Carol Paton and Brian Kantor's recent columns both focused on expropriation without compensation but presented different outlooks on the subject (“Land matters. It is as simple and as complicated as that”, April 8, and “Why protecting property is so necessary”, April 8)).
Paton holds the view that the original sin of dispossession must be dealt with: constitutional justice will not be legitimate if the foundation upon which it stands is stolen property. Kantor focuses on wealth as a commodity: certain conditions, namely private property rights, must be in place for it to be created; without these there will be insufficient means and motivation to either create or increase wealth, the result being a gradual impoverishing of society.
These two articles also look towards the betterment of our country. For Paton, it is the just restitution of land that will move SA to where the vast majority of its people who have no property in the land of their birth will see a change in their status: they may come to benefit from the wealth land can bring. Kantor, however, sees the safeguarding of present property rights as crucial for the purposes of investment and incentive, the means whereby growth of wealth is made possible. This, in turn, presents further opportunity via the wealth gained and can be the engine for social upliftment. If Paton’s definition of original sin is the colonial and apartheid governments’ dispossession of black people, Kantor’s is the move to expropriate private property without some form of compensation.
Paton’s concept of original sin, though accurate in certain ways, cannot be wholly extrapolated into the SA of today because the bulk of the land that was originally dispossessed does not exist in its original state. Ownership of it as private property has resulted in business, industries, homes and many other developments. As land in itself has no value until it has been put to use, its present value has to take into account the work and money expended upon it. To expropriate land without acknowledging these factors via a form of compensation robs the owner of what has been invested in it.
A further point needs to be considered in the expropriation debate: the outcome of the transfer of land. The justification of such a policy is that it will help right the wrongs of the past and restore land to its rightful owners. Such an idea may seem acceptable, but the efficacy of what follows after the land has been confiscated may be minimal. For these actions to be more than a symbolic gesture the land has to be used to create increasing wealth. That at least 50% of the state’s initiatives in reallocating land for profitable purposes have failed, resulting in a huge waste of taxpayers’ money and the degradation of what was once a wealthy resource, points to the benefits of expropriation without compensation being doubtful. Various state-owned enterprises being run into the ground has also shown that government’s ability to manage resources is limited.
If expropriation without compensation gets into the statute books via the proposed amendment to the constitution SA's future will be endangered. Righting historical wrongs will be small comfort to a society which may move towards a dog-eat-dog survival mentality owing to the bleeding away of what wealth the country presently possesses. An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.
Roger Graham
Cape Town
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