Land reform

Business and economic indexes, Competitiveness, Credit risk ratings, Crime against business, ECONOMIC GROWTH/ANTI-GROWTH FACTORS, Enterprise research, data and statistics, Expropriation without compensation, Job creation and unemployment, Land reform, Property rights, Public service delivery

Government sabotages growth through property rights uncertainties and ignoring Moody’s warning shots

The heated debate between proponents of property protection and those in favour of confiscation (expropriation without compensation) has been characterised by a lack of data and waged mainly on ideological and emotional arguments. The lack of an acceptable factual basis is evident in:

Government, AgriSA and Afriforum operating with different figures for categorising land ownership according to race;
The number of farms on the list for the first round of expropriation. (If there was such a list).
Uncertainty about the number of recipients of free subsidy houses (where transfer of title has not taken place) and how these properties should be counted.
Arguments that expropriation would kill the economy simply being countered with promises that the economy would not be harmed.

At the public consultations the facts applied were almost always derived from (and limited to) local situations and narratives with no or little attention to systemic information. EOSA therefore analysed last year’s WEF’s Global Competitiveness Index (as part of our enterprise research on relevant data and statistics) to assess whether there are some global indicators to inform the debate. Several significant correlations are evident from the WEF data:

Highly competitive countries have strong protection of property rights.
High per capita GDP goes hand-in-hand with property rights.
Poor policing and high cost of crime for businesses are not characteristics of highly competitive countries.

Continue reading “Government sabotages growth through property rights uncertainties and ignoring Moody’s warning shots” →

Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (ASGISA), Anti-business, Anti-poor, Black economic empowerment (BEE), Business incubation, Cooperatives, ECONOMIC GROWTH/ANTI-GROWTH FACTORS, ECONOMIC POLICY AND STRATEGY, Enterprise friendly environment, Informal businesses, Job creation and unemployment, Land reform, Preferential procurement

Cyril on a tight-rope: Paradox, not policy certainty the outcome of the ANC conference

Will the honeymoon breathing space of optimism that the worst corruption is over and that more business-friendly policies and better public spending behaviour be utilised or wasted? With new reports of the ANC’s national executive committee setting wheels in motion to recall Zuma as president, it is important to note that acting against Zuma would still not set enterprise friendly policies in place.

South Africa’s post-apartheid ANC policies and strategies dealing with enterprise development have been largely driven by an increasingly unfriendly framework for established businesses as well as an anti-growth premise. In the final gasps of December 2017, the ANC Conference even took unanimously policy positions that makes mockery of Ramaphosa’s utterances of making growth the priority.

The decisions to endorse Zuma’s announcement on free tertiary education and to change the Constitution to enable expropriation without compensation, provide ample proof the ANC doesn’t understand what is required to ensure growth and to step back from the fiscal cliff.

Continue reading “Cyril on a tight-rope: Paradox, not policy certainty the outcome of the ANC conference” →

Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (ASGISA), Anti-business, Anti-poor, Black economic empowerment (BEE), Black-owned businesses, ECONOMIC POLICY AND STRATEGY, Entrepreneurial activity, Job creation and unemployment, Land reform, Preferential procurement, Processors

Ready to choose a San hunter rather than a Sherpa guide for mountaineering? Dlamini-Zuma on Radical Economic Transformation

When Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma announced her Manifesto for Change, she reminded me somewhat of the stern Mother Abbess singing “Climb every Mountain” for Maria (Julie Andrews) in The Sound of Music.

Definitely not her voice, but her words… Dlamini-Zuma summoned support for Radical Economic Transformation (RET): “We must know which hills to tackle next. …(t)hese are the mountain of economic transformation, the highland of land redistribution and the summit that must see us educating and skilling our people. If not, the negatives will swallow the gains we have made.”

Mother Abbess