Mismanagement started with Mandela – lawyer

The democratic government’s mismanagement of land redistribution started with Nelson Mandela, according to activist and Advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi during a panel discussion on land, organised by the University of Fort Hare’s law school last week. Ngcukaitobi, who the Daily Dispatch notes, often represents the EFF in court, accused Mandela of failing to honour his promise to transfer 30% of all commercial farms to black people during his first five years in office. Ngcukaitobi said that at the end of Madiba’s term in 1999, only 0.7% of the land had been transferred. A 2016 report from the Department of Rural Development & Agrarian Reform revealed that only 7% of land had been transferred to black people so far, said Ngcukaitobi. He said Mandela would be remembered as the great liberator of the 20th century, but his legacy as President would always be debated. ‘When the politicians come for our votes, we must ask them the difficult questions of their failure to hold the apartheid leaders, and the apartheid beneficiaries accountable for black suffering.’ He said black people were turned into free labour, unpaid and restricted in acquiring property or to buy land. He noted, too, that it was very questionable that despite apartheid being declared by the international community as a crime against humanity in 1971, there were no criminals convicted of this crime.