The technicalities notwithstanding, any foreign-financed bailout support for SA should be conditional on the country abandoning its policy of expropriation without compensation. It is absurd to demand foreign bailouts to shore up the SA economy while pursuing a policy so obviously assured of undermining it.
Many of the taxpayers and countries who fund the institutions that provide such bailouts would in any event find the policy of expropriation without compensation abhorrent. They need to be kept abreast of the government’s position on property rights so they can demand that informed decisions are taken on how their money is used.
SA entered the global financial crisis in 2008 in a fairly strong economic position, in part because of its relatively sound support for property rights (notwithstanding what occurred with mining and water). The fragile position from which it has entered the Covid-19 crisis is in large part a function of its now open hostility to such rights.
SA’s prospects for a post-pandemic economic recovery are now contingent as much as anything else on abandoning the government’s pursuit of expropriation without compensation. If that is not done, a post-Covid-19 recovery probably cannot occur.
Frans Cronje
Institute of Race Relations
