Land is not SA’s problem – poverty is

The distribution of the land to all would mean continued poverty for all, writes

LPat McGee

and in SA is a highly emotional issue currently being exploited by various politicians for their own narrow political ends with scant regard for the real major problems of our country.

Poverty is by far the major problem and this is directly linked to the high unemployment rate, which means 9.3 million people are without jobs.

Politicians, including those of the ANC and EFF, would have us believe that seizing and distributing land would somehow miraculously solve the poverty problem. There is indeed a desperate need for housing land, especially in the urban areas. There is also a need to have a more balanced demographic distribution of land.

But when it comes to poverty relief the figures just do not stack up.

The total land area of SA, which by world standards is a dry country, is 121.9 million hectares.

If we divided this up among the approximately 50 million people (excluding white people) each person would receive 2.4 hectares of land. The average long-term grazing capacity of our country is about 15 ha per large livestock unit (ie a cow). Thus six individuals would have to pool their land to keep one cow.

If we only distributed the high potential land (about 15 million hectares with a grazing capacity of 5 ha/cow) each person would get 0.3 hectares and 16 people would have to pool resources to keep one cow.

The message is clear: distribution of the land to all would mean continued poverty for all.

The solution to the poverty problem in our country is jobs, jobs and more jobs – something that the ANC policies have manifestly failed to deliver.