LETTER: Expand property rights

Prominent agricultural economist and Business Day columnist Wandile Sihlobo has drawn attention to the potential for the government of national unity (GNU) to leverage the agricultural economy for economic growth and development, and warned against making it “a casualty of populist politics”.

We would second this. Agriculture occupies a strategic place in our economy, and the sector has demonstrated enormous resilience and innovation in a harsh and often hostile environment. But a large element of this has come from the state itself. This is not just about its flawed stewardship of infrastructure and its inability to exercise satisfactory disease control, but also a deliberate policy agenda to abridge property rights.

The proposed constitutional amendment may have failed, but other elements — such as the Expropriation Bill — endure. So too has the effective refusal to grant ownership to millions of households under traditional authority, and to recipients of landholding through redistribution programmes. Whether this can be termed “populist” or the outgrowth of deep-seated ideological impulses, the danger to the sector has been and remains much the same.

The success of whatever GNU eventually comes into being will be bound to its ability to maintain a pragmatic, future-focused policy orientation. This will require some difficult and painful choices, and abandoning policy trajectories that have undermined the growth prospects SA desperately needs.

Protecting property rights — and expanding them — would be a tangible demonstration of this.

Terence Corrigan
Institute of Race Relations

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