State Criminality

One of the essential elements of a developing State is an insistence by the Government on the maintenance and observance of private property rights.  If a citizen is to exercise his or her ingenuity and invest funds and time in the development of new businesses and new ideas, that citizen has to have the assurance that the results will be available to him or her.  Would you take the trouble to grow a vegetable garden if you knew that the products would be taken by a passer-bye without even a ‘thank you’ for the trouble you have taken, the money and effort you have invested?  Of course you would not!  It is more likely that you would join the ranks of the thugs that prey on the far-sighted and hard-working citizens who become the victims.  Investing the money, the time, the effort and the risk required to create something that did not exist before, and would not exist apart from your effort, would make no sense.  If you had the drive to do it, the chances are that you would move to a different neighbourhood where you could retain the fruits of your effort, a neighbourhood where the prevailing view was that you should be rewarded for those efforts, where the people in control could recognise that what you take out of the work is a fitting reward for the contribution you make to the good of the community.  Soon, those neighbourhoods that supported the ‘rights’ of the thugs to take from the productive members of the community would be denuded of those creative and hardworking members who drive the economy of the community, leaving behind the parasites, the criminals and the leaders who permitted and encouraged the institutionalised criminality.  The neighbourhood that offers protection from deprivation of your rights will benefit by the addition of the efforts, skills and intelligence of those driven from the places where theft, in any form, is not only tolerated, but also undertaken by the authorities.

South Africa under the ‘leadership’ of the ANC, unfortunately, has come to view private ownership as evil, except, of course, when that ownership is in the hands of the Party favourites.  The change has taken place slowly, each step being promoted with plenty of rhetoric about the need to protect the ‘poorest of the poor’.  The private ownership of mineral rights has been taken away.  The right if a businessman to choose his employees has been compromised.  The contract between employer and employee has been skewed to the extent that an employee has all the rights and the employer none.  There is a plan to take 50% of the ownership of productive farms from the farmers who have invested the funds, the time and the ingenuity to build them to provide the food supplies to the nation, and to hand that share to the workers, without compensation to the farmers who have built them up to provide the nation with food.  The argument that the workers also built the farm is specious.  They were paid for their work, while the farmer took the risk, and, if the pay was not sufficient, they had the right to withdraw their labour and apply it elsewhwere.  The ownership of mines, banks, insurance companies and all other businesses of any size is required to be ‘shared’ with members of the ‘previously disadvantaged’ groups.  The fact that such transfer of ownership is paid for from the dividends received from the shares transferred is designed to confuse the gullible – it is a simple donation by the remaining shareholders of a part of the business and the income from it that would have flowed to them, in the absence of this State-sponsored criminality.  It is State-mandated theft.

Now the Department of Trade and Industry is embarking on the next phase of the theft.  It is planning to deprive the owners of the patents that are sorely needed in this country of their rights, by enforcing the granting of licences to use those patents at a low or zero licence fee.  Of course, this is done to benefit the ‘poorest of the poor’, so no-one can argue the morality of it.  We all know that the ‘poorest of the poor’ is a form of Holy territory, not to be exploited (except by the governing Party).  We all know that the benefits of those patents should be made available to the country, that we can’t afford to pay for their use, so the jackbooted Capitalists who invested their ingenuity, their time, their money to create those patents, must simply hand over the rights to use those patents at a price to be determined by the noble political leaders in the interests of the ‘poorest of the poor’.

To put the story in a context that even the most obtuse can understand, let us imagine that you, a hardworking man or woman, have sold a possession that has taken you half a lifetime to acquire.  You are walking down the street in South Africaville, the money in your pocket, when a thug steps out and sticks a gun in your face.  “Give me half of what you have in your pocket,” he says.  Surprised (or perhaps not – this is, after all, South Africaville) you respond.  “Why half?”  The thug looks at you earnestly.  “I’m being fair to you, to leave you with half of what you have worked for!”  He is surprised that you do not understand the fairness of his act.  After all, half is better than none!  “What right do you have to take half of what is mine?” you ask, flabbergasted.  “My friends all agree with me that I am entitled to take half of the fruits of your labour!  That is the democratic system!”

That is emphatically not the democratic system.  It is the socialistic system!  It is theft, pure and simple.  The fact that the majority of voters agree that the Government may act in a criminal way does not make it less criminal.  We need to evaluate our actions, and those of our Government, on an objective basis of right and wrong.  That objective basis must comply with the standards of the civilised world. 

As citizens of a country, we have an obligation to support the provision of certain services, such as (effective and honest) policing, the construction of roads (preferably roads that will not develop potholes in the first rainstorm), education (of a standard to make our children able to earn their own way in the world).  We do not have an obligation to pay a bloated, ineffective and corrupt Civil Service.  We do not have an obligation to pay for thirty-two Cabinet Ministers, none of whom seem to have any understanding that they are the servants of the people and, as such, they have an obligation to inform the people of what they are planning, what they have done in our behalf, and the real truth of the areas for which they are responsible.  As citizens, we are entitled to expect value for our money, and a true accounting of the use of it.  As citizens, we are entitled to retain all of the assets and income that we and our ancestors have worked for.

We are not the fiefdom of the ‘new royalty’, the band of thugs who believe that everything we own is ultimately the property of the State (a different way of describing the Association for Nepotism and Corruption), to be exploited for the benefit of the people who can’t or won’t work to produce their own income.  We are not a resource to be exploited by the Government for its own ends.

To revert to the proposed change in the laws relating to the rights of the owners of patents, it is clear that the ANC-led Government is determined to undermine the rights of ownership which are an essential of a law-abiding economy.  The proposed changes will continue to reduce the incentive for people to invest in the future, or, possibly worse, to move away to a new country which understands that an entrepreneur will invest only if he can reasonably expect to receive a return.  There will be an increase in the stagnation of the economy that is already evident, and the only likely promoters of a recovery from that stagnation will choose to escape to a more enlightened, more honest country.

Some of the readers have asked what can be done, in the face of a Government that is increasingly irrational in its actions to preserve the power of the ANC.  Short of an uprising by the enlightened citizenry, the obvious solution is to employ the tactics of Ghandi.  Apply passive resistance.  Make every action by Government as difficult as possible.  Raise objections to every tax, delay payments to Government, and compliance with its demands, as long as is possible under the law.  Talk to foreign investors and inform them of the true situation in the country.  Write to foreign newspapers to tell them of Nkandla, the Arms Deal, the deprivation of private rights of ownership, the new Apartheid, Marikana.  The greatest strength of the Marxists who are running the Government is the apathy of those who are being exploited by it.  The situation in South Africa will not improve unless the people who are supporting the policies of the Government by paying their taxes, tolls, levies, licence fees, airport taxes, electricity bills and the numerous other demands of Government and Government-owned organisations show their dislike of them.  In the end, the person who pays is entitled to call the shots.