Wrong Thinking

The plan announced by the State President to remove the right of ownership of land by foreigners is not only remarkably stupid, in terms of the message it send to foreign investors, that they are no longer welcome to invest in South Africa, but also totally illogical in terms of the thinking behind it.

The reason stated by the President is that millions of South Africans do not own land, and the ownership of that land by foreigners is depriving them of the right to own the land in their own country.  That reasoning is faulty in many respects.

·         There is nothing to prevent a local from owning land, apart from the cost of buying it.  A man from the Eastern Cape or Soweto is just as entitled to buy land as the foreigner.  The fact that three per cent of residential property is owned by foreign citizens is not relevant in this regard.  The chances are that the Soweto man or the Eastern Cape woman does not do so is purely a factor of their ability to pay for it.  Perhaps Zuma or his cronies have their eyes on a prime property in Bishops Court or Sea Point, and see this as a way to prise those properties loose from reprehensible foreign ownership.

·         The conversion of a right of ownership to a long lease will not have any effect in making the property available to South Africans.

·         The main effects of depriving foreigners of the right to own properties for which they have paid will be to encourage them to withdraw their investment(s) from South Africa, and to discourage them from visiting the country, and, in turn, reduce the possibility of them making an investment in South Africa.  The country can certainly not afford either of those effects.

·         The President stated that the example is one set by ‘other countries’, but he neglected to state which other countries.  It is not the pattern set by the United States, Great Britain or Germany, all of which have demonstrated their observance of the principles of democracy, although Mozambique, that model of democratic and economic excellence uses the system.  When will Zuma and his cronies start to understand that the principles and practices of Marx and Stalin are not the ones we should be modelling our future on?

·         The President keeps harping on the need for the Black population to own land.  Why?  Under the tribal system, they do not own the land, and never have.  Any person, Black or White, can buy a piece of land if that is his or her desire, and start to farm on it.  Surely, the efforts and funds of Government would be more fruitfully directed to assisting them to do that.  An interest-free loan for ten years would go a long way to assisting aspirant farmers to acquire the land they aspire to, and to make it produce food for the nation, rather than the sterile granting of land to groups of people who then allow it to degrade, making once-good farms no longer productive.  It is a proven fact that people place on something only the value of what they paid for it.  A grant of land, to the vast majority of people, has little value, and gives no incentive to make it productive.  And let us get away from the idea that a true man must own land.  That is a fallacy that has been inspired by the politicians, to give them a lever to use in their bid to use tax money to buy votes.  Any expenditure, in any organisation, from a company to a Government, can be made only on a reasoned evaluation of its likelihood to produce an economically-justifiable result.  South Africa is in desperate need of jobs and food.  Assisting any aspirant farmer to turn his or her dreams to reality will achieve both ends, and a failure to achieve success will carry the penalty of repayment. 

·         The President errs when he believes that ownership of land is an aspiration only of Black people.  There are tens of thousands of Whites who would be delighted to have the opportunity to own a small farm, and they would put their hearts and souls into making them productive, generating jobs and producing food.  If those are the true desires of the ANC, change the laws from the reverse Apartheid that now exists, and give all people a chance to contribute to the economy.

One important factor that the President has not discussed is who will own the land of which the foreigners are to be dispossessed?  If it is the Government, that will represent a drift towards centralised management of the economy, a communist principle that has been discredited throughout the world, but which appears to be a central desire of the ANC.  If it is to be handed to private persons, a whole new set of questions arise.  Who will those persons be?  Who is likely to want to purchase a property that is subject to a fifty or ninety year lease?  And how much will the price be?  And to whom will it be paid?  Will the future land rates be based on the purchase price paid?  The possible answers are frightening.

In this little part of the plans that the President has for the future of the country, it is possible to see a much broader picture, of centralisation, or exploitation for political ends, of dissimulation and political manoeuvring, and of incompetence on a staggering scale.

One can only hope that the electorate will see the light, that the poor people, who are being held in poverty for political purposes, start to understand that their best interests are not well served by the President and his cronies, before those who pay the taxes that are being squandered by the ANC Government, decide to do something to stop the drift from the ideals of Nelson Mandela towards the kleptocracy that the South African Government has become.