Why is South Africa melting down?

Great Debates
141

If in 1987, I am a 23 year old kid who saves up enough to get a downpayment on a house and have since paid off the mortgage, I followed the law. If I am now in my late 50s should I be thrown out, even with the improvements I have made, and the land (with my house on it) given back to someone else?

I mean, I wasn’t on the fucking jury that convicted Nelson Mandela. Why pick on me? I followed the law when I was a kid and did the right thing according to what I was told and the law at the time.

And the worst part is that this landowner has for the past twenty years supported the end of apartheid. Now that you are taking his house, maybe his father was right that these blacks shouldn’t be trusted?

142

No one is “picking on you”. Your 23 year old self knew perfectly well that the land you were buying was confiscated from black people to create a white only neighborhood. No one guarantees your investment. I mean, what kind of chutzpah do you need to cry about your stolen land investment being stolen fom you?

143

If the British Museum can see its way to return historical plunder, however obtained, then these people can look for redress.

They have been promised land reform for two generations. How could these white farmers NOT see this coming? How is the money they have made over the years, off of stolen land, and the high lifestyle they’ve enjoyed over that span, not enough for them? The way they have been living large, while the rightful owner has been in dire poverty, should be sufficient reward.

They should be returned whatever they paid, not a penny more, and sent on their way. ( If my next neighbour builds a dairy barn on by back acreage, I’m not obligated to compensate him, and he doesn’t get ownership of my pasture. )

144

This is the second time you’ve said “why couldn’t white farmers see this coming?”. What the hell is your point? You really think this hasn’t been a worry for them for 20 years?

145

I would be most worried about the costs of improvement. Depending on the land, it may have cost a fortune to make it arable, and a huge investment in materials and equipment to turn it into a modern, producing farm. So we aren’t just talking about returning a piece of land in the condition it was taken.

I don’t know how much effort it took to raise the agricultural productivity of the land, but that effort is real and it took a lot of money to do it.

What happens if a farm is expropriated, and the farmer responds by deciding to return it to the condition it was in when it was taken? Let’s say he sells off every piece of machinery, tears down fences to sell for scrap, torches the buildings, and re-sows the field with rocks and other materials that had to be removed when it was first prepped for agriculture, thereby restoring the property to the state it was in when the whites took it. Would that be okay?

But my biggest worry, and I would say this has a high probability of happening, is that this will be a disaster for everyone. Agricultural output will decline, external imvestment will decline, and all the specialized knowledge and local economies around farming will be devastated. The result could easily be a severe economic contraction and a reduction in the standards of living for both whites and blacks.

See what happened in Russia when they strung up the Kulaks and took their farms for much the same reason. Or what happened in Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge killed the educated people who knew how to run things. These are complex systems with webs of communications and lots of local and specialized knowledge in the heads of the farmers.

I would also be very worried that the land will be divvied up based on political power and not necessarily go to those most capable of utilizing it. What if the former owner of the land is old, and his children have little education and no knowledge of farming? What happens to the country when major farms are ‘given back’ to people who have no idea how to run a modern farm, or who don’t have the work ethic to keep it up? For that matter, how are they supposed to raise operating capital if they have no money and no credit?

My guess is that the helpful government will ‘step in’ and before long most of these places will either be state owned, or they’ll find a way to benefit their cronies and either hand the land to them, or give the land to the ‘rightful owners’ but only if they accept a lease deal that lets other people run it. Probably a very bad lease deal or some other similar arrangement. The Kulak’s land eventually wound up being controlled by political functionaries and not farmers, with very predictable results.

146

What tribe got knocked off the land where your house currently stands?

147

The government is the entity that stole the land, and the entity that profited from the sale of that land. Perhaps the burden of reparations should be on the government, instead of the individuals who bought it? By putting this burden on the individual investor, aren’t you just letting the government off the hook?

148

The thing is, if nothing is done, then a very reasonably aggrieved majority is much more likely to support political action that would just take the land like Zimbabwe. That’s bad for everyone. What would be better for everyone would be some sort of arrangement that would keep the knowledgeable farmers on and in charge of their land, while also providing some sort of reimbursement to those families who have worked on that land for decades without fair payment for their labor. I suggested up thread an arrangement that (apparently) some South African vineyards have engaged in – the land becomes owned by a corporation, and the former owners of that land become the majority owners of that corporation, while those families that have worked on the land for decades get shares (and thus a stake) in that corporation.

149

Algonquin I think but that was more of a federation than a single tribe. I don’t live in South Africa though, so it’s not really relevant.

150

Should you not deed your house back to the Algonquin? Why not?

151

“Then the Holocaust wasn’t really murder at the time”…said no-one, ever.

Apartheid and its actions were never moral. Or, internationally, legal. It was a fucking crime against humanity, and was at the time, too.

