Sure way to end freebies

Any system setting out to be an alternative to private ownership will fail. No one has beaten the market, be they communist Russia, communist China, Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe or Hugo Chavez. Even the ancient Greeks had a dabble at communism.

The market is the great allocator of resources and the great distributor of wealth. Governments can intervene, but not conquer.

There are two mechanisms that ameliorate the excesses of the market. The one is market regulation to mitigate allocation inefficiency and the other is taxes, which should mitigate a distribution inequality.

The ANC has been doing both and we are having real, sustainable transformation as thousands of black people purchase farmland and JSE shares. This is real, sustainable and organic transformation and requires time and patience to succeed.

Radical economic transformation and expropriation without compensation are not real, are not sustainable and will not magically transform poverty into riches.

It is an illusion that economic transformation can come at the stroke of a pen.

Social grants – and all the other freebies like free houses, free education, free healthcare – are not actually free, but from the wealth earned by our capitalist system.

Tamper with that system by destroying the right to property, and with it trust in government institutions and policies, and out of the door go all the freebies.

Ask the Zimbabweans and Venezuelans what happened to their freebies. There are none now.

Ask them what happened to the property expropriated. Lying around in a state of dereliction.

Ask them what happened to the engine of economic prosperity. The engine seized. – Naushad Omar, via e-mail