The IRR is making the most noise about expropriation without compensation (EWC) and the change to section 25 of the constitution. Almost every week one of its members/writers, particularly its head of research Anthea Jeffery, writes about it, nothing new but essentially the same article.
It's agreed changing the constitution, which was approved by a vote in the National Assembly led by the EFF (it was their proposal) and ANC, which meekly followed and adopted as its own policy, and the bill (public comment on the Constitution Eighteenth Amendment Bill has been extended by a month until February 29), unwise and will damage confidence in the country and its economy. But the reaction especially from IRR has been exaggerated about the impact, namely, South Africa might turn into Zimbabwe or Venezuela where similar polices were adopted that contributed to their economic ruin.
The only reasonable analysis from them was CEO Frans Cronje's, who's generally milder than his reductive colleagues, who wrote of the implication for mortgage borrowers. But in the same article republished in right-of-centre BizNews and Politicsweb (the only two that regularly publish IRR writers), sourced from their media website Daily Friend, Jeffery laid out the case against EWC by making the specious comparisons to Zimbabwe and Venezuela.
These comparisons are alarmist and false equivalence. Neither Zimbabwe nor Venezuela is South Africa. South Africa still has strong institutions, rule of law (fine, in a corrupt and high-crime state) and strong courts.
Jeffery presents both countries' collapse were due to "land grabs", i.e. a lawless, free-for-all. But that won't happen here. Importantly, she presents land grabs - to use their term - was solely responsible for their collapse. That's not true.
One can imagine lawyer Jeffery before a judge: "M'Lord, I present conclusive evidence of EWC's evil nature: neither of my examples - Zimbabwe and Venezuela - is equivalent to South Africa at all, and therefore, useless as evidence".
It's agreed changing the constitution, which was approved by a vote in the National Assembly led by the EFF (it was their proposal) and ANC, which meekly followed and adopted as its own policy, and the bill (public comment on the Constitution Eighteenth Amendment Bill has been extended by a month until February 29), unwise and will damage confidence in the country and its economy. But the reaction especially from IRR has been exaggerated about the impact, namely, South Africa might turn into Zimbabwe or Venezuela where similar polices were adopted that contributed to their economic ruin.
The only reasonable analysis from them was CEO Frans Cronje's, who's generally milder than his reductive colleagues, who wrote of the implication for mortgage borrowers. But in the same article republished in right-of-centre BizNews and Politicsweb (the only two that regularly publish IRR writers), sourced from their media website Daily Friend, Jeffery laid out the case against EWC by making the specious comparisons to Zimbabwe and Venezuela.
These comparisons are alarmist and false equivalence. Neither Zimbabwe nor Venezuela is South Africa. South Africa still has strong institutions, rule of law (fine, in a corrupt and high-crime state) and strong courts.
Jeffery presents both countries' collapse were due to "land grabs", i.e. a lawless, free-for-all. But that won't happen here. Importantly, she presents land grabs - to use their term - was solely responsible for their collapse. That's not true.
One can imagine lawyer Jeffery before a judge: "M'Lord, I present conclusive evidence of EWC's evil nature: neither of my examples - Zimbabwe and Venezuela - is equivalent to South Africa at all, and therefore, useless as evidence".
Like Sherlock Holmes' dog that didn't bark.
Wikipedia's article 2013-Present economic crisis in Venezuela says it was due to various factors, the drop in oil prices, production and exports been significant ones. Expropriation is mentioned among other contributing factors like price controls, firing of the giant state oil corporations's dissident staff and "other disputable government authoritarian and populist policies". Expropriation did cause the collapse of the housing market as developers fled, but government also didn't make policy changes to "adapt to the low petroleum price".
Zimbabwe's farm seizures was a free-for-all. Wikipedia: "The new [black] owners did not have land titles, so they did not have the collateral necessary to access bank loans. Small-scale farmers did not have experience with commercial-scale agriculture. After land redistribution, much of Zimbabwe's land went fallow and agricultural production decreased steeply. Production of tobacco, Zimbabwe's main export crop, decreased by 79% from 2000 to 2008". (It recovered after 2008 - see the article.) Sanctions exacerbated the economic situation.
