Cyril differs with Malema on land
Juju wants state to own all land in the country
President Cyril Ramaphosa has rejected a proposal by EFF leader Julius Malema that the state should be the sole owner of all land in the country.
Responding to questions in the National Assembly on a range of issues from MPs on Wednesday, Ramaphosa said he simply did not buy the idea that ordinary South Africans should not be allowed to have title deeds to their pieces of land because they would be coerced by the rich to sell to them.
Malema had made the proposal during the three-hour question-and-answer session between the president and lawmakers.
“In the EFF we believe that the state must own the whole land, including Hout Bay and Camps Bay, because this thing of title deeds, Mr President, is a setup,” Malema said.
“They want you to give our people title deeds, knowing very well that our people are poor, they will sell the land back to them … don’t you agree that the state must be the owner of the land?’
However, Ramaphosa would not have any of that, saying while he believed “the land must be given to our people”, it was wrong to assert all land must only be owned by government.
“Many people say you give black people the land, they will soon sell the land and houses and remain poor. That’s a false fear, I’m afraid, because our people who’ve had title deeds become so proud that finally they own something that they can show and demonstrate in their hands,” said Ramaphosa, amid applause from the ANC side of the House.
“So, Honourable Malema, I think we should not rob our people from deep yearning and quest to want to own pieces of land. Right now we’re going through this process ... because with the recent land reform process that we embarked on, our rural development department started buying a number of pieces of land and then leased them out to our people.
“Now, the experience that we got is that many of those people are finding it difficult to get loans, because the banks say ‘you don’t own this land, we can’t give you a loan on a basis of a lease’,” he said.
“And some of them are coming forward to say we want to own, we want to have a sense of ownership of the land that you’re distributing to us. So, my own view is that, rather than frustrate this deep yearning
‘‘ Many people say you give black people the land, they will sell
that our people have about owning the land, we should not frustrate them by saying you cannot own this land ...”
Ramaphosa also rejected claims from DA leader Mmusi Maimane that his recent late-night announcement, in his capacity as ANC president, in which he said parliament would change Section 25 of the constitution to provide for expropriation of land without compensation, had undermined the parliamentary process currently under way.
Ramaphosa said Section 25 of the constitution was currently “implicit” and not “explicit” on the issue that has grabbed the attention of the nation.
The president spent a great deal of his Q&A session dealing with the matter.
He said if there was no departure from the current willing-buyer-willing-seller approach, it would take the country up to 100 years to change today’s land ownership pattern, at a projected cost of more than R700-billion. He said he was convinced that South Africans from across the racial divide were finding each other as the land debate rages on.