Frans Cronje of the Institute of Race Relations highlights two common misconceptions about expropriation without compensation. First, that the act will apply only to rural farmland and not urban housing (betterments as well as land), and second, that banks can assume a mortgage loan will remain owing even if expropriation applies. There is a further condition creeping into the current iteration: the process will exclude the courts and be adjudicated by politicians.

The Zimbabwe “land grab” was driven largely by a sense of righteous pain over white usurpation of the best farming land, as well as the greed and envy of elites. But another, more appropriate analogy gives a starker warning. In Mozambique expropriation was driven by pure ideology. And it is the Mozambican model the ANC ideologues begin most closely to mimic.

In Mozambique, on independence in 1975 all land, rural and urban, became state owned with zero compensation. This followed classic communist revolutionary ideology. Businesses were equally vulnerable to expropriation. All the “bogeys” now being raised were realised. Families homeless and ruined, the country’s economy collapsed through the destruction of property and the banking system.

Ten years after independence Maputo was a shell of a city in every respect. But, while ownership was denied, a small market began to develop based on 50-year-lease property. Needless to say, with approval required by politicians there was a feeding frenzy of corruption.

It is also worth noting that before 1975 nearly all of Mozambique’s “intelligentsia” had departed, surrendering the country to radical populists. South Africans, distracted by noise over economic downgrades and scandalous corruption, should be wary of lightly conceding clauses in our constitution. They might be surprised when the ANC’s “revolution by stealth and deception” puts in place a Mozambican model of ownership.

RWT Lloyd

Newlands

JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an e-mail with your comments. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Send your letter by e-mail to busday@bdfm.co.za. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.