiscation without compensation, however, has garnered diverging reactions from the South African public as well as political parties. Putting aside the social and political implications of such a landmark decision, the economic effects of the policy would lead to an eventual collapse of South African markets and financial systems.