Ten days ahead of the meeting between Presidents Cyril Ramaphosa and Joe Biden, the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) has voiced strong views about an issue that should be on the table.
The meeting on September 16 comes two days after the Expropriation Bill is scheduled to be voted on by Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Public Works and Infrastructure – and the IRR believes it should be raised by the American president.
The Expropriation Bill poses an existential threat to property rights and economic growth in South Africa. In Section 12(3) the Bill allows Expropriation without Compensation (EWC) under an open list of circumstances, says IRR head of campaigns Gabriel Crouse.
In 2020 the institute commissioned an independent pollster to survey a random, demographically representative sample of people who were asked, among other things, whether they preferred the promise of jobs and economic growth, or EWC. Some 15% of white respondents said they preferred EWC, but a super-majority of more than 80% in each race group said they preferred jobs and economic growth, according to Crouse.
The same survey asked people to identify the two biggest unresolved challenges in South Africa. This was the first question in the survey, there was no prompting, and respondents were free to list any issues that were important to them. The majority said “unemployment”. Some 44% prioritised crime, corruption and corrupt leadership. Only 4% mentioned “land reform”.
The IRR believes land reform should be addressed by strengthening property rights, which includes privatising the state-owned land on which approximately 20 million South Africans reside. It has crafted a comprehensive alternative approach in the “Ipulazi” proposal for rural land reform and the “Indlu” proposal for urban land reform. [https://irr.org.za/reports/atLiberty/files/liberty-issue-44-reaching-the-promised-land-18-09-2019.pdf]
Apart from the fact that most South Africans prefer growth and jobs to EWC, the US government has in the past given clear warnings to the South African government that the erosion of property rights and trade would have dire consequences, Crouse. Barack Obama issued such a warning directly on the matter of trade barriers, while Mike Pompeo, former US Secretary of State, issued this warning in terms of EWC.
“Will Biden raise the threat of EWC with Ramaphosa, or will this item be left off the agenda?
As the examples of Venezuela and Zimbabwe show, EWC imposes intolerable costs on a population. It would be a shocking act of complacency for a leader of the United States not to warn against this happening again in South Africa.”
