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South African Parliament Votes to Confiscate White-Owned Land Without Compensation

posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday February 28 2018, @01:17PM   Printer-friendly
from the Apartheid-2.0 dept.

Mykl writes:

As reported in news.com.au, South Africa's Parliament have voted to "expropriate" land from white farmers with no compensation.

From TFA:

The motion was brought by Julius Malema, leader of the radical Marxist opposition party the Economic Freedom Fighters, and passed overwhelmingly by 241 votes to 83 against. The only parties who did not support the motion were the Democratic Alliance, Freedom Front Plus, Cope and the African Christian Democratic Party
...
"The time for reconciliation is over. Now is the time for justice," Mr Malema was quoted by News24 as telling parliament. "We must ensure that we restore the dignity of our people without compensating the criminals who stole our land."
...
Mr Malema has been leading calls for land confiscation, forcing the ANC to follow suit out of fear of losing the support of poorer black voters. In 2016, he told supporters he was "not calling for the slaughter of white people‚ at least for now"

This policy has been tried in other African countries before, most recently Zimbabwe, with disastrous results. The farms appropriated usually fail rapidly, leading to food shortages and economic destruction. Will South Africa be able to avoid repeating history, or is it about to slide into 3rd World status?

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday February 28 2018, @06:08PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 28 2018, @06:08PM (#645282) Journal

    A land tax may gradually help with land inequality (or not - if you can't make that land turn a better-than-2% return on value, I'm sure one of your wealthier neighbors can)

    OTOH, we could a) put in a fixed deduction so those with low value land don't pay this tax, and b) simply not care about people who can't even pay a small tax on land after said deduction. Get them out and someone more productive in.

    I get that there's all sorts of scams that can be played with property values (such as overvaluing someone's property by an order of magnitude and then selling that property for cents on the dollar to said rich people), but you fix that by having rule of law, not by committing economic suicide just because you have poor people.