Blinken urged to speak up on EWC

The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) has urged US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to ‘offer clear warnings against the erosion of private property rights and free trade’.

The IRR highlighted former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s 2020 warning in Addis Ababa that the constitutional amendment then being mooted ‘to permit the expropriation of private property without compensation … would be disastrous for that economy, and most importantly for the South African people’.

In a statement, the IRR said: ‘Subsequently, the attempt to impose Expropriation without Compensation (EWC) through the 18th Constitutional Amendment failed. But EWC has been brought back with a vengeance through the Expropriation Bill, which stands before Parliament.

‘At the ANC Policy Conference in July, President Cyril Ramaphosa said that “despite the setback of our efforts to amend … [the] Constitution we must continue to pursue all available options, including through legislation, like the Expropriation Bill, to implement the resolution of our 54th Conference on land redistribution without compensation”.’

The IRR argued that passing the Expropriation Bill would indeed ‘be disastrous’ for ordinary South African people, ‘as the precedents in Zimbabwe and Venezuela demonstrate’.

‘The latter is especially relevant since Venezuela’s erosion of property rights started by nominally limiting EWC to ‘latifundios’ (large private landholdings) or ‘tierras ociosas’ (idle land), but quickly exposed the truth that property is either protected from corrupt government officials or it is not, and when it is not, everything is up for grabs while the poorest suffer the hardest.’

Going further back, the IRR recalled, former US President Barack Obama ‘threatened to remove South Africa from the “Agoa” trade agreement in 2015 “because South Africa continues to impose several longstanding barriers to US trade”.’

Before the Covid pandemic, South Africa’s exports to the US were worth roughly R150 billion. The value of its imports from the US came to roughly R75 billion.

‘The US has previously shown a willingness to clearly state its position that if South Africa wants continued special benefits under Agoa then our government must liberalise trade and protect private property rights. Ironically, in these examples, US leaders have been more in keeping with the average woman or man in the street than Ramaphosa was at the latest ANC conference.’

Said IRR Head of Campaigns Gabriel Crouse: ‘Blinken started his trip at the Hector Pieterson Memorial in Soweto, paying homage to the struggle against apartheid. That is good. Everybody agrees apartheid social engineering was wicked and stupid. Now Blinken must make his position equally clear on the policies threatening South Africans going forward. South Africa has the worst unemployment rate on record, globally, and EWC means making that even worse.’

[Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/iip-photo-archive/51024344951]