“Custodial” takings not just about land – IRR
It is now clearer than ever that the government plans to write “custodial” takings into its amendment of the Constitution, which is no surprise at the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), whose analysts have been warning against this since 2014.
In a case at that stage involving AgriSA, the apex court ruled that the just and equitable test for “custodial” takings was inapplicable. Writing “custodial” powers of dispossession into new expropriation legislation will set up the state to take your property – not just land – without a cent in return.
Agriculture makes a direct contribution to the economy of roughly 2% of GDP, which is less than a third of public debt-service costs, and a factor of fifteen less than government’s ballooning explicit costs annually. In order to maintain cadre deployment networks, in the absence of mass fixed-capital-driven growth, the tripartite alliance must arrest much more than just farmland, which its drive to marginalise courts from arbitrating property rights reconfirmed last week.
Had the sober warnings of 2014 been heeded, the risk of custodial takings being entrenched now would not be as great. The current warning anticipates the following targets of “custodial” takings as essential to the project of cadre-unity and incompatible with the most basic national interests: pensions and savings, health insurance, and fixed property. The motivation behind “custodial” takings is not redress for historical cases of dispossession (since custodianship puts assets in control of the state) but to confiscate the belongings of hard-working South Africans.
Says IRR CEO Dr. Frans Cronje: “Firstly the party’s objective in amending the Constitution is not land reform in the main but rather the nationalisation of the financial services and private healthcare sectors. The ANC needs this to feed its cadre deployment networks, given their dependency on flagging tax revenues. Should it fail to pivot the financing of those networks onto the pools of capital that lie in pension funds and banks, the internal unity of the party will splinter further. Land is simply the thin end of the wedge to set the precedents that will allow such nationalisation.