Land rhetoric won’t create jobs, or grow economy

Sam Boikanyo has missed the point on expropriation. I am not against land redistribution, in principle.

He continues to vindicate my view that South Africans suffer from an attitude of exceptionalism. He has not addressed the one question that South Africans have not answered to date.

Land is dangled as a solution for all ills and my question is if land creates wealth, it makes no sense that millions of Zimbabweans and other Africans are still flocking to SA to this day irrespective of what the Freedom Charter says.

It’s not true either that 80% of land is white-owned. Fortunately we no longer rely on politicians who are hungry for power!

I can assure you most of us work for meagre salaries; all we seek is to put food on our families’ tables.

The same land has not stopped many of us to be scattered the world over in pursuit of a better life. South Africans will be killed by exceptionalism. Land does not buy food, my meagre paying job does.

Rather than dangling rhetoric you should be focused on creating jobs and growing this economy.

Those who were dispossessed should be compensated or get their land back.

But creating an impression that everyone is owed a piece of land is disingenuous. Stop creating unrealistic expectations!

All you want to do is to destroy what works. You have already run down too many farms which were once successful and best of all you have not learnt anything from our mistakes.

The EFF will be your worst nightmare, you will miss the ANC faster than anything. Boikanyo is speaking from a theory point of view. I am talking from experience.

You will at last understand why we cross the border illegally to come here. Land expropriation without compensation has no place in modern economies, not because one condones the past injustices but because the world has evolved. You can’t solve a problem with the same mind that created it.

African history has continually proven that their Marxist ideology doesn’t work. It never worked in the USSR, China, Cuba, East Germany, North Korea, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Venezuela.

What kind of continent is this that repeats ideologies that don’t work? Boikanyo cites implementation but the challenge is that socialism is unimplementable!

If Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Zambia failed you will too. To say “we will never become like Zim” is another example of exceptionalism.

As long as Africa fails to reinvent itself to modernity, we will forever lag behind. Zimbabwe is 200 years behind as I speak. A mere bank withdrawal of $50 means you have to sleep outside the bank! Goats are now a currency as we have no currency.

This is the kind of backwardness some of us are trying to save you from.

Tendai Moyo, e-mail