No food, only water for those at land hearings
● The parliamentary committee tasked with land expropriation has had its budget cut by almost half: from R25-million to about R12-million.
This is according to parliamentary sources familiar with the planning of a constitutional review committee that will conduct public consultations on the amendment of section 25 of the constitution to allow for expropriation without compensation. It met this week to adopt a programme of action.
The sources said parliament was facing budget constraints.
The committee needed to stop spending on lunches at municipalities that would provide venues for public meetings. The committee was also lobbying municipalities to sponsor bottled water.
This is unusual because parliament usually provides food and soft drinks at public hearings in and outside the legislature’s buildings.
The parliamentary roadshow on land, which has generated huge public interest after drawing an unprecedented number of written submission, is due to start next month.
Vincent Smith, the co-chairman of the constitutional review committee, said this week it had to cut its budget by half.
During informal discussions, the committee came to agreement with the leadership of parliament about a framework for the budget.
Smith would not say how much the committee was given. Sources said the amount was between R11-million and R12-million.
“Our original budget was very ambitious. It took into account catering for 400 people per venue and venue hire,” said Smith.
The committee had planned to hire venues big enough to accommodate 400 people at each meeting in smaller provinces and about 1 000 in Gauteng. It had been planning to feed all the participants.
It was also looking for venues outside state buildings, hiring marquees and mobile toilets.
“We have now adopted an approach where we’re talking to municipalities and provinces to give us venues and we have decided that we are not going to cater, other than water. Even that water, we will ask the local municipalities to provide for us,” said Smith.
The cuts on venue hire and refreshments brought the budget down, and after the informal discussions with parliamentary bosses an agreement was reached this week to ring-fence the money for the exercise.
Sunday Times sources had previously claimed that initial talks were for the committee to cut down on the number of public hearing events because of the budget constraints.
But Smith said parliament felt strongly that the proposed three days in each province were not sufficient for consultation and therefore would not be reduced.
The joint committee will split into two groups that will visit each of the nine provinces, listening to thousands of oral submission in 31 venues. It will hold four hearings in each of the large provinces and three in the others from the end of June to August.
The committee said it had received an unprecedented number of written submissions, which stood at about 150 000 by Thursday.
It has extended the deadline for written submissions by two weeks to June 15 after receiving requests from a number of civil organisations which claimed that they were still conducting research and were unable to submit before the May 31 deadline.
Among the submissions received, about 64 000 seem to originate from “the same WhatsApp group” as the letters, although signed by different people, had exactly the same text, according to Smith.
The Sunday Times saw a copy of the letter that calls on the joint committee not to change the constitution because “many people have put all their life savings into their properties”.
It said: “Just taking the property is extremely unfair. It might even cause some people to not have retirement money as perhaps they have planned on selling the property, or letting the property for income when they retire.”
The letter also suggests that the government could use the money it spends on hosting parties for “themselves” to fund expropriation of land.
R25m
The original budget for the land expropriation committee
R12m
The reduced budget for the land expropriation committee