Few things have gripped the social imagination so firmly as the notion that “public = government = good” and “private = insular = bad.” This victory of rent-seeking statism over our collective minds is to be condemned, not embraced like we recently saw with the mooted privatisation of several Johannesburg “green spaces.”
In reality, just because something is private does not mean it is not, in the very best sense, public.
South Africa’s best private enterprises are also its most prized public assets. As Gideon Joubert often points out, private firearm ownership and private security, too, are national security assets. The right to private property is the foundation of the public interest in economic development.
We should guard against construing government-owned property, in the particularly South African political context, as akin to “public” and therefore “good.” The opposite is assuredly the case.
This reality has not, unfortunately, dissuaded many otherwise sensible commentators from vociferously opposing the privatisation of, among other places, the Johannesburg Botanical Gardens, Emmarentia Dam, and Marks Park.
The municipality has since clarified that it does not, in fact, want to “privatise” these assets and rather wants to extract more rents from its ownership of them. This will predictably, but unfortunately, be met with cheers and jubilation from the uninvolved, at the expense of the ratepayer and the interests of Johannesburg’s communities.
Nonetheless, this is an important learning opportunity.
“Green belts” and communal responsibility
If green spaces are your key concern, fret not about privatisation.
When you cast your eye across the most well-functioning suburbs and communities in South Africa, they share at least two characteristics: they are green, and they are private. And they are green because they are private.
When you compare these areas with those where tenure is insecure and state or state-adjacent “communal” ownership is dominant, lush green is more often than not replaced with decayed brown.
And it is not strictly a question of wealth: even the comparatively poorer suburban areas of places like Vereeniging are green because they are privately owned. Where there is ownership, there is care.
A good way to think about this phenomenon is this: To privatise something is to bring it into the realm of responsibility. To socialise something is to remove it from the realm of responsibility and subject it to the logic of rent-seeking.
A public park that “belongs to all Jo’burgers” is a nice idea but practically devoid of accountability. The park is just another in a string of assets that nameless, faceless bureaucrats, sitting in faraway offices, own “on behalf of” the people of the city. They have, likely, never been to most, if any, of the parks.
When it comes down to it, many of the opponents of privatising the parks approach the question with this mentality: Without expending any effort, I just wanted to be assured that, in theory if I wanted to, I could go to a clean, safe, and accessible park.
While on the surface this might seem innocuous, this is the seed of social decay.
If people do not take responsibility for themselves, their families, and – crucially – their communities, events will take them by and, at best, ignore them, and at worst, harm their interests.
It is because the people of Johannesburg have not lifted a finger in the past century to bring these parks under communal control – instead deciding to leave them with the black hole of responsibility that is the Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality – that the parks could now, or in the near future, slip away. And it is better that they slip away than remain in the unacceptable state of socialisation that they hitherto have been.
A corrupt privatisation
In support of their position, many opponents have submitted that the privatisation would see corrupt developers – comrades and cadres – take the contract and benefit at the expense of the city.
But a corrupt privatisation is preferable over no privatisation.
If privatisation is ever mooted, the immediate answer should always be “yes.” Anything else, including inquiring into corruption, must come after asset has been taken out of state hands.
Why?
When assets are held in state hands, the only thing we can hope for is winning an election. And if the 2024 election outcome is anything to go by, not even winning an election helps all that much. We are left to watch as Eskom, Transnet, and other state assets are destroyed, piece by piece, at our expense.
Assets under state control are subject to a completely different logic from that which is applied to us, our communities, and our businesses daily. State assets are only cared for in a strong political culture that emphasises integrity and accountability, and this is something South Africa will lack for the foreseeable future. State control of assets, therefore, necessarily means mismanagement, rent-seeking, and corruption.
On the other hand, when assets are mismanaged under private control by comrades, cadres, and oligarchs, they will eventually be sold to someone better able to steward them.
This – the Coase theorem – is economics 101. It will happen. “When” it happens is entirely at our discretion, unlike periodical elections. If the market – the aggregation of “the public” – wants a corruptly managed private asset to change hands, all that needs be done is to offer to buy out the owner. The locus of control is internal: social, commercial, and civic.