So, including SA's constitution and strong legal system, neither countries are SA. I'm not saying what happened there can't here, but it's very unlikely.
I've previously said Jeffery and her excitable colleagues are not economists but they do have one at IRR, so why aren't they getting his advice or researching before they rush to print? But I suspect one can't teach an old dog new tricks. They're alarmist and more agent provocateurs than rational researchers. IRR is now more tabloid media than think-tank.
To summarise, Jeffery misrepresents the facts and is making a false comparison to Zimbabwe's and Venezuela's situations. For Venezuela she picks one factor of many - expropriation - as causing its economic collapse but the primary one was the drop in international oil prices the government had no policies to mitigate, fall in oil production due to political reasons and exports. There were other factors too including expropriation that created a housing shortage as developers left, but oil and later US sanctions all played.
In Zimbabwe new black land owners had neither capital nor experience in commercial-scale farming. Production of the main crop, tobacco, fell by 79% (it recovered after 2008). Sanctions imposed because of land seizures completed the economic collapse.
Unlike Zimbabwe, SA's agriculture is not a one-crop economy and agriculture, although important, is not the mainstay of SA's struggling but diversified economy, or Venezuela where oil is it's main economic product.
Even if the worst case happens as IRR are agitating, which I don't believe will, expropriation shall be in a orderly manner over time with recourse to due process and courts which didn't happen in Zimbabwe (I don't know in Venezuela). Likely, cases will drag on for years.
It's bad enough when a narrative is twisted for an agenda but disreputable when statements bordering on lies and outright lies are presented including in media, e.g. BN and PW which publish IRR. In court - Jeffery is a lawyer, though, I doubt a practising one - it's equivalent to suborning perjury, a serious offense.
I take the facts as they are, not conspiracy theories and baseless assumptions as the media, IRR et al and social media commentators ignorantly do, and apply logic, and sometimes deduction based on the facts, to arrive at an assessment and/or conclusion. I'm not cleverer than Jeffery, but different in one respect: I reason, research and am not strangled comatose by ideology or preconceived ideas.
But according to the IRR, Jeffery et al and their supporters are right and have the answers including for events that haven't occurred yet and likely never will despite the facts, in this case about Zimbabwe and Venezuela, being indisputable. And the fact of SA's history and present situation - socially, economically, politically, constitutionally - being different in vital respects from them.
I've said how SA is different and showed Jeffery misrepresented Zimbabwe's and Venezuela's situations but there's proof, based on SA's unique history, of why it will not be like the others:
SA's economy did not collapse despite millions of properties expropriated under the Land and Group Areas Acts and millions of people relocated, sent to mining hostels and refugees in their own country, having to start all over again. In fact in the 1970s, immediately after the Group Areas Act was implemented, the economy did very well. Like Zimbabwe and Venezuela, there were a combination of factors that eventually caused almost total economic collapse 50 to 100 years later: the irrationality of apartheid despite the regime's and whites' vociferous defence of it.
Like the other two, once sanctions were imposed, the end came rapidly. The difference is President FW de Klerk and a few rationalists in his party acknowledged it and made plans.
I mentioned one can't teach an old dog new tricks. Jeffery and her colleagues are like a dog with a bone they've gnawed to nothing, but still chew on obsessively. They're more the yappie lap dog kind, though, rather than fierce Rottweiler (I love animals and no slur is intended on lap or any breed of dog).
AfriForum (AF), now there's the attack dog. They've only been around five minutes compared to IRR's decades and already they're everything IRR's not. They formed a legal unit with bulldog Gerry Nel and even scared the mighty but corrupt and inept NPA into prosecuting cases they'd otherwise not.
About EWC, AF issued a statement they're exploring legal options. AF and IRR have similar objectives - protecting and promoting white, minority interests - but IRR talks only, using war talk of 'fight' and 'resist', and as I said, letting others do so while they remain keyboard warriors.
IRR is a voluble troublemaker, having lost its think-tank status and morphed into a media organisation with one aim only - promoting inclusive (white, monopolisic, oligarchic) economic interests. It's online tabloid, which doesn't report news and only opinion it writes, under the helm of former Weekend Argus editor Michael Morris, (Michael, how has it come to this?), even has a doggie-sounding name, "Daily Friend", as in the white man's best friend.
