We love our jobs. South Africa is going through a complex, often fraught, but ultimately very exciting transition, and we are right in the heart of the hurly-burly.
The paper we bring you each Friday is the product of thousands of decisions, some of them very difficult, and a process of gathering, sifting and managing information on a baffling scale. We’re delighted when we think we’ve done well, we mope and criticise ourselves when we haven’t, and we agonise over our choices. You can’t ask for much more from a job than that.
But the past two weeks have been tough.
To begin with, the SABC threatened legal action to bar the screening of the Unauthorised documentary about Thabo Mbeki that it has so far refused to broadcast. That battle was averted, and the corporation’s Mavuso Mbebe joined in a robust debate at the Johannesburg screening. So we put away our lawyers and went back to our real work, savouring a victory for good sense and the values of an open and democratic society.
Last week’s edition was going to be a cracker, breaking major news stories on several fronts. We would reveal how the prosecution of Adriaan Vlok for apartheid-era crimes might threaten FW de Klerk and why a government contractor was paying college fees for the family of a Gauteng MEC. The Comment & Analysis pages featured Phillip Dexter on the woes of the SACP, and the Friday section ranged from Potter-mania to local fashion. And in our lead story we were going to detail the explosive contents of an SABC internal audit report.
That is the kind of paper we want to bring you on a Friday: important news that you haven’t read elsewhere; informed and credible debate, a dose of high culture and a leavening of fun. But we couldn’t, because Thursday brought more lawyers. Instead of nursing the Mail & Guardian to bed, we were heading back to court for a showdown with a senior SABC executive who wanted to keep his name out of print.
Strange things happen late at night in the urgent courts, and we lost.
The result was that your M&G arrived late, full of blacked out paragraphs and bereft of its strongest news story.
The absurd irony is that the information reached the public anyway, on the front page of the Sunday Times. Even more absurdly, as we went to press this week we still did not know if we were allowed to refer to the interdicted story or reveal its connection to apparent wrongdoing at another major public entity. On Thursday we were back in court, fighting for the right to do so.
This part of our job we don’t like. It is stressful, expensive and a colossal distraction from the real work of publishing excellence. But we are sticking with the battle because we know that this season of pre-publication interdicts is an obstacle that has to be negotiated on the road to a mature democracy. We apologise, and thank readers for sticking with us.
How the land lies
Land in South Africa is more than a resource. Given the country’s long and bloody history of dispossession, it is a deeply symbolic and emotional issue.
For this reason, the issue of foreign land ownership cannot be considered only from the perspective of its economic benefits and abstract notions of market freedom. Whatever the spin-offs in terms of investment, increased tax revenue and even jobs, foreign purchases have to be weighed against the unpalatable fact that most of the country’s land remains in white hands, and the growing impatience over the slow rate of transfer under official land reform policies.
The implication is that some restriction on foreign ownership is inevitable, and the Cabinet has implicitly asserted this by adopting the land department’s long-awaited report on the issue. This held out four main options: registration of foreign owners, long leasehold, ministerial permission for purchases in certain land categories and a total moratorium. It did not list the possibility of retaining the status quo.
The difficulty is that no one knows exactly how much land is in foreign hands or what the impact of such purchases might be. The report found that between 1,5% and 2% of land is owned by foreign individuals, but admitted that corporate holdings are not known. However, even this figure is contradicted by estate agents, who say that not more than 1% of South Africa’s land is foreign owned.
The 10-member panel of experts also admitted finding only anecdotal evidence of upward pressure on prices that might keep newcomers out of the market.
Restrictions on foreign ownership are common in other countries, including developed democracies. India has banned it outright; in Alberta, Canada, no foreigner may acquire an interest in “controlled land”, which includes private land outside urban boundaries. In much of Asia, land use title is only granted to non-nationals for up to 10ha of non-agricultural land, while Africa tends to the long-lease option.
The range of policy options highlights the need for more hard information about foreign ownership in South Africa — hence the Cabinet’s call for compulsory disclosure of foreign buyers’ details in line with the Financial Intelligence Centre Act.
Prescription should follow diagnosis, not the other way round.