Redistribution of Citizenship Status in South Africa: Prerequisite for Regional Development?

[Boojatta]

An individual can achieve economic security for the costs associated with parenthood or for personal retirement in a number of ways. Two important examples are: accumulating lump sums of assets that have resale value; and acquiring at least a partial ownership stake in a farm or other entity than generates a stream of income. However, some people suggest that the only path to economic opportunity and economic empowerment of the poor is via softening the legal concept of ownership. They consider economic redistribution to be a prerequisite for economic opportunity, economic mobility, and economic development.

Is economic ownership inherently oppressive of others? What enforces legal ownership and makes it any more rigid than civil rights or legal citizenship status? Is there a political-legal dynamic that guarantees rigid citizenship status and prevents redistribution of citizenship status? Is it not possible for political authorities, at the stroke of a pen, to strip civil rights from individuals or groups, confiscate their assets, and force them into internment camps? Is it not possible for political authorities, at the stroke of a pen, to strip citizenship rights from individuals or groups and deport them?

I observe that Robert Mugabe accused a vague "West" of causing the economic problems now being experienced in Zimbabwe. Why not blame the stubbornness and violence of South Africa? Mobs consisting of South Africans have attacked economic refugees from Zimbabwe who are in South Africa. Why haven't the South African police, and if necessary the South African military, been called into action to protect economic refugees from Zimbabwe?

It has been said that economic development in third world nations requires insecurity of ownership and periodic redistributions. Is it possible that political development in third world regions analogously requires insecurity of citizenship status and redistribution of citizenship? South Africans seem to be retaining their own South African citizenship and opposing (via direct violent action) any notion of redistribution of citizenship status. However, might it not be possible to deport from South Africa some South Africans who have enjoyed their fair share of decades or generations of legal citizenship status in order to make room for citizenship-poor people of Zimbabwe?