Evening out the scales

I WRITE this letter in the good spirit of our late first democratic president tata Nelson Mandela.

He fought against white domination just as he fought against black domination.

From those words we can see that he strove for a dream of a South Africa where no race is better than the others, and a South Africa that belongs to everyone who lives in it.

That will never change because we all care about this country and would like it to be among the best countries in the world.

On Tuesday the parliament passed a motion to expropriate land without compensation.

I would like you all to understand that this will be done after consultation with the public throughout the country.

Parliament has South Africa’s best interest at heart, as all those political parties were elected by us. The reason this motion was passed is that it will even out the scales as the economy is skewed in favour of the people who benefited from the wrongdoing and injustice done to fellow South Africans in the past. Since parliament has our best interests at heart, they took a decision on our behalf that in order to even the scale, land should be taken from those who obtained it unjustly.

If you didn’t acquire or obtain the land you possess unjustly, then I don’t think that land will or should be expropriated from you.

I used the word “unjustly”, not using “illegally”, because they mean two different things as we have lived through the days where some things were unjust yet legal.

The main aim of it all is to try to level the scale so that it does not favour certain individuals who benefited from unjust actions taken in the past.

We all know that most South Africans are living in unfavourable conditions and are not living their best lives; they merely survive from day to day not knowing what will happen tomorrow.

Provide solutions to this problem and don’t tell me about the effects this proposal will have.

South Africa has a lot of problems already and we are no longer alarmed by them.

The time to wait for statistics on how badly we are doing as a country should stop and instead, let us see some statistics showing improvements in living conditions for South Africans.

Ubuntu and gratitude are our weapons against all problems. — Nkululeko Nomvalo, via e-mail