Provincial ANC set to host land pow-wow

THE ANC Western Cape, still on a high from the election of Cyril Ramaphosa as party president, is set to host a land summit. The Western Cape has the lowest level of land restitution.

AgriSA has already indicated its concerns around the issue, calling it economic suicide. The organisation’s Dan Kriek said the decision by the party was a vague one with little explanation of how it would work.

Provincial secretary FaiezJacobs said they would be engaging with everyone concerned to ensure a “win-win situation”.

“In the Western Cape, the last stats that we picked up showed that less than 5% of the land is in the hands of nonwhite people. So that in itself is an indictment that after 23 years of democracy that land, which is linked to the colonial conquest, how people were dispossessed, our people are still marginalised because land was taken from them,” he said.

“We are welcoming this in the sense that there must be an accelerated land reform strategy. I think the condition that comes with it is that it must not interfere with food security and it must be sustainable… no land grabs.

“How this should work is that we use the existing legislation but there should also be a stronger programme to identify those areas where land restitution must take place. It must be accelerated, it must be fair. We are calling on the constituency who have benefited from the land to co-operate, to assist.

“You had 23-years to co-operate; now we are saying that goodwill was not there, so we need to find a policy instrument to force people to develop land capacity… we are willing to work with the agricultural sector…,” he added.