South Africa's high violence and land debates clash with Western media views

Trump's comments on South Africa spark outrage, but local concerns focus on violence and property rights, challenging Western media narratives.

Frans Cronje is president of the Washington, DC-based Yorktown Foundation for Freedom. He is a former head of the South African Institute of Race Relations and chairs that country’s Social Research Foundation.

Western audiences are commonly informed that white South Africans, who make up just 7% of South Africa’s population, own "three-quarters" of agricultural land whereas black South Africans own just "4%". These figures are misdirection. The bulk of White land holdings are in the arid western half of the country. These are areas where the terrain, climate, and population density is similar to that of Arizona, Nevada, or New Mexico. Across the high rainfall and densely populated east of the country approximately half of land by productive value is in black possession, although not ownership. The reason for this is that  the South African government continues to deny individual title across many Black communities preferring instead that land be held by the state or its proxies as a means of social and political control. Granting individual title would significantly shift land ownership patterns.

The belief that land ownership patterns, as they are, represent a national crisis might be popular in Western media but is not a view held by South Africans themselves. A recent poll found that top of the list of local concerns was job creation, mentioned by over 20% of respondents as South Africa’s single most important challenge. ‘Promoting access to land’ came far down the list, being mentioned by less than 5% of respondents.