Mpiyakhe, this is generally a good article highlighting crucial institutional and sectoral guardrails or better policy and functioning to ensure a better performing South Africa. However, the next paragraph is beyond my comprehension. Perhaps you can respond and provide more clarity, or consider a follow-up arguing for that crucial issue in more detail?
"...giving the country’s best retired farmers, real estate and other investors a budget and giving them a target (e.g. a certain % of each category of land to be transferred into the hands of people who were previously disadvantaged over a fixed number of years), the target would be agreed with these experts.
Even better if these people (the farmers and investors) still own a lot of assets in South Africa, they would be incentivised to solve this issue which has proven to be a permanent source of political instability."
Furthermore, in my humble opinion, the next remark was unnecessary. There is so much more about the "white genocide narrative" which needs context and perspective and makes nuance necessary. A statement like that on its own will "worsen race relations". However, I believe that was not your intention at all.
"I would be supportive of US President Donald Trump if he was pressuring our government to exit from the Paris climate treaty. Instead, he is pushing a discredited white genocide narrative that serves no purpose other than to offend most of the population and worsen race relations within our country."
Hi Piet, thank you for the comment, I value the feedback and those who provide it since it shows you were willing to read what I wrote. Before I answer you let me just say I don't expect that we will agree on everything, I will just give my honest opinion which I believe to be based on fact.
To answer your first question, in simple terms, I am saying the government should take the land reform budget and give it to retired successful farmers and investors. Their job will be to acquire land and distribute it under the existing land redistribution program (land reform has 3 legs in this country, what most people are talking about when talking about land reform is the land redistribution leg), it makes no sense to expect politicians and bureaucrats to navigate the land market, it's not a competency of theirs.
But someone like Johan Rupert not only has an incentive to solve this issue and the political agitation attached to it (since he is the biggest individual taxpayer and one of the biggest landowners and asset owners in general), he has the expertise to make sensible investments, negotiate well and avoid overpaying. Of course you also need farmers, not just investors. These people can then appoint the supporting staff they need themselves.
You can give them a greater incentive by allowing them to keep a certain percentage of the land reform budget they don't spend. I don't expect this to be popular but it's the rational way forward as I see things. It's more about making an existing program more efficient.
The white genocide issue is very simple, there is no white genocide. Do some farm murders involve racial hate? Probably. Are some murderers EFF supporters? Probably, I would expect EFF supporters to be overrepresented among the criminal class since I expect people who want free stuff from government to be predisposed to choosing the easy way in all things.
What is complicated are farm murders, even though we can be fairly certain that the motive is mostly economic from research done by the Institute of Security Studies and others. There is also no overwhelming racial motive from the data that has been presented, white victims being overrepresented among victims (even if they make up less victims) is explained by white people being more likely to own commercial farms and those farms being more likely to have valuable possessions than subsistence farms.
The final piece of evidence that shows that there is no white genocide is the treatment of African immigrants (by the way, genocide watch places African immigrants at greatest risk of genocide in South Africa), if there was similar animosity against white people you would see it. There would be a "deadline" like the 30 June deadline for African immigrants. If people are capable of a hidden genocide against whites, why then are they openly attacking African immigrants, something that harms SA's standing?
I plan to write at some point about how conspiracy theories about our government fail to fully appreciate just how incompetent this government is. People say the government is competent when it comes to tax collection, not really, private companies do the tax collections for the government. Just like private security companies and ordinary people stopped the July 2021 riots in KZN.
There is nothing the government can do right, if you find something let me know. Even the army and police are shells of what they used to be, all the security services in fact. You'd at least need the security services to oppress/genocide people effectively, they can't even do that.
One day the private sector will wake up and realise there's no reason to keep listening to the government. Until that day we will keep suffering from private sector compliance with stupid government mandates. Not anything the government does directly.
Thank you again for the questions and for reading the article, I hope I answered you.
Hi Mpiyakhe, that is what is so nice about the liberal mindset with which we write: we may differ, but we may also express our views freely. We debate, but do so in a civilised manner. 🙏🏻
I agree with most of your reply. In fact, I think the proposed remedies for the land issue are quite brilliant.
On the other contentious issue of "genocide", we need more debate at some stage. By the way, I think Trump used the wrong language. It was pointed out to him/his administration by Afrikaner organisations on several ocassions. Yet, he (Trump) opened a debate which should go much futher than semantics. I for one welcomed that. We can't sweep huge national issues under the carpet. We must continue debating it and find solutions in the interest of the country AND minority groups.
I see Substack has now a Translate option! I am on Substack and perhaps you should read some of my articles published via OntLaer, an Afrikaans publication allowing for well considerd opinions, like Rational Standard.