I have no faith in the ANC government and certain institutions of state, which my posts about various things show, but I have hope, based on SA's experience, in the courts to defend the constitution.
I also don't believe EWC, if implemented - a big if - shall be as bad as IRR say. The fact the ANC are so incompetent is the reason that should give us hope. The present land redistribution scheme and dozen other poverty, employment and economic programmes including NDP came to nought so why won't EWC? Either the accept what I say as valid or must acknowledge their reasoning is inconsistent or wrong. This the problem of their reasoning.
There's another way to look at this: why are they and whites so willing to foresee the worst (despite acknowledging the ANC never gets anything right)? I'll tell you: conservative-right whites have never accepted the new order: a flawed but working democracy. They hanker for apartheid where they pretend everything was fine. It was for them in their privileged bubble but not for others, and are now wishing for an independent Western Cape under their heroine Helen Zille. They ignore the iniquity and inequity of apartheid and pretend laws like Group Areas, from which they or their families benefited, was not worse than EWC.
They're eternal pessimists, and worst, masochists, hoping the worst happens to justify their belief black rule is as bad as apartheid then told you it will be. If BEE, EWC, NHI, Eskom, etc didn't happen, they would have found something - anything - to complain about. Good for them it did.
EWC is a risk, although given the ANC's inability to make anything work including the present redistribution programme, a small one. So given that, would IRR provide probability percentages of urban and farming properties that shall be expropriated without compensation in 5, 10 or 20 years after EWC becomes law taking into consideration it shall be litigated?
Wikipedia's article 2013-Present economic crisis in Venezuela says it was due to various factors, the drop in oil prices, production and exports been significant ones. Expropriation is mentioned among other contributing factors like price controls, firing of the giant state oil corporations's dissident staff and "other disputable government authoritarian and populist policies". Expropriation did cause the collapse of the housing market as developers fled, but government also didn't make policy changes to "adapt to the low petroleum price".
Zimbabwe's farm seizures was a free-for-all. Wikipedia: "The new [black] owners did not have land titles, so they did not have the collateral necessary to access bank loans. Small-scale farmers did not have experience with commercial-scale agriculture. After land redistribution, much of Zimbabwe's land went fallow and agricultural production decreased steeply. Production of tobacco, Zimbabwe's main export crop, decreased by 79% from 2000 to 2008". (It recovered after 2008 - see the article.) Sanctions exacerbated the economic situation.
So, including SA's constitution and strong legal system, neither countries are SA. I'm not saying what happened there can't here, but it's very unlikely.
I've previously said Jeffery and her excitable colleagues are not economists but they do have one at IRR, so why aren't they getting his advice or researching before they rush to print? But I suspect one can't teach an old dog new tricks. They're alarmist and more agent provocateurs than rational researchers. IRR is now more tabloid media than think-tank.
To summarise, Jeffery misrepresents the facts and is making a false comparison to Zimbabwe's and Venezuela's situations. For Venezuela she picks one factor of many - expropriation - as causing its economic collapse but the primary one was the drop in international oil prices the government had no policies to mitigate, fall in oil production due to political reasons and exports. There were other factors too including expropriation that created a housing shortage as developers left, but oil and later US sanctions all played.
In Zimbabwe new black land owners had neither capital nor experience in commercial-scale farming. Production of the main crop, tobacco, fell by 79% (it recovered after 2008). Sanctions imposed because of land seizures completed the economic collapse.
Unlike Zimbabwe, SA's agriculture is not a one-crop economy and agriculture, although important, is not the mainstay of SA's struggling but diversified economy, or Venezuela where oil is it's main economic product.
Even if the worst case happens as IRR are agitating, which I don't believe will, expropriation shall be in a orderly manner over time with recourse to due process and courts which didn't happen in Zimbabwe (I don't know in Venezuela). Likely, cases will drag on for years.
It's bad enough when a narrative is twisted for an agenda but disreputable when statements bordering on lies and outright lies are presented including in media, e.g. BN and PW which publish IRR. In court - Jeffery is a lawyer, though, I doubt a practising one - it's equivalent to suborning perjury, a serious offense.
