Pity people who think this way don’t recognise that “the market” and “people” are equivalent. Not to mention that the new owner won’t find his land safe from theft and expropriation either. You cannot provide legal support for redistribution unless you specifically create legal inequality and selective property rights, which is exactly the injustice that liberation was meant to undo. If you do this, you undermine the very security of tenure and property rights that gives people an incentive to invest in their land. So, onwards and upwards, to an unequal, unproductive, unjust future, is it?

Exactly. It’s all very well that the people now have land, but they don’t have secure rights over it, nor do they have basic political freedom. And of course they lack more basic things like money that has value, food, etc.

I agree that it is deplorable – and stupid – to praise Mugabe, but I think the writer is broadly correct. We need to facilitate people’s return to the land in a way that is politically, economically and environmentally sustainable.

When White capital needed Black labour to work on the mines at the beginning of the last century, hut taxes were used to force people off the land.

Other land was siezed by force, and now mostly belongs to agribusiness. Property rights were only applied after Black people had their land stolen, and now they are expected to abide by this?

Now our economy has shifted from a manufacturing base and the descendants of those who were forced off the land are surplus to requirements. We have 40% unemployment, and people crowded in squatter camps around our cities. There will never be jobs for them.

Making rural areas viable and self-sufficient with community land ownership – the traditional model, aided by modern technology – is the solution.

You’ll find, Laurence, that people don’t need money and food, or a booming formal economy, quite so much if they are self-sufficient. If you give people the land back, they don’t need jobs.

This situation is not unique to developing countries. In England, people were forced off the land during the industrial revolution by the enclosure acts removing rights to the commons (sound familiar?), while in Scotland the Highland clearances did the same.

What’s interesting is that there has been a move to correct this in Scotland, with crofters (tenant farmers) given security of tenure, and many communities being able to buy back their land (with state and European assistance) from private landlords.

The first to do this was the Scottish Island of Eigg, which recently celebrated 10 years of community ownership.

Because the land is used to invest in the local community, rather than turn a profit for the landlord, these places are thriving.

“If you give people the land back, they won’t need jobs.” The problem, Walton, is that people would rather go to the city to find a job than farm. Farming is hard work, specially in a water-stressed country like ours.We’ve all heard about cases like the model fruit farm that was returned to ‘the people’, who then sat around forgetting to irrigate the trees and waiting for the government to pay them wages. Ultimately, they stripped the farmhouse of all useable materials and disappeared to the nearest town to build shacks.

“...I agree that it is deplorable – and stupid – to praise Mugabe, but I think the writer is broadly correct. We need to facilitate people’s return to the land in a way that is politically, economically and environmentally sustainable…”

That certainly sounds reasonable, but I don’t think that’s what the writer was advocating. He wants a bunch of people to form mobs and seize land without any commercial contract or the sanction of law—in what way could that possible be described as “politically, economically and environmentally sustainable land redistribution”? This is precisely the same policy that was carried out in Zimbabwe, and it would have the same long-term effect.

“...Now our economy has shifted from a manufacturing base and the descendants of those who were forced off the land are surplus to requirements. We have 40% unemployment, and people crowded in squatter camps around our cities. There will never be jobs for them. Making rural areas viable and self-sufficient with community land ownership – the traditional model, aided by modern technology – is the solution. You’ll find, Laurence, that people don’t need money and food, or a booming formal economy, quite so much if they are self-sufficient…”

So in essence, your solution to poverty and underdevelopment is to kick the poor onto plots of rural land and let them become self-sufficient peasant farmers?

There are numerous problems with this, not least of which is the fact that the poor themselves generally don’t like it. A lot of people have a highly romanticised view of subsistence farming and see it as a pure lifestyle in harmony with nature, but in reality it is a harsh and impoverished existence. It may offer people a chance to become “self-sufficient” in the sense that it provides them with resources that are sufficient (albeit barely) to survive, but it offers no long-term prospects for wealth generation. It is such an unpleasant lifestyle that, in states where it is prevalent (like Vietnam and China), jobs in factories under what we would consider appalling conditions are highly sought after, simply because the alternative – backbreaking agricultural labour – is so unappealing.

Self-sufficiency and poverty go hand in hand. States can only prosper when they embrace the principle of division of labour and allow individuals to specialise in what they’re good at. I find it appalling anyone would wish to isolate that unemployed 40% from the modern economy rather than bring them into it. The reason those 40% are unemployable is that the unions have pushed for labour laws that stymie job creation and preclude the sort of labour-intensive manufacturing-driven growth we’ve seen in Asia. Top-down economic management from the state created the problem, and now you want to “solve” it by banishing the poor to substince farms where they’ll find themselves trapped in a state of permanent poverty? There has to be a better way than that.

I agree with you Laurence. Those who believe that subsistence farming is a viable alternative to the ‘Western’ lifestyle, should go and try it.
The history of mankind is that of a long, ongoing trek away from subsistence.

Walton, youre an idiot. If people dont need jobs for land…who will provide hospitals and police and firefighters for people that need them? Is your crop of carrots going to save you from a heart attack?

Concerning land redistribution, what is your view on the Oppenheimer dynasty sitting on 250,000 hectares of South African land? Much of it is said to form exclusion zones around mines which in turn enrich them further. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me. It’s a laugh in my opinion. How many billions of dollars does one family need?