Land issue ‘scares us’

Plans by the ANC to change the constitution to allow the expropriation of land without compensation have unnerved investors, a senior executive of the World Bank group of institutions said on Wednesday.

“If you create uncertainty of some aspects of your environment, and land tenure is one of them, that is one aspect that investors will be looking at,” Sérgio Pimenta, the vice-president for the Middle East and Africa at the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank’s private investment arm, said.

The ANC has made the acceleration of land redistribution key ahead of 2019 elections, pledging to do so in a way that does not threaten food security.

Most private land remains in white minority hands more than two decades after the end of apartheid, making it a vivid symbol of wider disparities.

“What investors are looking for is certainty,” Pimenta said on the sidelines of a meeting between the World Bank and member countries in Livingstone, Zambia.

“The land issue is complex ... Whatever the solution the government is looking at, creating an environment that is reliable, that is certain, is important.”

Public hearings on land redistribution were held across SA in 2018.

A parliamentary committee will consider that and other contributions before recommending whether to change the constitution to allow land to be expropriated without compensation.