I take the facts as they are, not conspiracy theories and baseless assumptions as the media, IRR et al and social media commentators ignorantly do, and apply logic, and sometimes deduction based on the facts, to arrive at an assessment and/or conclusion. I'm not cleverer than Jeffery, but different in one respect: I reason, research and am not strangled comatose by ideology or preconceived ideas.
But according to the IRR, Jeffery et al and their supporters are right and have the answers including for events that haven't occurred yet and likely never will despite the facts, in this case about Zimbabwe and Venezuela, being indisputable. And the fact of SA's history and present situation - socially, economically, politically, constitutionally - being different in vital respects from them.
I've said how SA is different and showed Jeffery misrepresented Zimbabwe's and Venezuela's situations but there's proof, based on SA's unique history, of why it will not be like the others:
SA's economy did not collapse despite millions of properties expropriated under the Land and Group Areas Acts and millions of people relocated, sent to mining hostels and refugees in their own country, having to start all over again. In fact in the 1970s, immediately after the Group Areas Act was implemented, the economy did very well. Like Zimbabwe and Venezuela, there were a combination of factors that eventually caused almost total economic collapse 50 to 100 years later: the irrationality of apartheid despite the regime's and whites' vociferous defence of it.
Like the other two, once sanctions were imposed, the end came rapidly. The difference is President FW de Klerk and a few rationalists in his party acknowledged it and made plans.
I mentioned one can't teach an old dog new tricks. Jeffery and her colleagues are like a dog with a bone they've gnawed to nothing, but still chew on obsessively. They're more the yappie lap dog kind, though, rather than fierce Rottweiler (I love animals and no slur is intended on lap or any breed of dog).
AfriForum (AF), now there's the attack dog. They've only been around five minutes compared to IRR's decades and already they're everything IRR's not. They formed a legal unit with bulldog Gerry Nel and even scared the mighty but corrupt and inept NPA into prosecuting cases they'd otherwise not.
About EWC, AF issued a statement they're exploring legal options. AF and IRR have similar objectives - protecting and promoting white, minority interests - but IRR talks only, using war talk of 'fight' and 'resist', and as I said, letting others do so while they remain keyboard warriors.
IRR is a voluble troublemaker, having lost its think-tank status and morphed into a media organisation with one aim only - promoting inclusive (white, monopolisic, oligarchic) economic interests. It's online tabloid, which doesn't report news and only opinion it writes, under the helm of former Weekend Argus editor Michael Morris, (Michael, how has it come to this?), even has a doggie-sounding name, "Daily Friend", as in the white man's best friend.
*
I have no faith in the ANC government and certain institutions of state, which my posts about various things show, but I have hope, based on SA's experience, in the courts to defend the constitution.
I also don't believe EWC, if implemented - a big if - shall be as bad as IRR say. The fact the ANC are so incompetent is the reason that should give us hope. The present land redistribution scheme and dozen other poverty, employment and economic programmes including NDP came to nought so why won't EWC? Either the accept what I say as valid or must acknowledge their reasoning is inconsistent or wrong. This the problem of their reasoning.
There's another way to look at this: why are they and whites so willing to foresee the worst (despite acknowledging the ANC never gets anything right)? I'll tell you: conservative-right whites have never accepted the new order: a flawed but working democracy. They hanker for apartheid where they pretend everything was fine. It was for them in their privileged bubble but not for others, and are now wishing for an independent Western Cape under their heroine Helen Zille. They ignore the iniquity and inequity of apartheid and pretend laws like Group Areas, from which they or their families benefited, was not worse than EWC.
They're eternal pessimists, and worst, masochists, hoping the worst happens to justify their belief black rule is as bad as apartheid then told you it will be. If BEE, EWC, NHI, Eskom, etc didn't happen, they would have found something - anything - to complain about. Good for them it did.
EWC is a risk, although given the ANC's inability to make anything work including the present redistribution programme, a small one. So given that, would IRR provide probability percentages of urban and farming properties that shall be expropriated without compensation in 5, 10 or 20 years after EWC becomes law taking into consideration it shall be litigated?
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