Stomach first, land second
RADICAL economic transformation and radical land redistribution are impossible objectives. It will never work and has never worked anywhere. Colonisation itself from the 1660s till the 1960s was done slowly over a 300-year period. Now the ANC wants to reverse this process in five years or even a year.
Whether it was the Communist USSR, Communist China, Venezuela, Uganda under Idi Amin or Zimbabwe, all these social engineering experiments failed and ended in mass starvation.
Some of our RDP housing beneficiaries actually sold their houses or are renting them out. Why? Because they need the money to survive. Some agricultural land beneficiaries were also given capital with the land. Instead of investing the money in their farms, many of these beneficiaries lived off this money until it was used up.
Most of the farms given to black beneficiaries are lying fallow and are not being farmed. They have been stripped of all their scrap value.
What this means is that what our people need more than land is more education, more skills and more jobs – which will generate some form of income. Stomach first, land second. Land alone will not suffice.
Ironically, threatening white owners of properties with expropriation without compensation is the very thing which will reduce investment and job creation even more.
Mark my words, I predict here that radical economic transformation and radical land redistribution, if it ever gets off the ground and past constitutional muster, will be another failed ANC scheme which will push our growth rate into negative territory and push us into the realm of junk bond status, higher interest payments, less money to borrow, higher import costs, higher inflation, etc.
Taking more land by expropriation is not going to address the real reason why the ANC could not make a success of land reform over the past 23 years. This must be laid squarely at the door of its own policies, its own incompetent cadres, and trying to force ordinary folk to become farmers when they do not have the wherewithal or the inclination to farm.