Nick Schifrin:
No, and it’s a great point, Geoff.
I mean, tonight in his press conference, Ramaphosa emphatically said that there is absolutely no genocide happening in South African. And what’s at issue here, just to step back, is a legacy, of course, of apartheid, when the government dispossessed many Black South Africans’ land.
For the last 30 years or so, since the end of apartheid, the government has tried to redistribute that land mostly by purchasing land from willing white settlers, but it hasn’t solved the problem. Today, Afrikaners only represent about 7 percent of the population, but own more than half the land in South Africa.
And so a new law is designed to take land from white farmers, basically eminent domain, as we call it here in the U.S., but with what South Africa says are provisions for compensation, for due process. And as we heard today, Geoff, South Africa’s argument is that the violence is not about race. It affects everyone, really more about class.
