From the BBC:
Some 90% of farms redistributed to South Africa's black population from white farmers are not productive, the government has said. Land reform minister Gugile Nkwinti warned the land might be repossessed if the farms continued to fail.
Almost 60,000 sq km (23,000 sq miles) have been redistributed under policies aimed at benefiting black people who were left impoverished by apartheid. The land was bought from white farmers who sold up voluntarily...
But Mr Nkwinti ... said the focus would now shift to helping the black farmers make their land productive. "The farms - which were active accruing revenue for the state - were handed over to people, and more than 90% of those are not functional," he said, "They are not productive, and therefore the state loses the revenue. We cannot afford to go on like that... No country can afford that."
At the end of apartheid in 1994 almost 90% of land was owned by the white community, which made up less than 10% of the population. Land reform is a sensitive issue in South Africa and has been brought into sharp focus by the decline of agriculture in neighbouring Zimbabwe, where many white commercial farmers have been violently evicted.
Requisitioning land is a dangerous practice of course, what the cunning cove would have done is say to Whitey:
"OK, you're good at this farming lark, our country needs you, but look at what's happening in Rhodesia - you don't want that to happen to you, do you? So how about we protect you and your livelihoods in exchange for you handing back some of your super-profits* as Land Value Tax?"
* To the extent there were any, you'd have to compare it with the incomes that they could earn from farming elsewhere, or how much rent tenant farmers were prepared to pay and so on.
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13 comments:
But thye ANC were communists so any ideas by Adam Smith and Ricardo would bot be given attention.
This will surprise none of the white South Africans I know over here. Those farms were settlers homesteads - the land was made productive by the white farmers and South Africa's wealth (relative to its neighbours) grew on the back of it.
So, take away the white farmers and by default, the land reverts to its pre-farm state. The idea that white farmers were somehow depriving the black population from their farming land was always a politically motivated idea grounded in fallacy.
Paul,
That all sounds very like Boilerplate Marx.
Blacks are thick.
OK, you're good at this farming lark, our country needs you, but look at what's happening in Rhodesia - you don't want that to happen to you, do you? So how about we protect you and your livelihoods in exchange for you handing back...
Sounds rather too close to Nice place you got here. You wouldn't want anything to happen to it, would you? ...
Yours is certainly a sensible idea but given the political reality of black resentment, anything comes across as "you do a deal and give us more money or else".
In other words it doesn't sound too different from what is actually transpiring.
Paul, AC1, I shall be interested to see whether and how your spat develops :)
NHH, off to re-education camp with you! What you mean is "they suffered from decades of white oppression and weren't given the opportunity to grow as a people. Which is why they can't even run a farm". Or something.
TDK... and that is exactly how it was meant to sound.
Whitey, on the other hand, is perfectly entitled to do his own calculation and say "Yes, but if it weren't for me looking after it, it would be worth nothing, and if you hand it over to your people, it will have negative value [which is now clearly the case]" and then compare that with the income he could earn from being a tenant farmer elsewhere in the world.
It may well be that the tax revenues would have been small, that I do not know, but that is the most that the new regime could have squeezed out of them.
Never before have so many been so disappointed by something so inevitable.
In many instances I suspect that the transfer will also move the land status from private property with clear property rights, to commonage, possibly under tribal law.
The results are predictable.
Land redistribution is alleged to have worked well in some places (e.g. Taiwan - but everything seems to work well there). There seem multiple problems with the notion in South Africa. As I understand it, the land is given (rather than sold) to applicants, who are scarcely likely to place a high value on it as a result. Modern commercial farming is highly capital intensive - do the new owners have the skills to apply to banks for credit? To buy and operate sophisticated machinery? To maintain irrigation schemes etc. etc. etc. Of course the whole thing is half baked.
Anecdotally and incidentally, I gather that the death by murder rate amongst white South African farmers is even higher than it is/was for their Zimbabwean counterparts.
'To the extent there were any, you'd have to compare it with the incomes that they could earn from farming elsewhere'.
From memory a lot of Zimbabwean farmers moved to Botswana which has a similar, though virgin, topography and ergo needs more initial work(with the trade off that with good planning crops can be better organised with better returns).
Anyone who has travelled in Africa will come across British trained engineers, accountants, lawyers: name your accepted middle class profession and they are there in abundance.
The punchline is that they run B&Bs, bars etc. as trying to actually do work for their country requires so much graft(corruption) that they decide it is not worth the effort and they can make a good living in a place(with a few comforts available to the richer)that most would consider akin to paradise.
Add that into the mix.
I too look forward to Paul v AC1. Methinks AC1 has slightly more to explain. A tad, but an important one.
STB.
Anon 1, yes, because Taiwan has LVT, so the land only went to people who were at least as productive as the previous owners.
Anon 2, that's not anecdotal, it's true. Second highest murder rate in the world after Columbia (and far worse than Iraq or Afgh).
STB, I happen to know a farmer (originally from Yorkshire I think) who farms in Botswana, which appears by all accounts to be a very well run country (they've negotiated a free trade deal with the EU, for example). I haven't had the temerity to ask him about that country's tax system yet.
> The idea that white farmers were somehow depriving the black population from their farming land
I was agreeing with Paul, but it came accross wrong.
Sorry.
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