‘No business plan behind people getting land’

Some of the people clamouring for land to be expropriated and redistributed did not know how to utilise it and others had arable land they had not used, commercial farmer and AgriSA board member Siphiwo Makinana said yesterday.

The government’s plan to amend the constitution to allow for land expropriation without compensation has been the subject of a heated national debate, with critics saying it would damage agriculture.

“People say ‘we want land, we want land’, but for what?” Makinana asked. “If you go through the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, you will see that people have small gardens ... and those small gardens are not worked, let alone the arable land lying fallow there.

“They are building on arable land instead of tilling it. On grazing land, they build homes. What do these people want land for? Is it for residential purposes or for commercial agriculture?”

Makinana added that there was currently no plan to enable subsistence and small-scale farmers to become large-scale commercial farmers.

He urged government to assist in this regard.

“Those currently on the land should be assisted, instead of putting more people on land without a business plan. In short, there is no business plan behind people getting land,” said Makinana, who is also national vice-chairperson of the National Wool Growers Association of South Africa.

On Tuesday, parliament adopted a report recommending the constitution be amended to explicitly allow expropriation without compensation.

AgriSA president Dan Kriek said his organisation would defend commercial farmers facing the threat of losing their land.

“We will not allow the constitution to be changed for political reasons, and we will not allow that position to be construed as being nonprogressive and antitransformation,” he said. – ANA