Most owners of land don’t want to share

The argument by the EFF and ANC for making a huge change to the constitution wasn’t for money, or to gain investor confidence. It was to 'restore dignity'.

When they say money is the root of all evil, I suppose they refer to how we lose our humanity for this material medium of exchange.

Everything has a price tag. From water to a bag of manure. Even patches of grass sold on the side of the road are not for free.

Breathing and surviving requires enough cents to make it to the following day.

When government said they would adopt a resolution to change the constitution to allow for expropriation of land without compensation (EWC), land owners’ hearts sank to the pit of their farms.

There was an outcry.

“How will this affect us economically? We’re going to lose investors.

“This country is going to the dogs.”

Organisations such as AgriSA, AfriForum, Solidarity, and political parties such as Congress of the People and the Democratic Alliance quickly gathered for an “urgent” seminar to continue denouncing the “EWC” idea in Centurion last week.

“We have been making an economic argument where parliament and the ANC were making an emotional argument,” head of Solidarity’s research institute Connie Mulder said.

“And there is large vengeance from the EFF of taking the boer’s land.”

Indeed. The argument by both the EFF and the ANC for making such a huge change to the constitution wasn’t for money, or to gain investor interest and confidence.

It was to “restore dignity” – and to rights the wrongs of the past.

“Our forefathers were forcefully removed decades ago and I want my land back,” a lady at a rival newspaper once said after finding out they won’t be receiving their December bonus.

“Don’t ask me what I’ll do with it. That’s my business. I want justice to be done for my forefathers.”

But the need and greed for money has toppled any form of love, “brotherhood” and sympathy.

All of this could have been avoided had we practiced humanity, botho, ubuntu, and sharing love.

As I scroll through my social media timelines, those that were privileged during apartheid often cry about how the disadvantaged “nonwhites” would waste the land. They post long essays on how Cyril Ramaphosa and the EFF will turn the country into “another Zimbabwe”.

But they never speak of how this could, in some way, heal the hearts and wounds of those who still bear the scars of the past.

I suppose that is why expropriating without compensation might seem necessary. The majority of the land owners don’t want to share – they’re not sympathetic or show humanity.

They want to own the evil that is money all to themselves.

And they don’t want to consider their fellow countrymen …