No single piece of legislation since South Africa became a democracy in 1994 has done as much damage to our economy and our lives as the revised 2024 Expropriation Act allowing the expropriation of private property without compensation.
Signed into law by President Cyril Ramaphosa just before last year’s elections, the inclusion of the words “it may be just and equitable for nil compensation to be paid where land is expropriated in the public interest” was designed to ingratiate his ANC with demoralised poor black voters abandoned by his party between elections. It palpably didn’t work, but it is simply mad to assume that anyone looking to invest here, and in the process create new jobs, would not be intimidated by it.
The rationale doesn’t matter — we all know a court would have to rule on the narrow set of circumstances where “nil compensation” might be applicable. But the fact is that this was a political amendment, forced on an apprehensive president, that had nothing to do with general practice in expropriation. Deputy President Paul Mashatile telling parliament last month that “the ANC is pro-expropriation without compensation, and we have never deviated from that” only digs the hole even deeper.
It is important to remember this and the many other hopeless decisions Ramaphosa has made as we try to come to terms with the fact that as far as the biggest economy in the world is concerned, we are nothing more than a trivial nuisance to be ignored and insulted.
US President Donald Trump may be a vain, vindictive and ignorant man, and the people around him mere lickspittles as they manoeuvre to survive and perhaps replace him, but he won his free election fair and square. We have been simply incapable of countering the lies he tells about us, and there is nothing much we can do about his final shove — barring South Africa from attending any events associated with the Group of 20 he will preside over in the US for the next year.
There is a powerful line in John le Carré’s 1996 novel Our Game where a protagonist under interrogation reminds himself that “when you are accused of monstrous things, nothing sounds so feeble as the truth”, and in many ways that applies to South Africa. There’s no white genocide here, as Trump repeatedly avers. There’s no persecution of Afrikaner farmers, no grabbing of farms.
Our goal is simple — we must urgently at least double the rate of fixed capital investment into the country and mercilessly remove anything that might deter it
But the truth is always indistinct, and the fact is South Africans have had to suffer needlessly under Ramaphosa’s leadership. During the Covid-19 pandemic he allowed Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma to give full vent to her personal loathing of tobacco and alcohol.
As a result of her banning the sale of both under the state of disaster declared by Ramaphosa, the industries and jobs involved in the production of cigarettes, beer and wine were hugely damaged as criminals filled the markets she had patronisingly destroyed.
Finance minister Enoch Godongwana said in his mini-budget last month that “the growing markets for illicit cigarettes and alcohol pose a serious risk to public health and undermine legitimate business … since 2020 government has lost around R40bn in excise revenue to the cigarette black market”. Add forgone alcohol taxes and the cost of lost business from Ramaphosa’s many lockdowns once the virus was in general circulation, and the number is a searing indictment of him and his government.
Add to that the (at least) R1-trillion the ANC has spent on BEE to the benefit of perhaps a few hundred thousand people — while millions wilt under widening inequality and unemployment — and the negligence and incompetence of the ANC come into sharp focus. BEE isn’t working.
Yes, the ANC’s fixation with “transformation” has coloured the economy darker, but it hasn’t changed its shape. Jonny Steinberg wrote eloquently last week how the old apartheid manufacturing economy was “a broken machine taped together with tariffs, import levies and subsidies”, and, frankly, after 30 years of the ANC, it still is.
Fixing this requires an unflinching look at the real economy remedies available, whatever they may turn out to be. This is not 1970. Trade, industry & competition minister Parks Tau, meanwhile, has promised a review of BEE rules, but he is in no position to make a reliable assessment.
So while people may be angry — and others triumphant — over Trump’s distortions and his crudity, now would be a good time to take a hard look at ourselves. Our goal is simple — we must urgently at least double the rate of fixed capital investment into the country and mercilessly remove anything that might deter it. Investment is really all that matters now. Fix it and then Trump can really go take a hike.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.