ANC’s continued insistence on expropriation without compensation will harm everyone

2 July 2020 

AfriForum labels the ANC’s statement that expropriation without compensation should be investigated again as a blind pursuing of ideological ideas that will be to the disadvantage of society as a whole. 

The civil rights organisation is already formulating a comprehensive plan – that will focus on the economy, among other things – in cooperation with various experts. The plan will soon be submitted to government.  

The COVID-19 pandemic and the ANC’s irrational lockdown regulations has had an enormously negative impact on the country. What South Africa now needs more than anything else is responsible actions that will stimulate economic growth to allow the private sector to repair the damages. This requires greater certainty about property rights in the first place, and secondly a regulatory framework in which entrepreneurship is rewarded with proceeds rather than being targeted by the state.

“Experience teaches that cadres and political friends of the ruling party are the only ones to reap rewards from policy ideas such as expropriation without compensation – and even for them the benefit is only temporary because the government’s friends are not isolated from economic decline,” says Ernst Roets, Head of Policy and Action at AfriForum.

Issued by Mariska Nanni, Media Relations Officer, AfriForum, 2 July 2020