Business Day

Low-hanging fruit to fix spatial inequity

- Stephen Meintjes Meintjes, a retired equities analyst, is co-author of ‘Our Land, Our Rent, Our Jobs’.

The hoardings hiding empty urban sites in SA are a boon to advertiser­s, but there are so many they can’t get to them all, so the blackjacks flourish amid rubble on many unadorned sites.

How is it that this most “in your face” phenomenon doesn’t rate a mention when SA has just been gifted by a 170-page report with concrete recommenda­tions after a two-year investigat­ion by researcher­s at the prestigiou­s Harvard Kennedy School’s Growth Lab?

Granted, it came out in late November and has had to compete for attention with the growing crescendo of election noise. Moreover, one of the two main conclusion­s — that SA is performing poorly due to collapsing state capacity “because reforms are encounteri­ng systemic, deep-seated and underlying issues of political gridlock, ideology, patronage and an over-burdening of state organisati­ons with goals beyond their core missions and capabiliti­es ”— is hardly news to South Africans.

Neverthele­ss, instead of one loud yawn from civil society, on the one hand, and a deafening silence from the government, on the other, one would have expected calls for action on spatial inequities — also known as the enormous disparity in land ownership in SA — to redouble. This would include those echelons of government the Harvard Kennedy School researcher­s thanked for their assistance during their two years of research.

While the researcher­s did indeed make numerous helpful suggestion­s regarding collapsing state capacity and addressing spatial inequities, they missed the dynamite that would blow the inequities sky high. This would simply begin with the reversal of an administra­tive change made by the ANC 20 years ago, when it insisted that municipal rates be based on the value of both land and improvemen­ts (buildings), rather than land (site) alone.

It wouldn’t require populist gimmicks such as the ANC’s expropriat­ion without compensati­on, let alone the EFF’s nationalis­ation of land. All that is needed to begin with is to allow municipali­ties to restore site value rating if they want to, or introduce it if they didn’t have it before.

There is no doubt that if Johannesbu­rg were to revert, the ensuing positive effects would encourage others to follow.

The site value rating system that Johannesbu­rg and other Gauteng municipali­ties had in place before 2004 was responsibl­e for the enormous economic dynamism that continued long after the gold mines surroundin­g the city had closed.

University of California professor Mason Gaffney, visiting Johannesbu­rg in the early 1990s, remarked that Johannesbu­rg was the only large city not on a river or with a harbour that he knew of, and he ascribed the continuing dynamism to site value rating.

Rating on site (land) value only, as opposed to land as well as buildings (composite), is not rocket science and works simply because it encourages efficient use of land and discourage­s withholdin­g land from use for speculativ­e purposes. That the latter is efficientl­y achieved by composite rating is now plain for all to see.

When you have bought a relatively underdevel­oped urban property for a song, such as at an “emigration” auction, rating on improvemen­ts encourages you to demolish old buildings and hold the land idle while it increases in value as the city continues to grow. On the other hand, site value rating means a property owner pays the same rates even if they keep the land idle. Not having to pay additional rates if the property is developed is certainly an encouragem­ent to do so.

For the record, all of this was explained tirelessly and in great detail

— but to no avail — by Godfrey Dunkley, Peter Meakin, Michael Jacques and others to the parliament­ary subcommitt­ee that considered the draft Municipal Rates & Property Bill before it was passed into law in 2004. The majority of the committee members evidently saw buildings as wealth or capital and were of the ideologica­l mindset that all such obscenitie­s must be taxed.

It goes without saying that the above-mentioned gentlemen would also have pointed out that whatever you tax you get less of — except, funnily enough, land. Given that a greater availabili­ty of land in general would forcefully address the spatial inequities of apartheid, this is a no-brainer that we all need to consider, since if it weren’t for the spectacula­r collapse of state capacity and explosion of crime, the full focus of political debate would long since have returned to land.

In fairness, we should also note that the non-resolution of the land issue is due to the unparallel­ed ability of the ANC to obfuscate and kick cans down the road, as it has with expropriat­ion without compensati­on. But if we don’t come up with the right answer, it will be back.

The Harvard Kennedy School researcher­s also emphasised that new strategies are required “to bridge know-how between the productive economy and rural areas of former homelands, which remain largely excluded” and that “black and poor rural communitie­s are largely stuck in desolate rural areas and isolated suburbs far from jobs in urban areas a legacy of SA apartheid”.

Unsurprisi­ngly, it is not just in solving the problem of the proliferat­ion of blackjack farms in the leafy suburbs of Johannesbu­rg that site rating would work. There is also major scope elsewhere for moving from total reliance on taxation to the collection of land rent. That is a conversati­on we need to have, but in the meantime we must put out some big fires that are relatively easily doused.

As far as those “isolated urban suburbs” are concerned, as a security guard who lives in Pimville put it to me recently, “on weekdays the streets are full as though it is weekend, because the taxis are too expensive and there are no trains so they can’t go to look for work”.

Site value rating would work in the townships as well. Yes, town planning regulation­s might have to be revisited to ensure greater availabili­ty of sites for small and other businesses and industries. Essentiall­y, though, residentia­l and business land values would be lower, encouragin­g start-ups as well as a move from other areas.

Again, it might seem like a big leap from the leafy suburbs to Harvard Kennedy School’s “black and poor rural communitie­s ... largely stuck in desolate rural areas”, but it isn’t because the same principle of taking into account locational advantage also applies in these areas. However, it would probably require commencing the greater conversati­on referred to above, entailing a general move from tax to land rentals.

To begin with, though, company and income tax in those areas could be lowered. It should be recalled that, albeit for completely the wrong reasons, this applied in the former homelands and sustained about 250,000 industrial jobs.

Since the advantages of community-created infrastruc­ture in urban and other areas are also reflected in land values, this would provide a quick, ad hoc move before an expanded conversati­on around general applicatio­n of the principle.

Meanwhile, we have had the need for action on land and state capacity spelt out in no uncertain terms. Best we listen to this friendly warning and pluck the low-hanging fruit now. Most wars, including civil wars, are essentiall­y about land. So before we have yet another one in SA, let’s begin a move to a more intelligen­t, just and prosperous solution.

RATING ONLY ON LAND VALUE WORKS SIMPLY BECAUSE IT ENCOURAGES EFFICIENT USE OF LAND

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