Dr Guy Preston is special advisor to Water Affairs and Forestry Minister Ronnie Kasrils and head of the Working for Water Project. He wants legislation to force landowners to clear their property of recently-listed “alien plants” such as bugweed, lantana, bluegum and black wattle. The scope of the proposed law is very wide, but on radio he has suggested that the implied clearing of cities’ beautiful jacaranda trees would not be a priority.
He has now (The Star, February 6) suggested that such plant-clearance should be made obligatory before you can register the sale of your house or farm. Other examples of such cleverly-leveraged encouragement by government are employers’ PAYE, admission-of-guilt fines to avoid going to court, tax-clearance certification needed before emigration, and the need to settle outstanding traffic fines before renewing a vehicle licence. It is unsurprising when government abuses its power by making such linkages to better enforce its will.
But will government pick up the cost of clearing ‘invader plants’, estimated by Dr Preston as R160 a hectare? Well, no, that is not exactly the plan. If it was, MPs would no doubt throw the law out on the grounds of high cost for low benefit. And we can note that a plant is not a nuisance to the neighbours like excessive noise or a polluting factory, which would allow the state to exercise its police power, find the landowner guilty, and make him pay for corrective measures. Plants do their evil deeds of sucking up water and spreading their offspring around in their own natural ways. The law can hardly claim criminal action or negligence by the landowner, and his plants have only just been listed for future proclamation as illegal immigrants.
If a neighbour steals my car or my tree I am entitled to demand compensation from him, and the case is no different if it is the state that steals my car or my tree. When the state restricts or expropriates part or my land, or part of what I can do on or with my land, this should be subject to suitable compensation just as when the state expropriates my whole property for a post office or highway.
Our constitution’s property clause 25 insists that expropriation needs to be for a public purpose or for a public interest. Maybe there is a broad public interest in removing bluegums and wattles to save water, but there is another and prior interest. Many landowners have a large if narrow personal interest in the shade or fuel or protective barrier provided by their trees, as well as a preference for not spending money uprooting them just to please Dr Preston. So they are morally entitled to expect suitable compensation from the public purse. The taxpayer should contribute some of his new benefit (if it is indeed a public good) to avoid penalising individual citizens with the whole of the cost of the new benefit. We need this approach if only to prevent majorities from simply voting to benefit themselves by just stealing all the property of minorities.
Still, bugweed and lantana are smelly old plants, and maybe few will care about the farmer’s gums and wattles. But we also need minerals in our diet, and the minerals nationalisation bill is fast approaching. The drafters have tried to claim that mineral rights are not really going to be taken away without compensation. But if the state told you ‘use it or lose it’ about a bottle of champagne that you had been keeping for your daughter’s wedding, you would recognise the theft of your right to dispose of your property as (and when) you please.
Naturally the state (that is, the taxpayer) cannot afford to pay compensation for expropriating mineral rights, but at least the moral and constitutional need to do so is beginning to be recognised. On 6 February Minerals and Energy Minister Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka told the Investing in African Mining Conference that ‘she was not completely opposed to compensation’ and seeks ‘partnership, not confrontation’. We can but hope that in due course the Constitutional Court will uphold the Bill of Rights, since our legislators seem bent on undermining its property clause at our expense.
Source:Dr Jim Harris is a freelance researcher and journalist. He maintains the Privatisation Update which appears under Publications on this website.
This article may be reprinted without permission but with acknowledgement)
