10/07/2019
LAND INVASIONS – A CATCH 22 IN A WIDER NET
I felt the need to jot down a few thoughts relating the above trend here in South Africa, as, over the past two years Augmentis has experienced three such invasions of properties that its clients have secured for development. Some of these thoughts have led to other thoughts, so, here we go!
After the first invasion, the property owner secured a court order preventing any such further invasions. Whether there was blatant disregard for the court order, or total lack of understanding of the impact of such a court order, or incitement to invade and disregard the court order or a combination of these, invasions continued; invaders were evicted; tyres and vehicles were burnt; people were injured; court cases were held and the plight of the invaders is worsening. The invaders are patently “organized” by someone, as they actually took the land-owner to court! They lost the case, with costs. Costs still haven’t been paid!
This is a huge socio-economic problem. Notwithstanding our current President’s statement that there will be no land-grabs, it is strongly believed that certain opposition political parties are secretly encouraging it. The socio-economic problem, however, is not restricted to South Africa.
The World is currently experiencing an unprecedented 70 million migrants on the move at any one time. A very large percentage of these migrants are as a result of socio-economic problems in the states from which they are migrating. Reasons range amongst starvation and hunger; persecutions based on religion, race, s*xual orientation, conflicts such as wars and skirmishes; xenophobia; overpopulation, collapsed economies and more. It is ironic, that some West African migrants have, in recent times and indeed, currently are, abandoning their countries by stowing away on ships bound for Europe and the Americas. The transatlantic slave trade commenced in the 15th Century and in Britain, was only abolished in 1807. Slave trading was an entrenched feature of colonisation. Slavery has been alive since the beginning of time and still exists in a few places around the World today. But now, it appears as if a replay of willing migrants is taking place on the modern equivalent of ‘slave’ ships. Even in the under-carriage of passenger aircraft! Heathrow airport recently reported an incident of a stow-away falling from the undercarriage bay of an aircraft as it was on its approach to land. It was not the first – there have been others before now. The stow-away did not plunge to his death, but had died of hypothermia long before he fell to earth and may have even been crushed to death shortly after the aircraft took off, since there is very little free space in the undercarriage-bay once the gear has been retracted. Such is the desperation of some migrants.
Migration, nationally and internationally, will continue to happen as long as there are forces of propulsion in a region that “push” people away from it and forces of attraction in other regions that ”pull” people toward it. In Economics 1 at the University of Cape Town in 1971, I was introduced to Dr. Francis Wilson’s “push-pull” model that aptly describes the forces at play during the early development of South Africa’s economy, involving the rural Nguni and the mines and industry in South Africa’s main economic centres. This is indeed, a World-wide phenomenon.
The quality of leadership within sovereign states, globally, is also a problem! Where there is unchecked power, political leaders tend to run ahead of themselves and forget entirely about the community they are meant to be serving. This is not only an “African” problem, but happens elsewhere around the globe. Venezuela is a case that comes to mind. Why do such states get into the dire straits in which they currently find themselves? In most cases and in my opinion, it’s the lack of maturity of the electorate combined with the abuse of power by leadership. These two ingredients make for the sort of human calamity we see unfolding World-wide, today.
Among the victims of this calamity are many who do not comprehend the complexities, the context within which their plight exists, nor any easy way to overcome the forces that push them out of their home countries. Neither do they fully understand the gap between the reality of the situation versus the “dream” that they are pursuing in the countries to which they are migrating or fleeing. If such migrants are successful in entering a country of destination, then many of them are shunned and treated as second-class citizens. Whatever the reception in their new country may be, the social support system is bound to be several times better than the (non-existent, in most cases) support systems in their countries of origin. But that remains merely a treatment of a symptom and not of the cause.
When it comes to property development, antagonists are eager to cite such concepts as the Gini coefficient and gentrification. I can’t help thinking that there is a direct correlation between the Gini coefficient and general IQ levels. I am not an “egalitarian” but I do believe in equal opportunity. If two people of low and high IQ levels respectively, are faced with the same choices to make, it is probable that the one with the higher IQ would make a “better” choice. This is generally borne out by the results in economies where there is, on average a higher average IQ level among its communities. A case in hand being Singapore, which started, in August 1963 after seceding from Britain, off a very low economic base. “In the 1960s, the city-state of Singapore was an undeveloped country with a GDP per capita of less than U.S. $320. Today, it is one of the world's fastest-growing economies” (Ping Zhou of ThoughtCo., updated July 04, 2019). Singapore currently has one of the highest real-estate prices in the World. Sub-Saharan Africa is reported as having an average IQ level of around 72. Singapore is listed by both World Data and Brain Stats as having a national average of 108. South Africa is listed by Brain Stats as having a national average IQ of 77, whilst World Data reflects this as 70. What is alarming is that whilst the global average IQ is reflected as being 100; any IQ level below 70 is considered “mental retardation”. Mental retardation is, today, considered a pejorative term and should be replaced with “Intellectual and Developmental Disability”! This means, by logical deduction, that the percentage of such people in Sub-Sharan Africa is uncomfortably close to, but below 50% and that of South Africa is at 50% (according to World Data).
A post by a random black South African on facebook today makes interesting reading:
“SA is probably the only place on earth where people get angry with demarcation board…. burn the school! (That has nothing to do with who must belong to which province or Municipality). Get angry about high university fees, burn down the same university! (They are pretending to want to study at for free). Get angry about government service delivery - burn the high schools! Then the government finally does something, give us free houses - we sell them to foreigners and move back to a squatter camp..... 2 months later beat up foreigners and say they take our things!
