Certainly laws are constructed to enable each country to deal with what is now. Laws are enforced and the nations decide whether they will co-operate with the differing laws that protect the various economic systems in place.

Contracts underpin peoples live in but increasingly usury, punitive taxes and curtailing of freedoms mean individuals will question the various contracts they live and abide by.

Although no Communist if I had been a jew or a serf during the days of Russia’s Tsarist regime I would have fought for a different way of life and taken by force the property of another. The poverty that drove such change is understandable.

Theft is a word very open to interpretation…

http://www.resurgence.org/magazine/article449-WORK-GIFT-AND-THEFT.html

I

The South African economy is completely different to the agrarian Zimbabwe. Most of SA depends on industrials and manufacturing. These are high-skill, capital intense industries. So a Zimbabwean situation is unlikely to arise. However, the levels of corruption, state interference in business and influence-peddling is a lot more like Putin’s Russia. In fact, exactly like Russia.

Ann, there are certainly plenty of examples of people who have purchased property in good faith that was originally stolen. But international law on this is pretty clear; the recipient of stolen property, even if they are unknowing, is not allowed to keep it. It must be returned to the original owners.

The South African process works as follows: either the state must value the property and provide an equivalent value of land to claimants, or they must purchase the existing land at current market rates. Whether the government buys the land and gives it to claimants, or just gives money to claimants, government still has to come up with the cash.

It has been a fairly sensitive process (at least in the early years) where productive farms were not unilaterally shut down and passed on to claimants (after all, many of these farms have been significantly improved and invested in). South Africa used to be a net exporter of food when the process started. We’re now a net importer and, as things have gotten more strained, they’ve become more politically volatile.

There’s an election this year and a bunch of thugs will get in. I don’t think anyone knows what will happen after that.

The post makes complete sense to me as it stands, but I have a question (as usual): if the people being recompensed in this not-very-well-thought-out way are several generations removed from the original victims, aren’t the farmers occupying the land which was redistributed a few generations removed from the original oppressors (or beneficiaries of oppression) as well? And are they in every case direct descendants or heirs of those invaders? Does it matter? What if, say, forty years ago I had emigrated to South Africa and bought a sugar cane farm in one of these zones? Would I have been compensated for the farm I’d have had to leave under redistribution? Would my perfectly legal acquisition still be considered tainted by its provenance?

Okay, that’s more than one question.

Do you think that South Africa is headed in the direction of Rhodesia, given the events unfolding right now?

Sam, property rights are fundamental to Apartheid. Everything came down to one group of people wanting the property of another group of people without paying for it. They were certainly racist, and that became the lens through which they justified their theft. Arguing against racism is hard, arguing against theft is not. Either it is their property or it is not. If it is, then no matter how racist or sexist or whatever, there is no justification for theft.

And we can spend all day attempting to define a “cultural treasure”. When the Taliban bombed the Bamiyan Buddhas, we could argue about the destruction of a cultural treasure. They declare that it is against their faith and so justify the destruction. Difficult to debate that one. However, we can certainly debate who owned the Buddhas.

The same is true of the current debacle that China is having over the auction of the heads stolen from the Chinese Imperial Summer Palace in 1860. Whether it is moral or not should not be the issue. The issue is that a “respected” auction house is trading in stolen goods. Since everyone acknowledges that the heads are stolen, they should be returned to their owners.

Which gets us back to the restitution at the heart of my post. Either the people concerned are receiving just compensation for their property, or they are receiving unjustified rewards merely for being black. If the former, then the state has no right to take their property away from them – no matter what they do with it! Or, if they are merely the lucky ones in a race-based lottery, then no-one should be surprised if the property is taken away from them.

But let’s not pretend that the South African government genuinely has the interests of these people at heart.

In this case, we can talk about property rights all we like, but there’s a guy over there with an elephant gun. Call that gun “colonialism” or “racism” or talk about manifest destiny or what have you, but let’s acknowledge that there was something a little more complicated at work than a simple failure to honor property rights.

Also, the proposition that whoever pays for a cultural treasure has the right to destroy it because he “owns” it – that’s ideology, not fact. Put another way, that’s a proposition that is to be demonstrated, not accepted as a given.

Here’s a link.
http://www.nycjunto.com/