Whites did not steal land – Roets

AFRIFORUM STIRS WASPS’ NEST AT HEARINGS Process is a waste of time, yells United Democratic Movement’s Filtane.

More than 20 years after the ANC took power and after hundreds of thousands of written submissions, hundreds of verbal submissions across the country as diverse as the people who made them, and verbal representations made in parliament to the joint committee on constitutional review in an oft hostile atmosphere, the land hearings draw to a close today.

AfriForum’s Ernst Roets yesterday responded to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s promise that, “in recognising the original sin of land dispossession ... government would continue the land reform programme that entails expropriation of land without compensation”.

Roets claimed the narrative that whites stole the land was “the single biggest historical fallacy of our time” and the ANC was leading the country into a “communist utopia”.

Settlement, treaties and cooperation – and “most controversial, but least significant” by conquest – were reasons for white ownership of land, Roets asserted.

His claims were the verbal equivalent of poking a stick into a large wasps’ nest.

“This process is a waste of time,” the United Democratic Movement’s Mncedisi Filtane yelled at Roets, while the Economic Freedom Fighter’s Floyd Shivambu said he was determined now to amend the constitution.

The African Christian Democratic Party’s Steven Swart said he was disappointed by Roets’ submission, noting the process was about restorative justice.

“People are hardening their hearts on what you have said today,” Swart said.

Today, the Banking Association South Africa, Business Unity South Africa, Nedbank, John Langalibalele Dube Institute and Legal Resource Centre are expected to finish the submissions stage.

Yesterday, heavyweights Indigenous First Nation Advocacy South Africa (Ifnasa), South African Human Rights Commission, Helen Suzman Foundation, National House of Traditional Leaders and AfriForum, among others, weighed in with submissions.

Ifnasa’s Anthony Williams, representing the Khoe-San people, said his organisation was not entering the debate because it was “inconsequential”.

“Without our identity restored, engaging is futile,” he said.

He called for a removal of the 1913 constitutional deadline for land claims “because it aggressively and violently obstructs our historical claims to our ancestral land”. –