Real Estate Investor Magazine South Africa October 2014 | Page 10

PROPERTY ALERTS

The
Good

The
Bad

They
Ugl

The Good: Your The Bad:
Property Rights
Right2Know
Under Threat
Defended

Demise of the
Rainbow Nation

T

R

he Right2Know Campaign
has released its 2014 ‘Secret
State of the Nation’ report
of secrecy trends and patterns in
South Africa. Key findings include
several signs of abuse of secrecy
and continued securitisation of
some parts of the state, including
increasing limitations on protest
and attacks on protesters by police;
continued increase of the use of
state-security policies with no public
oversight; lack of public oversight
of surveillance capacity vulnerable
to abuse and signs that secrecy and
security-state capacity are used to
shield political actors. The report
itself was hampered by lack of access
to information.
Nevertheless, the Right2Know
Campaign recently claimed a “partial
victory” against Sanral’s secrecy
application regarding the proposed
N1 and N2 Winelands highway
tolling, after the parties involved,
except Sanral, reached a compromise
to make public an edited version of
the relevant documents.
This is crucial, because although
only a few national roads in Gauteng
are currently being tolled, other
major cities will be next, as is already
evident in the Cape, and there is
nothing preventing other government
entities from tolling their roads too.

10

August 2014 SA Real Estate Investor
October 2014 SA Real Estate Investor

E

arlier this year, business
rights watchdog AfriBusiness
proposed a plan to combat a
perceived threat to property rights
due to legislative and policy changes
by the government. AfriBusiness,
with
the
Solidarity
Research
Institute, looked at 14 examples of
recent legislative and policy changes
and concluded there were threats
to property rights because “of a
deliberate strategy by government to
undermine them”.
AfriBusiness CEO Cornelius Janse
van Rensburg said they intended
to use the research report to lobby
embassies, CEOs of listed companies
and boards of 400 multinationals
operating in South Africa to increase
awareness of the threat to property
rights.
Economist Dawie Roodt said the
single most important right in a free
economy was the right to private
property, and this was under attack
from the state. This is a glaring
contradiction because the primary
function of the state was to protect
private rights, including property
rights. The pressure on the rand, low
investment levels and slow economic
growth all pointed to low confidence
in the economy as a result of policy
uncertainty.

acially preferential - in
reality racially discriminatory
- policies such as BEE
legislation
and
other
racially
motivated doctrines, suppress the
spirit of enterprise and undermine
the dream of a Rainbow Nation, says
Free Market Foundation director
Temba Nolutshungu.
Affirmative action policies have
been discredited in countries where
they were implemented previously,
including the US and Malaysia, as
they bring about the enrichment of a
few politically connected individuals
and fail dismally to empower the
genuinely disadvantaged.
Tried and tested alternative
policy instruments are available.
One pertinent example is the Czech
Republic where shares in state
owned enterprises were given to
the people. Also, taking from the
states’ superfluous own land holding
and giving it to poor families, with
full and legal freehold title to land
they currently occupy without title,
provides the first vital step out of
poverty. It ensures access to finance,
and all that means for buying
education, healthcare and household
essentials. An additional benefit is
the stimulation of broader economic
activity, as people with secure legal
title to property naturally tend to
improve it, creating jobs.

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