Expropriate, distribute land to landless

The insinuation by Tendai Moyo that the EFF’s land policy has already failed in post-colonial Africa (Sowetan July 25) is not only contradictory, factually incorrect and misleading, but also highly propagandist in favour of the apartheid and capitalist winner-takesall socio-economic policies.

The majority of Africans in SA are landless, the minority whites own more than 80% of the land. Moyo’s article suggests that he does not understand what equitable and equal means.

Whether the population grows or shrinks, land is static. However, the point that the EFF is propagating is to repossess through expropriation and distribute to the dispossessed.

It is myopic to say land does not buy bread, does not pay fees and bills. A good job reflects what our late iconic leader, Steve Biko, spoke about when he observed “Black man you are on your own ... lest you are mentally and psychologically liberated, we must forget about political liberation.”

We need African agricultural and industrial entrepreneurs and not workers. We have been exploited as labourers to whites for many centuries.

South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, so says our constitution. The Freedom Charter puts it clearer: “Land shall belong to the state and all the mineral wealth underneath shall be nationalised.”

The status quo in South Africa is that the black ANC government has failed to deliver on its mandate not only to distribute land to its rightful owners but to also develop and implement an empowering strategy for those whose land has been returned to make it productive and economically viable.

It was not socialism that failed but its wrong implementation by despots. Sam Boikanyo Mabopane