Nicholas Woode-Smith writes that the EWC will be the final death knell for South Africa’s economy. Private property rights, and the assurance that the government can’t just take away your property, is a cornerstone of civilisation. David Ritchie African News Agency (ANA Archives)
Three policies, all in various forms of implementation, threaten the livelihoods of all South Africans, faltering our growth and development, and ensuring that unemployment, crime and corruption flourish.
If the government of national unity (GNU) is to usher in a brighter future for this country, it must do all it can to end the oncoming threat of Expropriation Without Compensation (EWC), stop the implementation of National Health Insurance (NHI), and finally put a stop to the scourge that is ill-thought out Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) policies.
EWC will be the final death knell for South Africa’s economy. Private property rights, and the assurance that the government can’t just take away your property, is a cornerstone of civilisation.
With EWC, the government will not only have its proposed powers to strip people of their property in the name of redress, but additionally will have the powers to take property away from everyone. This enables vast amounts of land theft, corruption, and is a foundation for totalitarian state ownership of all land.
If EWC is implemented, investment, foreign and local, will stop and flee. Developments will stop. There will be a complete erosion of trust in South Africa’s economy, and we will follow Zimbabwe’s example and be relegated to the status of a broken nation.
The NHI has been passed but will take sometime to be implemented. This is because the policy is unworkable and potentially disastrous. NHI has been pushed by deceitful promises of free, universal health care. In actual fact, all it does is persecute private healthcare spending, while threatening to force all individuals under a single, bloated, underfunded and corrupt system.
Public hospitals are already a death trap, and the public healthcare system cannot perform adequately as it stands. NHI wants all South Africans to be cared for under a single public health-care system. And who will pay for this? An already emaciated and crushed taxpayer base, that was already paying tax while simultaneously easing the burden on the public sector by using private healthcare.
The BEE, Broad-based BEE, and other racial quotas, affirmative action and a host of abbreviations all contribute to the flourishing of corruption and unemployment in this country. While BEE was advertised as an innocent policy to provide redress and help the disadvantaged and previously disadvantaged gain economic opportunities, it has proven to be anything but innocent. BEE has been leveraged by corrupt individuals to seize tenders, which they inadequately fulfil at exorbitant prices, while also being used to capture private sector businesses and loot them of their wealth.
Deserving and genuinely disadvantaged black individuals have not benefited from BEE. Only politically connected, already rich cadres and cronies have benefited from hiding their nepotism and corruption behind BEE red tape. BEE procurement has resulted in the collapse of service delivery in municipalities, the looting of public coffers, and the stifling of economic growth.
If we want a brighter future for this country, we must embrace sound policy. This new government has given us the first real opportunity in three decades to push the ANC to set aside its obsession with racial national, Marxism and communist ideology, and rather embrace rational policy that will genuinely serve to uplift all South Africans.
* Nicholas Woode-Smith, Economic historian, policy analyst and author.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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