Malema takes hard line on land
Expropriation must be without compensation, he tells president
EFF leader Julius Malema has warned newly-elected President Cyril Ramaphosa that expropriation of land without compensation was not an issue to bluff about. “Mr President, it is an emotive issue and you only mention it if you mean it,” Malema said yesterday during the debate on the State of the Nation address.
On Friday, Ramaphosa said the government would undertake a process of consultation to determine the modalities of the implementation of expropriation without compensation.
DA leader Mmusi Maimane said Ramaphosa should resist the pressures on the ANC to undo the rights enshrined in the constitution, including property rights.
“These same property rights underpin the entire economy, as you well know from your own successful business career.”
Maimane said the injustice of land dispossession could be corrected in a way that respected the rule of law and protected the rights of current and future land owners.
“We can speed up land reform by rooting out corruption and inefficiency. And we must trust emerging black farmers with real land ownership, and not just as permanent tenants of the state. Let those who work the land, own the land.”
He warned that expropriation of land without compensation was incompatible with a growing, flourishing economy.
“You can have one or the other, but never both. That is why our neighbours in Zimbabwe who started to pursue such disastrous and destructive policies in the past are now reversing those and rebuilding their economies,” Maimane said.
But this did not go down well with Malema, who warned Maimane that the DA’s hold on three metros depended on their attitude to expropriation without compensation resolution.
“That’s the fundamental issue which is going to make us fight with you, because anybody who is opposed to expropriation of land without compensation is the enemy of our people and such a person will be dealt with,” he said.
Malema said Ramaphosa’s announcement did not make headlines because “they know you are bluffing”. He said there should be no conditions in the expropriation of land without compensation.
Cope president Mosiuoa Lekota questioned if Ramaphosa’s announcement was in line with his allegiance to the constitution, which stated that expropriation should happen with compensation.