Government slept for 24 years on land issues – lawyer

If the political will to implement land expropriation without compensation was determined by timing, the government’s latest motion shows that they are either unwilling to do it or have been asleep for the past 24 years. A Fin24 report says this is according to Advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, who said it was important to understand that land was not merely an economic asset or a place where people live and produced. He said the deprivation of land by the past regime was ‘the debasement of people’s identity’. Ngcukaitobi said the first secretary general of the ANC, Sol Plaatje, and journalist Richard Msimang wrote extensively on how land dispossession also robbed black people of property, including livestock and tenure. ‘They found that 1913 was not the beginning but the culmination of disposition of the current political, social and economic realities of black SA. It did not begin it, but served as a frozen point in the programme that had been advancing over years.’ He added: ‘The land dispossession cannot be understood in the wider context. The property that comes as a consequence of land ownership was also compromised. If you go from owning 5ha of land and 50 cows to half an acre, what happens to the cows you used to own? This is characterised by Msimang’s writings as a theft of livestock,’ he said. Ngcukaitobi added that resistance of land owners to expropriation was a stumbling block to addressing land dispossession, even when leaders of colonialists governments in SA sought to have the issue addressed.

Full Fin24 report

State-sanctioned theft is how DA leader Mmusi Maimane describes expropriation without compensation. He told a press conference last week his party will continue opposing the proposed constitutional amendments. ‘Property rights are the bedrock of development and economic growth. Expropriation without compensation is state-sanctioned theft‚ which is inimical to economic growth and development‚’ Maimane is quoted as saying in a TimesLIVE report. He said his party stood for protection of all individual rights‚ including the right for individuals to own property. ‘We regard the attempt to amend the Constitution as nothing but a populist effort to scapegoat the Constitution for the failure of the ANC‚ over 20 years‚ to reform land ownership‚’ he added. Maimane instead called for a handing-out of more title deeds to beneficiaries of RDP houses. ‘We are the only party in SA that has focused on reforming ownership of urban land by making sure that beneficiaries of state-subsidised housing have full ownership title to those homes, he is quoted as saying in a BusinessLIVE report. ‘We have made 75 000 homeowners already‚ and are distributing more title deeds every day we are in government‚’ he said‚ referring to initiatives implemented by the party in the Western Cape.

Full TimesLIVE report

Full BusinessLIVE report