By Sanjeev “Mahatma” Gupta
There is something the ones engaged in the heated debate about the impending Land expropriation Law are totally missing: productive land usage. As a disclaimer, this is not an alarmist outlook, but the situation in a country to the North of our Border should serve as a classic example of how a supposedly well-intentioned decision can totally backfire.
In that country, the decimation of a world-class commercial agricultural sector to Stone Age subsistence levels has been universally lamented.
Reflecting on the merits of the haste at which land was redistributed, the country’s leadership rued the transfer of land in the lands of people who did not passion to work the land as the previous white owners did. “Land was forcibly taken from people who were prepared to sacrifice everything to ensure it was used productively to the ones who did not what to do with it,” a lecturer from the University of Zimbabwe was quoted by The Daily News, a newspaper which is the ruling party’s bane.
And, the fear is that at the rate which things are going, South Africa’s land redistribution programme might be headed towards the failed state’s route.
Though the fears might be exaggerated, what is needed is for the government to transfer the expropriation land into the hands of deserving recipients with a basic knowledge of land economics, which the white farmers have in abudance. And, to do this, they have to be trained.
The tragedy of a a country reduced from relative wealth to abject poverty! That’s how miscalculated decisions can backfire!