Quote of the week
Trump’s electoral fiction floats free of verifiable reality. It is defended not so much by facts as by claims that someone else has made some claims. The sensibility is that something must be wrong because I feel it to be wrong, and I know others feel the same way. When political leaders such as Ted Cruz or Jim Jordan spoke like this, what they meant was: You believe my lies, which compels me to repeat them. Social media provides an infinity of apparent evidence for any conviction, especially one seemingly held by a president.
The New York Times
Elite Capture of land reform
The Plaas research team gathered data on 66 land reform projects across the country and found that “land reform has shifted from being pro-poor to being pro-elite”. The question, then, is: who has benefitted from land redistribution in South Africa? Who are the winners and who are the losers Elaborating on the concept of elite capture of the land, Mtero says, “[It] simply refers to the concentration of public resources in the hands of a few individuals, and usually it’s the economically powerful and the politically influential individuals. Instead of broadening access to land and reconfiguring the unequal agrarian structure, a select group of black commercial farmers is promoted in land reform.”
