expropriation – praag.org

The folly of ‘land reform’

Despite the wholesale attack on agriculture and white farmers in South Africa threatening food security, The Times (Johannesburg) believes “land reform” or land grab is a worthy goal, seemingly blind to what a much milder form of the same policy has achieved in Zimbabwe.

Some 70% of farms in Gauteng are either standing idle or are being used as weekend party destinations for the wealthy black elite who use taxpayers’ money to buy up agricultural land.

This is no tiny matter, as the unfolding and alarming situation is strangely not reflected in the analysis, policies and goals of the main “representative” political parties.

After 20 years of democracy and never-ending Anglo-American attemps to stir racial animosity through their myriad of foreign-funded NGO’s – most advocating land grab – blacks are quitting rural areas in droves for the lure of city life.

Established commercial farmers are under pressure, often being forced to contend with deadly political slogans, drought, high input costs, competition from cheap imports and an unsympathetic government who simply ignore the scourge of farm murders. There were about 66 000 commercial farms in this country in 1994; today the number has dwindled to 44 000.

Thousands of white crosses dot the countryside, where farmers have had their weapons confiscated to face a low-intensity war waged against them.

Yet the role of farmers in ensuring our food security and providing employment cannot be overstated.

This year’s bumper maize crop, for example, is causing the price of the staple to drop, putting downward pressure on food prices against the backdrop of inflationary pressure, a weakening currency and a struggling economy.

Despite the abject failure of instilling land-grab fever, The Times chillingly argues that “it goes without saying that the land redistribution process needs to be ramped up”.

How? By arming not only small groups of terrorists against farmers but also whole brigades who will complete a Pol Pot-style ethnic cleansing or genocide?

The editorial continues unashamedly that “reforms to deal with the deep inequalities that persist in our rural areas need to be urgently effected”.

Really? When most inhabitants don’t care for farming and are actually abandoning land, what inequalities might those be?

Clearly cheap slogans and “representativity” have already lost much of their value in the face of reality.

“Land reform” – which envisages the expropriation of half of all commercial farmland without compensation on behalf of farmworkers – is not only unworkable and will destroy what is left of agriculture and food security. It is also deadly.

It would make far more sense to abandon this folly and to stop dreaming up grand imperial schemes to steal agricultural land and engineer famines. Stalinist planning really does not have the same allure any more, despite American attempts to restore the Cold War.

The Anglo-American NGO’s and their paid flunkeys need to pack their bags and leave.

An end to free government housing?

Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu wants to end to free government housing.

“Somebody has to have the courage to say this is not what we intended,” she said. Free housing was not in the Freedom Charter, which talked of there being houses, or in the constitution, which set out the right of access to adequate shelter.

Currently there are many reports of beneficiaries of free government housing selling their homes, often for next to nothing and without the right paper work.

In her budget speech this week Sisulu said it was do-able to provide 1.5 million housing opportunities over the next five years.

This included about one million brick-and-mortar free government houses, with 50 mega-projects of at least 10 000 units to get under way within 100 days.

The remainder would be made up of site and service spots, where people could build their own homes, affordable rental accommodation and the financing in the gap housing market for those earning too much to qualify for free homes and too little for commercial mortgages.

Land is at the heart of state housing provision in integrated human settlements. Sisulu is determined suitable land will be identified and acquired: “We might think of expropriating for this purpose.”

But as the Lwandle evictions in a freezing mid-winter cold spell showed, the DA-controlled Cape Town council and provincial administration, the government-owned SA National Roads Agency and the national transport and human settlements departments will be subject to a ministerial inquiry.

Sisulu is adamant the lessons from this eviction will be applied countrywide and, if necessary, the Prevention of Illegal Eviction Act will be amended to ensure every party is aware and sticks to its obligations.

“It’s not just about Lwandle,” Sisulu said.

Zimbabwe arrives in SA: ANC’s plan for expropriation

Dr Anthea Jeffery, head of Special Research at the Institute of Race Relations, says the Investment Bill opens the door to expropriation without compensation and is a new Expropriation Bill by another name.

Media coverage of the Promotion and Protection of Investment Bill of 2013 (the Investment Bill) has focused on its role in replacing South Africa’s bilateral investment treaties with various European states. Representatives of these countries have broken their usual diplomatic silence to warn against the reduced protection it gives investors from their states. However, the true significance of the Bill goes very much beyond this.

The Investment Bill is, in fact, a new expropriation measure that will apply to all property owners in South Africa, both local and foreign. It is also likely to result in many people receiving zero compensation on the loss of their property, provided the State takes this, not as owner, but rather as ‘custodian’ for the disadvantaged. In combination with the Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Bill of 2013, it could see property of many kinds taken by the State as ‘custodian’ for land claim- ants and without any compensation to its former owners. Yet most commentary on the Investment Bill has overlooked this risk, helping to lull all property owners into a false sense of security.

A misleadingly named Promotion and Protection of Investment Bill of 2013 was gazetted by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) in November last year. The three months allowed for public comment expired at the end of January 2014. Since then, media coverage has been sanguine or absent, helping to obscure the threat posed by the Investment Bill to the property rights of every person, whether local or foreign.

Under the Investment Bill, the rights of domestic property owners will be much reduced. The current Expropriation Act of 1975 gives them the right to full compensation on expropriation, which must include not only the market value of their properties but also compensatory damages for consequential loss. The Act also guarantees them immediate payment of 80% of the compensation due, with interest on the outstanding balance.

Under the Investment Bill, by contrast, expropriated owners will receive less than market value and will have no right to damages for consequential loss. They will also have to wait for the State to make payment in what it regards as ‘a timely manner’.

However, the real danger in the Investment Bill is not that domestic property owners will be confined to ‘just and equitable’ compensation falling somewhat short of market value – but that they will receive no compensation at all.

This danger stems from a key clause in the Investment Bill stating that various actions ‘do not amount to acts of expropriation’. According to the Bill, there will thus be no expropriation where the Government’s actions result ‘in the deprivation of property’ but ‘the State does not acquire ownership’ and ‘there is no permanent destruction of the economic value of the investment’.

Shares in farms a smoke-screen for expropriation

The issue of proposed shares for farmworkers is a thinly disguised attempt by government to expropriate farms and could allow the uncertainty amongst South African farmers about their future to reach crisis levels, Mr. Pieter Groenewald, the Freedom Front Plus’ parliamentary spokesperson on Rural Development and Land Reform, said.

Mr. Groenewald said the proposals contained in a policy document of the department of Rural Development and Land Reform about the voluntary issuing of shares to farmworkers, boils down to nothing less than brutal expropriation of land, similar to that which took place in Zimbabwe.

According to Mr. Groenewald the document is making waves in agricultural circles and the proposals have been met with great concern.

One of the proposals in the document is that a person with ten year service is entitled to 10% shares for 50 years. The document does not at all make mention of what would happen if workers eventually hold the majority of the shares in a farm.

The document also mentions that it intends to reverse a wide range of uncertainties regarding property rights which were brought about by land expropriation, humiliation and exploitation of people.

Mr. Groenewald said the proposals are frightening and could cause enormous harm to South Africa’s agriculture as it could lead to large scale disinvestment.

“What will happen if a farmer has four workers who worked on his farm for 25 years each? Will that mean that they could take over ownership without compensation and the farmer has to seek another livelihood?

“South Africans and the world should open their eyes now about the ANC government’s plans with land ownership in South Africa.

“It is clear that the land reform program is a miserable failure and other plans are now being made to expropriate land from farmers without compensating them,” Groenewald said.