Land reform another ANC debacle
HERE we go again. After the OBE (education) debacle, the arms debacle, the electricity debacle and the HIV/Aids debacle, welcome to the next debacle: the agriculture debacle. Rural Development and Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti sees fit to conjure up a gigantic scheme to redistribute 50% of South Africa's farms to employees free of charge ("Land proposal seen as a quick fix", June 24).
Who is going to carry the R90-billion farming debt? Are the workers also going to split it 50/50?
Farming is not a hobby. It is a multi-million rand business requiring huge inputs of investments, skills, knowledge and hard work.
It is also extremely risky, and is susceptible to droughts, flooding, pollution and disease. If South Africans cannot even run the local spaza shops (now run largely by Somalis, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis), which require far lower levels of investment, skills, knowledge and risk, how are they going to run large commercial farms?
That explains why the few farms that the ANC has already redistributed to our rural poor are now lying largely fallow. All they (farm workers) did was to strip the farm of its assets and thereafter sit around waiting for more government handouts.
The ANC has now built up a dangerous culture of entitlement which will be virtually impossible to eradicate – the genie is out of the bottle. Income (raised through taxation) is being redistributed daily to the poor with free houses, free electricity, free water, free services and free monthly social grants.
There is very little incentive to study, to improve skills, to innovate, to work and to compete. Ironically, we claim to be a Christian nation, but we have thrown out of the window this Judeo- Christian ethic, and replaced it with the socialist-communist ethic of redistribution and retribution.
Wealth cannot be redistributed. Ask the Ugandans when Idi Amin redistributed the wealth of Asians to the African population – the wealth evaporated and disappeared into thin air.
Russians tried the same thing when they undertook voucher privatisation in the 1990s. Again, these vouchers were sold to capitalists and exchanged for consumer goods, and the wealth disappeared into the pockets of a few well-connected oligarchs who now rule the roost.
This evidence shows that poor people do not invest. Only the middle class or the richest 1% do.
The other problem we are going to create is to disturb the compact signed at Codesa between the different racial groups. This compact is based on the protection of private property rights, another Judeo-Christian ethic.
The only way this scheme can be enforced is through mass expropriation without compensation, which means the constitution will have to be changed – music to Julius Malema's ears. This will be a signal to investors that their investments are not welcome anymore.
As agricultural production sinks, money that should be used for education and health will be redirected to importing food at much higher prices. People will stop investing in factories, mines and other businesses, thinking that they will be next for confiscation.
This will lead to a massive flight of capital, collapse of the rand and state liabilities reaching "junk bond" status.
The ANC has already spent R80-billion on land reform over the past 20 years, but so far most of the money has gone down the hole of corruption and bureaucratic incompetence. Imagine if this money was used for responsible land redistribution or to pave all our urban and rural roads or paid for another three power stations?
The return hardly warrants this huge investment – so much for so little. The best thing that can happen to South Africa is to remove this cancer called the ANC and only then will there be light at the end of the tunnel.
Naushad Omar, East London
