Getting SA onto a productive growth path is an existential issue for the country’s future. Central to getting this right in every official strategy since 1994 — in fact, going back even further, into PW Botha’s presidency — has been the growth of small business. Small companies have been held up as an opening for entrepreneurship, as a strategy for wealth and job creation, and a counter to poverty.
Owing in large measure to the pre-democracy regime of property rights, millions of South Africans have some form of landed asset, though not the legal recognition and protection that would allow them optimally to use it. Post-1994, the attitude of the state towards property rights has been ambivalent, and although a great deal of effort has been put into, say, the provision of housing, the transfer of actual property to the beneficiaries has been resisted.
It also means recognising the links between property rights and entrepreneurship. Any investment is predicated on the assumption that it will be protected. This is all too often denied by the state — and the latter’s commitment to truncating property rights through expropriation without compensation can only damage this potential further.