‘Land expropriation not to be feared’
PRESIDENT Cyril Ramaphosa urged people not to be afraid of the expropriation of land without compensation as it would uplift the economy.
He said the debate must now move to the categorisation of land to be given to people.
Ramaphosa made the comments in the Chamber yesterday after parties squared off in another meeting over submissions made by various stakeholders on the expropriation of land without compensation.
The EFF also attacked the team from Parliament over its report on the public hearings in 34 towns. EFF leader Julius Malema and his deputy Floyd Shivambu demanded that the constitutional review committee provide all the recorded material of all the public hearings in the past three months.
The committee will in the next two weeks be given a presentation by a company hired by Parliament to provide a report on the 700 000 written submissions. “We agreed we’ll get the company to summarise the report. We can’t be told it is 89 000 against 60 000,” said Shivambu.
This was after a report revealed that out of 149 000 submissions made 89 000 were not in favour of amending the Constitution and expropriate land without compensation. In turn, 60 000 people were in favour of this.
Malema also said the report by parliamentary staff must be challenged as it did not reflect the views of the people during public hearings. This was not a referendum, Malema said.
The committee is racing against time to finalise the report by the end of next month.
Ramaphosa told the National Assembly there was no going back on the expropriation of land without compensation. He said there was now a groundswell of support among all South Africans for this process to be implemented.
Moving forward they would categorise pieces of land to be given to the people, he said. The debate should now move in that direction.