LETTER: ANC’s land policies stifle wealth-creating business sector

It’s a strange world. There is an easy way for the ANC to remain in power, and for SA  in time to become as wealthy as our  erstwhile colonial master, the UK. Yet the ANC shies away. It simply refuses to save itself and the people of SA.

This way is to recognise and accept that a healthy nation needs a strong economic foundation. The right to property is that foundation. It enables talented, innovative people to satisfy the market — the very market that reflects the desires and needs of the people.

Entrepreneurs will supply better ways of living on Earth and yet also reach for the stars, like Elon Musk. In so doing such innovators grow the nation and lift us all. If we grew at 5% annually we’d have nearly 10 times our present economy within two generations , that is by 2075. We’d catch up with or even surpass  the UK and France.

China adopted market-driven  growth post-Mao, and increased  its economy over 30  times in 50 years. Yet, instead of protecting our market foundation the ANC is digging it up and intends to parcel it out to its cadres.

Nothing will  grow in such disturbed soil.  Yes, the constitution needs to be changed, but in the opposite direction. We should provide that deprivation (dispossession) of property constitutes expropriation, which should be compensated at market value.

Instead we cling to the absurdity that dispossession and the taking of “custody” is not expropriation and need not be compensated, and the further absurdity that holding property as an investment should entitle the state to take it for nothing.

These attitudes stifle the wealth-creating business sector. Instead of being on course to be as rich or richer than the West,  we are heading to be supplicants, begging to be fed as our economy grinds to a halt.

To get on the high road all the ANC has to do is protect our economic foundation. This will enable us to build a great and prosperous society. Market players will do the building. We will head steadily towards a better life, and the party of liberation will be richly rewarded.

Willem Cronje
Cape Town

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