Jakkie Cilliers: We’re missing EWC point – rural chiefs in crosshairs, unleashing growth the priority

A year ago, founder of South Africa’s Institute for Security Studies Jakkie Cilliers produced a quite marvellous book which he titled Fate of the Nation. Perfectly timed ahead of December’s ANC Elective Conference, in our interview on the book a year ago, Cilliers shared with us the likely result of that watershed event and what would happen thereafter. His projections were excellent – he as one of the few to call a Ramaphosa victory, but one which brings with it a huge challenge of modernising his party - and the country. I like engaging with scientists like Cilliers. They trash popular narratives by focusing on the facts and how they are most likely to impact the future. This ability to achieve perspective is a rare gift in a noisy developing country. But Cilliers achieved it in his book, and has done so again in this excellent interview on South Africa’s hottest potato, the policy of expropriation of land without compensation. Again, he says the real fight on land will be in the rural areas between traditional chiefs and their subjects. And he also dismisses sees notions of a split in the ruling ANC.