152

Yes - most of which was *government *money:
[INDENT]In 1985/86 government subsidies to farmers amounted to R708 million. In
early 1988 it was noted that 25 000 of the 59 000 farming units had received
government aid amounting to R24 billion in the previous seven years. This
did not include flood aid and financial aid to the wool (R15,5 million) and
maize (R309 million) industries. Nor did it include the government guarantee
for debt carried over (R900 million) and the R400 million to keep insolvent
farmers on land.[/INDENT]

Three guesses off whose backs the apartheid government made most of its money…

153

Already dealt with in this thread, but let me add one thought:

who kept the Apartheid government in power? It sure wasn’t non-Whites…it was those Whites who most stood to profit, or those who were ideological purists. And the intersection of those is largely evident in the kind of people who would buy a formerly-Black farm, on the cheap.

154

It would be the same with a watch. To begin with, the current holder can perfectly be unaware that the property was originally stolen, and have invested all his efforts and money in perfectly good faith. If you take the property from him in favor of the greatgrandson or whatever of the original owner, you clearly deprive him unjustly of his efforts despite him having done nothing wrong for the benefit of someone else who hasn’t been wronged to begin with. You’re creating an injustice, not fixing one (and no, I don’t consider you’ve been wronged because your greatgrandfather was. I already explained why. But even if you do consider things this way, you’re just swapped the injustice from an innocent party to another innocent party). Once again, the longer away from the original theft you are, the more likely you are to create injustices rather than repairing them.

Fences are people who knowingly deal in stolen goods. If I buy in good faith the watch that was stolen from you and I have to give it back to you, I’ve been wronged. If I keep it, you’ve been wronged. Stating that obviously the moral thing to do is for you to get the watch and for me to eat the loss is completely arbitrary. The only way to make things right is for one of us to get the watch and the other to be compensated by the thieve. If he’s long dead, that’s not going to be possible. The way it’s typically handed nowadays is that if that the issue surfaces during a given period after the theft, you get the watch and I eat the loss. After the end of this period, I keep the watch and you eat the loss.

I dispute the fact that any of us would necessarily be morally guilty. Once again, the only person we can be sure was morally guilty was thief. You might argue that my brothers and me should reimburse you because dad had a debt towards your father, and this should be deduced from what we received as an inheritance. But even that cause problems : if I’m about to retire and suddenly learn that I owe you all the money I set apart for my retirement because I inherited about as much from dad, it wreaks havoc in my life despite me not having done anything wrong. You could say that you too didn’t have the money, but you could plan on the basis of the known situation, why I couldn’t. That’s one of the main reasons why there are statutes of limitations, adverse possession rules, and so on. Besides the fact that it become more and more difficult to determine who is in the right and who is in the wrong when time passes, claims that come out of nowhere decades after the facts wreak havoc, and not just for the person but also for third parties (people you have made agreements and contracts with, tax services,etc…). People have to be reasonnably sure that what is considered theirs won’t be suddenly taken away because of a claim dating back from 50 or 500 years ago.

Anyway, I was asking about my brothers because it seemed to me that only the person currently holding the land would have to face the consequences, even though others might have beneficied equally (or even he could have not benefited from it at all because he bought it, while the people who did benefit can walk away with their profit because the land or the watch isn’t in their hands anymore.

155

The sins of the land thieves are NOT being visited upon their descendants. They are not going to jail or being horsewhipped. They do, however have to forfeit that which was stolen from another.

Conflating these things is counterproductive to meaningful discussion in my opinion.

(If my Grampa stole an artwork from yours, my saying I shouldn’t be punished for his crime would free me from prosecution and jail, but I’d still have to return the art!)

The thieves and their offspring have enjoyed wealth, prosperity, security, education, healthcare due to this land for decades. No one owes them anything, in my opinion.

156

I’m just going to stop you there, and not even read the rest of your post, on the assumption that it’s all as stupid as this particular utterance.

No-one could be a land owner in South Africa and not know. If they say they didn’t know, they’re lying. Any arguments based on “not knowing” are absolutely irrelevant for the South African situation. You’re welcome to open a general “reparations - good or bad in the abstract” thread about it. You might want to go back and read post #110.

157

The government is negotiating with the Algonquin to settle land disputes. At present, Crown lands and cash will be part of the agreement but not privately owned property.

158

No, now, let’s be principled here. No matter what the government works out, at the end of the day your house was stolen from the Algonquin. You concede that. Shouldn’t you return it to them?

159

But white people in South Africa needed houses to live between the years of 1948 and 1991, yes? And they, as you point out, would know that any house that they bought was “stolen” land.

So should they have moved? I think they did what anyone else would do and live within the imperfect system that was established. I think equally that all Americans know that our land was “stolen.” Private expectations have grown up around those conquests and the results thereof.

And as others have said, if your guilt leads you to support some form of reparations, then we should have to go back until the dawn of time, with each conqueror paying the conqueree reparations, again, unless the conquest was so complete that the people were obliterated, then they are off scot free I guess.

160

Uh, no. Canada is working on its Indigenous people issues in its own way. I don’t recall saying anything like what you’re apparently parodying.