Cunning piece of legislation

The political tsunami that is Donald Trump continues to create monster waves that crash on South African shores.

- William Saunderson-Meyer

It throws the platitudes of Cyril Ramaphosa's State of the Nation Address into stark relief: a sideshow only peripherally connected to the new realities that are suddenly reshaping our politics.

Never mind that Trump's blunderbuss fulminations against the Expropriation Act (EA) were partly inaccurate. As was the case with his 2018 railing against a supposed genocide of white farmers, the exaggerations and distortions of his claims should not detract from some important truths about what is happening in South Africa.

The first inescapable truth is that farmers are disproportionately the targets of murderous criminality. Also, the gruesome nature of the violence is likely, albeit empirically impossible to prove, tied to hateful incitement spewed by black radicals who have the tacit approval of the ANC.

The second truth is that the EA is not just a benign bit of legislative housekeeping that virtuously ties together in a constitutional bow some previous omissions, duplications and contradictions in the law.