TV expropriation debate enters realm of Neverland
Iwas reminded sharply on Tuesday night of the rebuke “no one forced you to do this” when I guest-anchored the eNCA TV show Let’s Have it Out.
I selected the topic, “expropriation without compensation — the economic consequences”. Intended as a sort of TV bloodsport, my opponent for the evening was EFF Gauteng chairwoman Mandisa Mashego. From the opening bell, or question, I remembered, too late alas, Thomas Friedman’s wisdom on the dialogue of the deaf in the Middle East: “If you ask what is 2+2 and your opponent says 5, you can still have a discussion; but if he answers 87, you are on different planets.” So this proved in our debate about land in South Africa. We were Venus and Mars.
I thought it of interest to ask her how undermining property rights might sit with the 1% of taxpayers (480 000) who pay the bulk of personal taxes, presumably own properties and are highly mobile and able to exit South Africa.
She was having none of it. Instead of an answer on the merits, I was suddenly the proxy on screen for billionaire Christo Wiese, whom she accused of being a tax delinquent, treated with kid gloves by SARS. (Cue here: all white taxpayers are dodgy). Then my parents (both deceased and who to the best of my knowledge were not met in their lifetimes by Ms Mashego) were introduced into the answer: “I’m sure they left you property,” she angrily admonished me.
In response to another question, Ms Mashego chose to deliver a stern warning, quaint in its own way from a leading EFF politician, about polite public behaviour. “I’m just warning AfriForum that they had better behave properly at the Gauteng hearings on expropriation this week.”
Time did not permit me to say that I was neither a member of AfriForum, nor cognisant of Mr Wiese’s tax affairs. But of course this was not about my perspectives, or questions. I was, in terms of her racial and rhetorical co-ordinates, the representative of 4.5 million white people in the country. This was race essentialism laid bare — and little wonder we were veering all over the map.
On the day of this TV joust, the IMF had published a report with the alarming statistic that inflation in Venezuela was soon to hit one million percent. Since this beggared country — once the richest in South America — is the inspiration for both the EFF’s red berets and their land policy, I thought she might want to explain?
It has nothing to do with policy, my opponent confidently advised. “It is all about corruption.” On this basis, South African inflation should also be in the statistical stratosphere, instead of our earthly 4.6%. After all, Ms Mashego had just raved on about ANC corruption as well.
But TV time, like logic, is limited. So I thought I’d target a bull’s-eye: “Can you mention one country in the world where EFF-style expropriation without compensation has actually led to economic growth?” I thought she might mention North Korea. Instead, she floored me with her answer: “Singapore.”
I wondered how the most capitalistic country in Asia with — according to the International Property Rights Index — the highest protection of property rights in that continent, could be a role model for EFF radical policy.
We could not pursue it on air; but Ms Mashego kindly gave me her party’s policy booklet. Buried in it was the “fact” that indeed the state in Singapore owns much of the land.
But unmentioned by the EFF is the analysis by the Singapore Academy of Law Journal (2010) that in the event of a forced expropriation, “compensation is now based on open market value” — a much greater protection than even our current constitution provides.
Facts and figures don’t matter much in this debate. We are in an era that Orientalist Bernard Lewis called political fundamentalism: “I’m right, you’re wrong — go to hell.” But since he is a dead white man, doubtless Ms Mashego and her party can brush off the warning or denounce its genesis. But ignored or not, it rings ever louder.
I was, in terms of her racial . . . coordinates, the representative of 4.5 million white people