By
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board
South African opposition party
Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema gives a press conference
in Cape Town, Feb. 15. Photo: gianluigi guercia/Agence France-Presse/Getty
Images
Land expropriation produces misery wherever it is
tried.
No country ever became rich through
its government’s seizure of private property (exhibit A: the Soviet Union), but
politicians in South Africa want to give it another go.
That’s the disheartening news from
Cape Town this week, where the National Assembly voted 241-83 on Tuesday
to start a process to amend the constitution and allow land expropriation
without compensation.
A parliamentary committee will review the motion and
report by Aug. 30.
Land long has been a fraught issue
in South Africa, where during the apartheid era blacks were barred from buying
property in white areas. Post-apartheid, the government bought land and offered
compensation to South Africans whose property had been forcibly seized after
1913.
Many of those claims are now
settled, and more than 90% of claimants chose to receive cash instead of land
titles, a reflection of the country’s rapid urbanization. According to a 2016
Institute of Race Relations survey, less than 1% of South Africans think land
is one of the country’s “serious unresolved problems.” Unemployment, public
services, housing and crime rank far higher.
You’d never know these facts from
the rhetoric offered by the motion’s sponsor, Julius Malema of the far-left
Economic Freedom Fighters party.
Mr. Malema believes the state should be the “custodian” of the nation’s
property, and that government expropriation will “restore the dignity of our
people without compensating the criminals who stole our land.” His party says
the expropriation “should apply to all South Africans, black and white.”
The idea is likely to duplicate the
awful experience of Zimbabwe during the Robert Mugabe era, a case study in the
reality that bureaucrats can’t distribute resources more efficiently or
productively than private markets. Mugabe’s confiscations spooked investors,
the agricultural industry collapsed, and a once prosperous country became known
for hyperinflation and poverty.
Mr. Malema may believe that the
Zimbabwe model will lead South Africa to “a new vision of agrarian revolution.”
But the ruling African National Congress is supporting the measure to
distract attention from its own failed statist economic policies, which have
produced subpar growth and denied opportunity to poor South Africans. The first
budget of new President Cyril Ramaphosa suggests these policies will continue.
South Africa needs more capital,
more investment and a favorable business environment.
Seizing private
property has produced misery everywhere it has been tried. South Africans don’t
need more of that.
