Why RDP housing is keeping people poor
Restrictive property rights have led many beneficiaries — who are not "true home owners" — to take the "illegal" route and let out their houses or sell them, writes Martin van Staden
Most people would agree that racial discrimination characterised apartheid. However, with all the confusing political rhetoric heard nowadays, the true methodology used by the apartheid government to oppress the majority of South Africans is often misunderstood. So how did the apartheid government succeed in creating several generations of poor black South Africans? The answer is simple: by restricting their property rights. As Leon Louw said recently on The Renegade Report on CliffCentral, "The worst thing about apartheid was the economics of it." According to the Liberal Party parliamentarian, Edgar Brookes, co-writing with JB MacAulay in 1958, "[the economic life of] the African is almost entirely in the hands of officials … possessed of very wide discretion." The inability of black individuals to engage freely in the market played a major role. Since 1994, various schemes have been devised by the democratic government to "solve" poverty, but none of them have really broached the...
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