Mpiyakhe, this is generally a good article highlighting crucial institutional and sectoral guardrails or better policy and functioning to ensure a better performing South Africa. However, the next paragraph is beyond my comprehension. Perhaps you can respond and provide more clarity, or consider a follow-up arguing for that crucial issue in more detail?
"...giving the country’s best retired farmers, real estate and other investors a budget and giving them a target (e.g. a certain % of each category of land to be transferred into the hands of people who were previously disadvantaged over a fixed number of years), the target would be agreed with these experts.
Even better if these people (the farmers and investors) still own a lot of assets in South Africa, they would be incentivised to solve this issue which has proven to be a permanent source of political instability."
Furthermore, in my humble opinion, the next remark was unnecessary. There is so much more about the "white genocide narrative" which needs context and perspective and makes nuance necessary. A statement like that on its own will "worsen race relations". However, I believe that was not your intention at all.
"I would be supportive of US President Donald Trump if he was pressuring our government to exit from the Paris climate treaty. Instead, he is pushing a discredited white genocide narrative that serves no purpose other than to offend most of the population and worsen race relations within our country."
Hi Piet, thank you for the comment, I value the feedback and those who provide it since it shows you were willing to read what I wrote. Before I answer you let me just say I don't expect that we will agree on everything, I will just give my honest opinion which I believe to be based on fact.
To answer your first question, in simple terms, I am saying the government should take the land reform budget and give it to retired successful farmers and investors. Their job will be to acquire land and distribute it under the existing land redistribution program (land reform has 3 legs in this country, what most people are talking about when talking about land reform is the land redistribution leg), it makes no sense to expect politicians and bureaucrats to navigate the land market, it's not a competency of theirs.
But someone like Johan Rupert not only has an incentive to solve this issue and the political agitation attached to it (since he is the biggest individual taxpayer and one of the biggest landowners and asset owners in general), he has the expertise to make sensible investments, negotiate well and avoid overpaying. Of course you also need farmers, not just investors. These people can then appoint the supporting staff they need themselves.
You can give them a greater incentive by allowing them to keep a certain percentage of the land reform budget they don't spend. I don't expect this to be popular but it's the rational way forward as I see things. It's more about making an existing program more efficient.
The white genocide issue is very simple, there is no white genocide. Do some farm murders involve racial hate? Probably. Are some murderers EFF supporters? Probably, I would expect EFF supporters to be overrepresented among the criminal class since I expect people who want free stuff from government to be predisposed to choosing the easy way in all things.
What is complicated are farm murders, even though we can be fairly certain that the motive is mostly economic from research done by the Institute of Security Studies and others. There is also no overwhelming racial motive from the data that has been presented, white victims being overrepresented among victims (even if they make up less victims) is explained by white people being more likely to own commercial farms and those farms being more likely to have valuable possessions than subsistence farms.
The final piece of evidence that shows that there is no white genocide is the treatment of African immigrants (by the way, genocide watch places African immigrants at greatest risk of genocide in South Africa), if there was similar animosity against white people you would see it. There would be a "deadline" like the 30 June deadline for African immigrants. If people are capable of a hidden genocide against whites, why then are they openly attacking African immigrants, something that harms SA's standing?
I plan to write at some point about how conspiracy theories about our government fail to fully appreciate just how incompetent this government is. People say the government is competent when it comes to tax collection, not really, private companies do the tax collections for the government. Just like private security companies and ordinary people stopped the July 2021 riots in KZN.
There is nothing the government can do right, if you find something let me know. Even the army and police are shells of what they used to be, all the security services in fact. You'd at least need the security services to oppress/genocide people effectively, they can't even do that.
One day the private sector will wake up and realise there's no reason to keep listening to the government. Until that day we will keep suffering from private sector compliance with stupid government mandates. Not anything the government does directly.
Thank you again for the questions and for reading the article, I hope I answered you.
Hi Mpiyakhe, that is what is so nice about the liberal mindset with which we write: we may differ, but we may also express our views freely. We debate, but do so in a civilised manner. 🙏🏻
I agree with most of your reply. In fact, I think the proposed remedies for the land issue are quite brilliant.
On the other contentious issue of "genocide", we need more debate at some stage. By the way, I think Trump used the wrong language. It was pointed out to him/his administration by Afrikaner organisations on several ocassions. Yet, he (Trump) opened a debate which should go much futher than semantics. I for one welcomed that. We can't sweep huge national issues under the carpet. We must continue debating it and find solutions in the interest of the country AND minority groups.
I see Substack has now a Translate option! I am on Substack and perhaps you should read some of my articles published via OntLaer, an Afrikaans publication allowing for well considerd opinions, like Rational Standard.
Oh sweet, that translate feature will open up a whole new world of articles for me. I love substack. I'll check out your articles.