Rodrigues Island Privatization Of Public Lands
The idea of putting public lands in private hands is not a revelation; it is as old as the hills of Rome. At first, gangs of marauding thieves and cut-throats stole the land from the people by violent conquest; soon after, monarchs and lords (I repeat myself) took possession and claimed divine right. Later, other emboldened tyrants simply legislated and fleeced the people of their land.
It has taken many wars, many revolutions and much bloodshed to restore the natural order of things and return the land back to its rightful owners the people. Despite all of history's painful lessons, today, the world seems to be heading full-steam-ahead towards another Renaissance period of darkness.
Many of the so-called Commonwealth countries are now adopting this crazy private-wealth policy of handing over public property to private individuals. Even, if all of them were to agree on this dim-witted and immoral idea, it would still be a dim-witted and immoral idea.
The more avid proponents of denationalization are usually those who stand to gain the most from it: The elite and their protgs.
Denationalization is a particularly persuasive concept, as it bypasses the normal scrutiny of reason, and appeals directly to the greed and short-term self-interest of the soft-headed. Well, dear reader, as the soft-headed have the numbers six billion to not many its popularity, at least in the short term, is assured.
In reality, there is no perfect system of land distribution anywhere in the world; every system is flawed in one form or another. Our own Rodriguan model is not perfect, but even after we factor in all of its flaws; it is still one of the world's most equitable systems of land distribution.
Why would anyone, untouched by madness, want to destroy a system which has served so many, so well for so long? This is truly beyond my comprehension.
Were it not for a lifetime lease at peppercorn rental, how many of the poor (the majority of Rodriguans) would have ever known any kind of land ownership at all? How many?
On almost every occasion in the third world, where large scale privatization of public lands has occurred, degeneration has resulted for the native population. In the case of Rodrigues with its impoverished population and scarcity of land, the socio economic impact would be disastrous.
I do not know whether it was imported at the behest of International lending institutions or locally domesticated for political opportunism, but the Beast that I had always feared would one day reach these shores, has arrived. It is here, and it rears its ugly head.
Before we put up the sign: Rodrigues for sale - Cheap.
Let us ask the ill-fated millions on the bread line in Russia about privatization.
Let us ask the homeless thousands pressed into prostitution and drug trafficking in Peru, Bolivia and Argentina about the benefits of privatization.
Let us ask our emaciated African brothers and sisters, as they pass in and out of starvation-induced unconsciousness, beside foreign-owned cash-crop plantations which were once their lands let us ask them, what privatization has brought to their lives.
Land is by natural law the common property of the community, by extension all Rodriguans of this and future generations are already stakeholders in it. With the ever-increasing need to produce more food to sustain an overpopulated world, land will become critically important. The point I want to bring home, because I doubt whether it is sufficiently realised, is this: For Rodriguans, land is everything there is no future without it.
The notion that some people of one generation, who exist for less than a century, can somehow claim absolute possession of land, that has been there for millions of years before them and that will be there for ages and ages after their decomposition, and then by design, legitimately bequeath it to their descendants for time without end is a monstrosity beyond words. It is not dissimilar to Rhodes bequeathing all of Rhodesia, to all the descendants of Rhodes, for all of eternity.
Apart from the social upheaval that usually follows privatization, it also tends to provoke land disputes which are costly to adjudicate and resolve. In Rodrigues, consider a powerless people captive in a natural monopoly, at the mercy of imported lawyers with a history of overcharging; weigh up the Poor's lack of resources and inability to defend against possible if not probable abuse of process does the word exploitation readily come to your mind's eye?
A lavenir sa rodriguais ki pauvre ki penan enn tiboute la ter la kot li pou alle reste kot li pou alle repose so lezo dan ghetto dan Maurice ou dan ramparts dan rodrigues?
Even if you could give the land away to the poor who do you think would end up with it?
Which level of government will privatize which land and to whom will it go?
Will foreigners be able to buy uncultivated land? If so, given the disproportionate rate of exchange, what protective measures will the government put into effect to afford the local population a level playing field?
Will cattle walks and grazing land become the exclusive properties of landlords?
Will the public still retain its rights of access and transit?
How will the government control land clearing on private property?
Will public beaches and their surroundings be converted into private property, fenced off and reserved by foreign resort owners for foreign tourists?
Will the surrounding islands be secretly auctioned off to the highest bidders?
Sooner or later, the tourist industry will have to be centralized and controlled (foreign exchange to pay for imports). How will this be done, once all the land is in private hands, when private profits from private institutions disappear in private pockets?
In a small handcuffed country like ours, Rodriguans would do well to remember the Seychelles islands before the coup. Public islands were fast becoming private property and the best lands were being sold off to rich Europeans and oil sheiks. Land value was spoken of in terms of millions, while the native Seychellois earned a handful of Rupees a month, working as servants for the rich. To cut a long story short, if not for President Albert Rene, Seychelles would have become a lavish fiefdom for rich foreigners and a land of eternal servitude for the natives. We may not be as lucky as the Seychellois were.
The disconnection between political rhetoric and the harsh realities on the ground is as great today as it was in the bad old days of Duval. Politicians continue to promise the impossible, sycophants continue to kiss up and kick down, while the poor Rodriguan continues to eke out a miserable existence amid the familiar smell of artificial promises.
Once this wretched bit of legislation has been passed and it has forever extinguished the right of the people of Rodrigues to the continued ownership of Rodrigues; once the community's cooperative kinship has been exposed to the dog-eat-dog ethics of cut-throat capitalism, Rodriguans will have become a nation of tenants in their own land.
From then on, their inheritance will only ever be the wind and, generation after generation will awaken on the horns of this dilemma: Emigration or Serfdom.
Vive Rodrigues libre
Alain Leveque
