Cyril's Zim praise deepens anxiety - The Citizen

Since taking office in 2018, President Ramaphosa and his administration have substituted (decreasingly credible) verbiage for the hard choices and necessary reforms that would put South Africa on the track to economic growth.

Indeed, as it did with the expropriation without compensation agenda, the Ramaphosa government pursued policies inimical to growth, even while denying that that they would undermine the country’s prospects.

In his recent address to the Zimbabwe Agricultural Show, the President managed to combine both of these. Praising Zimbabwe’s programme of land seizures was both poor narrative communication and sent a dreadfully chilling message to investors – not least because the President has assented to the country’s new Expropriation Act, with the latitude that it gives the state to take private property for minimal compensation. Nothing is more dissuasive to investment, and this to growth, than threating property rights. And remember, these powers are “not limited to land”.

One has to wonder how South Africa’s long-suffering but highly productive agricultural sector reacts to hearing this message. One might equally be surprised by the President’s verbal remarks on the Zimbabwe Agricultural Show itself that “much as ours are impressive, yours has impressed me more” – rather at odds with the proudly South African tenor the country is enjoined to display.

Sadly, South Africa remains stuck in the same rut that it has been for decades. Ideology, policy romanticism, and a refusal to face up to reality. It’s bad enough that this is on gaudy display domestically; doing so on a foreign podium takes things to a new level.

Terence Corrigan

Institute of Race Relations