Oyena Gwebityala

I am still reeling from a public debate I watched yesterday, not because it was particularly good (it might as well have been a one man show), but because of its content. The debate was about a new expropriation bill that was before parliament recently and has now joined the national health insurance bill on the shelf. The bill in its entirety is very disturbing.

Here are a few characteristics of the bill:

1) The minister (I’m assuming of land affairs) has the right to expropriate any property from its current owner if this is viewed to be in the public interest (the definition of public interest is vague and open to much abuse)

2) Property is not just limited to land; it includes intellectual property, shares in companies, banks and other businesses

3) The victim of the expropriation has no legal recourse at all; the only time an expropriation can be challenged in court is if it’s not procedurally correct. However the reason for the expropriation itself is not up for discussion.

4) Although there is compensation, this compensation need not necessarily be the market value of whatever property is being expropriated

I don’t know about everyone else but I find this bill very draconian. Taken to its most watered down version, the government could force a wealthy person in Sandton to move out of his 10 bedroom house (assuming he stays alone), because it would be in the public interest to house a family of ten living in a 2 bedroom house in Alex. Or if one invented a drug for say AIDS that was too expensive to buy, government could legally (under the bill) violate the intellectual property rights of that person to produce the drug anyway. Don’t even get me started on the banks, hospitals, private schools and fuel companies whose blood COSATU has been baying for.

In my opinion this policy gives far too much power to government officials who have already shown that they can use power to further their own aims, even against public good e.g travel-gate, arms deal etc. Government has become synonymous with corruption, giving them a window to this much power and this much resources could be a very dangerous thing to do.

As well this policy could retard the economic growth advances that we have been making in the country. Very few investors would want to build factories here if their property rights were not guaranteed. As well farmers would have even less off an incentive to make their farms very productive if their land could be taken that immediately and without proper compensation.

One of the guys in the debate asked me how I as a black man could be worried about intellectual property rights; and that is just the main problem with the bill and its proponents. In the haste to redistribute resources in this country those in power have forgotten that new wealth can be created as well. Government is happy about giving black people shares in existing companies, ignoring completely that a better way (though perhaps more difficult) would be to encourage entrepreneurship among the previously disadvantaged. So I might not need intellectual property rights now, but I will in the future, when I start inventing stuff. The only man who made sense in that debate pointed out quite correctly that “government is too concerned with rich people to have time for the poor”

In closing, the bill will come before parliament again next year; I would encourage all of us to contribute during the public hearings on the bill. If there was ever a reason to pick up a cause this is it. Our economic freedom is at stake.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 at 5:46 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.