Biggest problem we have in SA is us! - not the government, not white people or monopoly, not foreigners! We are a problem! We are lazy to think. And we love easy free life!
That's why it's easy for a broke crooked Malawian to wake up one day, come to SA and tell people he will make them rich overnight - they must pay him everything they have - he has connections with God .... South Africans believe that, and pay (making him super rich).
A dumb illiterate fool in SA can start a political party, promise highly educated, highly sophisticated South Africans free everything including free s*x! They believe without questioning and vote for him!
Then we keep bitching about almost everything. Complaining has become our new hobby.
Everyone except ourselves contribute to our problems. We are no part of problem or solution (as far as we see it! Qhubani!” Probably posted by a “woke” guy! The post, in my opinion, aptly illustrates the outcomes to be expected from those to the left of the mean in the IQ distribution curve of South Africans.
Getting back to property development and the projects in which I am currently involved, I am faced with a great degree of irrational thought, comment and intervention (land invasions aside). A local authority councillor (a political appointee) pushes social housing of a nature that is guaranteed to result in a slum, whilst not embracing inclusive housing that would result in a general uplifting of living standards; a local authority allows the invasion of properties zoned for industrial use and a slum develops in the heart of a once vibrant industrial area - causing collapsed values of surrounding properties and the death of an industrial node that would otherwise have provided employment for many; public order policing is becoming ineffective due to it sympathising with the plight of the poor and the poor’s complete exasperation with the State’s inability to deliver basic services and housing – this all exists whilst the State sits on vast tracts of vacant land or underutilised land in prime positions that could go a long way towards accommodating this demand.
Then, we just have to look at the country’s treasury. Looted to the point of virtual bankruptcy. The State-owned enterprises leeching billions of Rands of tax-payers money, yet they are not closed down and continue to seek bailouts – and that very government is voted back into power along with many of the crooks that caused the bankruptcy! What level of intelligence is displayed in that theatre?
Senior researcher for Equality at SAHRC, Shanelle van der Berg, said last year that with a Gini coefficient where zero represents a perfectly equal society, and one represents an unequal society in terms of wealth, South Africa’s Gini coefficient is 0.95 - just 0.5 short of being perfectly unequal. No prizes for those that can guess the reason for this! It’s hardly rocket science to figure that one out.
The poor will get poorer; the Gini coefficient will get worse; the value of the Rand will continue to weaken in the medium to long term; skills loss due to emigration will continue to worsen (both blacks and whites are leaving in droves); the crime rate and overall anarchy will increase; hospitals will continue to “kill” instead of heal people and the graduates of our education system will continue to under-perform because, according to the United Nations, our education system is the worst in the World. The World Happiness Report is an annual publication of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network. It contains articles, and rankings of national happiness based on respondent ratings of their own lives, which the report also correlates with various life factors. Just watch South Africa’s rating plummet towards the bottom of this chart! In my considered opinion, all of this is happening at an alarming rate, accelerating imperceptibly, as a sole result of the lack of leadership quality in this country and by this, I mean that we are largely in the hands of mental retards.
This brings me to the question of whether democracy is a panacea to every country’s ills. Well, clearly, when a population’s intelligence is skewed towards the 70’s, it definitely is not. When a country’s population “matures” and is capable of rational thought and proper decision-making, then democracy, in my opinion, stands a good chance. Benevolent dictatorship or “enlightened despotism” (where the dictator is gifted and intelligent) has worked in “immature” countries in the past and states like Rwanda, under Paul Kagame, seem to be prospering under circumstances that can hardly be called democratic. Even mature countries sometimes get it wrong – look at Britain and the Brexiteers! They’re all having second thoughts now, not having realized the complexities of an exit from the EU! They got there through a referendum where the “not-so-enlightened” determined a course of action. At the end of the day, it boils down to the quality of leadership and without that key ingredient, everyone in the country will suffer, especially the intellectually challenged (the poor).
About two years ago, Helen Zille visited Singapore to find out exactly how they managed to get themselves out of poverty to where they are now. I assume that she refrained from raising the topic of intellectual superiority, as it as politically incorrect to do so. Recently, on BBC, a senior government official from Singapore attributed Singapore’s stellar performance, over 40 years, to the pursuit of three critical success determinants: M, P & H, which stand for: MERITOCRACY, PRAGMATISM and HONESTY. These are three ingredients that are patently absent in the current government of South Africa! Under quality leadership, Singapore became one of the World’s top economies in a period of forty years. Surely, other countries would love to achieve the same result? But without that quality leadership, it will not happen. Should the leaders of collapsed states happen to have a “Singapore epiphany”, then they might be bold enough to adopt something entirely new, albeit controversial. I call it “reverse colonialization”. This is where the leaders of a collapsed economy would “invite” a country like Singapore, to invest in their countries, build houses, hospitals and schools, assist in developing manufacturing and service industries, develop agriculture and infrastructure and create employment. By doing so and religiously implementing the MPH philosophy, more and more first-world investors would be attracted and eventually the failed state would mature into a first world economy and the “reverse colonialist country” would then withdraw. There would be no need for land grabs, xenophobia, crime would be almost eradicated, disposable incomes would be very high, health and happiness would also be high and the currency would be strong. It’s not a pipe-dream! If Singapore can do it, so can every other country….if they want to!