LETTER: No redress in land grabs

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Parliament has approved the Expropriation Bill, providing for land seizure by the state — that is, something for nothing (“How expropriation laws will undermine access to capital”, September 29).

This is tragically deluded. Land and agriculture ceased to be central to the world’s societies centuries ago. Farming is today a risky high tech business. Bare land is useless.

The tragedy is that SA’s governing alliance believes land and tangible goods are the route to wealth creation, and hence  equity and equality. But the alliance is like a bull chasing the matador’s cape. There is nothing to the cape. Real wealth is intangible.

If the ANC wants redress (as we all should) it must seek it in the transfer of skills. The only wealth worth pursuing is in the mind. To enable the creation of this wealth it is necessary to safeguard the tangible base, which itself has no utility but on which true  wealth is built by the application of intellectual endeavour.

It is necessary to abandon BEE quotas so as to facilitate competition. It is in open competition  with the world’s best that real wealth is created.

President Cyril Ramaphosa must have realised this when he said, apropos the restructuring of Eskom debt: “There is nothing for nothing in this world.” Pity he didn’t see the connection to the approval of the Expropriation Bill.

Willem Cronje 
Cape Town

JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.​