Land issue central to IFP manifesto launch

THE IFP will launch its election manifesto a little under two months before the May 8 national general elections.

The party is determined to continue from where it left off in the 2016 municipal polls.

When the party heads to Chatsworth Stadium on March 10, it will be expected to outline to potential supporters its solutions on the land question, education, health care, jobs, the justice system and corruption amongst many pressing issues.

IFP national treasurer Narend Singh said the foremost issue was the land question and the party’s position was that there has to be redress in terms of land for those people dispossessed in the past.

“Government has been far too slow in dealing with the land restitution problem,” Singh said.

He added claims that been submitted as far back as 1998 had not yet been dealt with and there was a lack of administrative capacity and will on the part of government to deal effectively with the claims.

“That is leading to the kind of tensions that we see at the moment. We are fully for expropriation, but there’s also a lot of land still in the hands of state ownership that needs to be dealt with,” Singh said.

He said dealing with land in state ownership was not being done speedily enough, although there had been some significant settlement of land claims.

“If we are in government, we will make sure that we start a process of how do we transfer ownership or use of state owned land to communities that want land either for settlement purposes in the urban areas or for agricultural purposes in the rural areas,” Singh said.

He said that they also want to focus on several other issues such as health care and the justice system.

“We are focusing on how to sort out the old problem of health care – 25 years down the line, there are still major problems and there just needs to be tough administration, supervision and management of health care in our country.

“There are challenges with the justice system and we are saying that we must return to training our police better, providing the necessary infrastructure for them, proper detective, proper forensic services and investigations and creating an ethos of them feeling to want to work as policemen.”

With the Zondo ccommission looking into corruption and state capture, Singh said they wanted there to be specialised corruption courts where the issue of corruption can be speedily dealt with.