This might sound unachievable, but that is only because we have allowed ourselves to take the state’s rent-seeking for granted. In reality, a suburb could easily get 5,000 of its residents to contribute R1,000 each (a month’s DStv subscription, in other words) to purchase a R5 million estate and convert it into a park.
This can be done. That it is not done is not the fault of privatisation or “circumstances,” but of stubbornness inside the community itself. The locus of control, again, is internal.
The evils of “development” and the wonders of the commons
Quite aside from corrupt developments, many suburbanites problematise the very notion of development!
Somehow, whilst having unambiguously good connotations in all other contexts, “development” has become a dirty word in urban planning. “The park is going to be developed” is regarded as something to condemn, not celebrate.
The problem is that those most opposed to the “development” of the park are more than likely people who have not and would not set foot in the park.
Not because they oppose the park, of course, but because they have borne witness to the consequences of the commons.
They have seen the play area in the park be converted into makeshift housing. They have read stories of children disappearing near or at parks.
They enjoy the idea of the park, and want it to remain just as it is until one day, in a utopian future, the government-owned park’s reality lines up with that idea.
Alas, no, this approach is unacceptable.
The commons degenerate public spaces.
A privately owned block of flats is infinitely preferable to a commons labelled “park.” A privately-owned park might be even better, but for all the complaints about “development,” communities have been lax to put their money where their mouths are. Few private initiatives to establish community-owned parks, or to purchase municipal parks, have been undertaken.
They want, desperately, for the park to remain “free” – in other words, for residents on the other side of the city to subsidise the nice idea of a nearby park that they will never visit.
But if something is “free,” it is not accountable, and if it is not accountable, it is not responsible, and if it is not responsible, it is rent-seeking, and if it is rent-seeking, it needs to go.
Low-cost housing and the undesirables
Many are concerned that “low-cost housing” – which some of the parks, or parts of them, are or were slated for – might bring people into the community who do not share that community’s interests.
This makes sense: the lower a barrier to entry into a community – or club, and so forth – the easier for people with different interests to enter the community.
This is a good concern to harbour in general. Inclusivity has never been a liberal value, and exclusivity – a hallmark principle of liberal property relations – is to a large degree a guarantor of freedom.
But, as applied to the Johannesburg green spaces, this objection is shortsighted in the extreme.
The barrier to entry into South Africa’s communities – as I have detailed before – is virtually nil already. A person from anywhere on the planet can walk into any non-private South African community, construct a makeshift structure in an open space – like a park – and henceforth the law and press will label that person a “community member.”
Far from new “low-cost housing” being a threat to community integrity and interests, the already-existing “no-cost housing” that can and will be plopped onto the commons is the unequivocally bigger threat. Any community that retains open spaces within its boundaries is inviting trouble, as many suburbs around the country have found out the hard way.
“Don’t be dogmatic”
Those of us who favour privatisation under virtually all circumstances are often labelled as being “dogmatic.”
The “anti-dogmatists” will insist that they have a closer grasp of practice and reality than those of us who understand – whether we like it or not – that the world operates according to ironclad principles.
And yet, in the case of the Botanical Gardens, Emmarentia Dam, and Marks Park, the anti-dogmatists hold onto theory for dear life: the nice ideal of a public asset that will be diligently stewarded into the future.
All of our lived reality contradicts this nice theory. Those opposed to privatisation have nailed all their colours to the excessively contemporaneous “I live in Jo’burg now and it’s great” mast, ignoring the creeping commons that edges ever closer to communities that have not fully secured themselves.
Joe Emilio’s recent Stolen Ground documentary on the Tygerberg Raceway – a walled, until recently suburban commons – is well worth the watch for anyone who still lives in South Africa with delusions about what becomes of property not consciously and vigilantly secured.
You might – perhaps as the exceptional person who does visit the park – enjoy your occasional strolls around Emmarentia Dam right now, but the lush commons could in a matter of days – as in the case of Tygerberg – become a dry, dusty shantytown. The police will not save it.
Though the parks might now not be privatised, their eventual privatisation should remain the goal. Communities that want to see them remain “green spaces” should go about the work of buying the municipality out and governing them as private, strongly secured parks. But in the absence of this, in the long-term, only the dreaded development will save our suburbs.
Remember that privatisation is a gift we give future generations.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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Image by Evgeni Tcherkasski from Pixabay