Your report mischaracterises President Cyril Ramaphosa’s plan for property rights (Ratings agencies are happy with Nene, March 14). You write of "his plan to change the Constitution to allow white-owned property to be taken without payment for redistribution to landless blacks". This is not so. Section 25 of the Constitution relates to all property — not just land. Land is simply the thin end of a political wedge, which can be used to dilute property rights more broadly. Nor is it the case that only "white-owned property" will be taken. Before backtracking this weekend, the ruling party’s ideological allies in the assault on property rights, the EFF, made it quite clear that black people would likewise lose their property rights. This will inevitably be the case, as the Constitution cannot easily sustain a clause limiting property rights to blacks only. Nor is it the case that expropriated property will be handed to "landless blacks". Property will be held by the state – and used by...
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