In a policy discussion document, Numsa is calling for the nationsalisation of all key sectors of the economy. “Mining, banks, telecommunications, transport, food and so on, especially industries and sectors that are very monopolised, must be nationalised as a precondition for resolving the property question in South Africa,” according to the Numsa document.

It is the efficiency and productivity of private enterprise that has allowed the population to grow as much as it has, by making food more abundantly available at reduced real prices than ever before in history. How often to you see any kind of retailer, no matter what its target market, with empty shelves not able to serve consumers food?

We know of the type of chaos that result when government enters the food industry. Recently a government upliftment project in the chicken industry resulted in 3,000 chickens cannabalising each other because they hadn’t been fed. All 3,000 chickens had to be killed. Is this what Numsa wants on a nationwide scale?

If the government was to nationalise the food industry, it would result in a decline in the productivity of farmland and output of food will decline, pushing the price up, which will have a disproportionate effect on those people with the fewest resources at their disposal to survive. You hate the thought of dealing with home affairs or your local municipality or the traffic department or Eskom, but if this plan is implemented people will need to queue at their local government department to get food. Not a pretty thought.