SA to expropriate 139 farms without compensation

THE ANC has targeted 139 selected farms that they plan to expropriate without compensation in the coming weeks as it moves to make good on its commitment to test out section 25 of the Constitution.

The governing party emerged from a twoday lekgotla (meeting) of its highest decisionmaking body, the national executive committee (NEC), with the resolve to make an amendment to the constitution which will explicitly allow for the conditional expropriation of land without compensation.

The NEC has given the green light to its deployees in government, specifically the department of rural development and land affairs, to forge ahead with the process at the Land Claims Court, in which the state will for the first time refuse to pay market value for identified land portions in various parts of the country.

The controversial land debate has also formed the backdrop to a subtle tug-of-war between two dominant lines of thought in the ANC.

Those aligned to President Cyril Ramaphosa are opposed to the strong lobby for “blanket nationalisation”, instead preferring a measured approach that sets out the necessary conditions for expropriation.

ANC NEC member and the head of presidency, Zizi Kodwa, would not divulge details of the farms, but was at pains to emphasise that the move was necessary for the long-term stability of the country.

“Both domestic and international investors must appreciate that long-term investment is tied [to] ownership of land by the majority of people. In other words, if you are talking about sustainable long-term certainty, it is tied to addressing the injustices of the past,” Kodwa said.

“You can appreciate the jittery response and so on, the shocks at the moment, but what we are doing now is to create policy certainty.

“Obviously then there may be a negative impact in terms of the markets, but over time I think the markets as well as investors will appreciate that what we are doing is creating policy certainty and creating the conditions for future investment.”

Kodwa said that ideally the expropriation bill currently in Parliament would be approved by the end of the year, but that slow processes were creating further uncertainty.

The expropriation bill, which will in the main be authored by the department of public works, will elaborate the exact wording of the amendments as it will outline the conditions under which the state can expropriate land without compensation.

On whether or not the constitutional amendment would still be necessary even if the state was successful in its constitutional test, Kodwa affirmed that it would.

“Even if the Constitutional Court rules in our favour on the amendment it will still take place because absolute clarity is important. What we don’t want to happen is that we leave that lack of clarity to chance and then, in two or three years, we realise that we should have sought clarity. Then we must go back to a process.

“We want to satisfy ourselves [so we won’t need] to go back to this process of amending the Constitution. We want long-term certainty.”

In a separate interview with City Press this week, NEC member Ronald Lamola denied that the ANC was being strong-armed by an electoral threat posed by the Economic Freedom Fighters, who have championed the land issue.

Lamola reiterated that the ANC has conceded its failure to move with speed on the land question since it came into power. However, he said, this did not mean that it would abandon due process just in order to be seen to be acting.

The former ANC Youth League leader said the party was also considering a tax for vacant land owned by so-called absent landlords as a way to free up land.

“Outside of expropriation without compensation, what we would also want to do to vacate land is to put a land tax on it, or a form of levy. If, for example, you want to live on an estate, you know that if you don’t build something by a certain time, you can lose your stand.

“So we need the same to happen to vacant land: a person must know that they must use it or be forced to sell it or pay a tax. That will also lower the property prices because there will be land available in abundance in the market,” Lamola said. — Sapa EBOLA is suspected to have caused as many as 33 deaths during the latest outbreak of the virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the health ministry said.

Thirteen cases of the virus were confirmed across northeastern North Kivu province and neighbouring Ituri province, DRC’s health minister said in a statement on Saturday, with another 30 “probable” cases registered.

Three people were confirmed killed by the virus and 30 suspected Ebola deaths are being investigated since the outbreak was declared on Wednesday.

Laboratory examinations aimed at determining UP to 20 people are feared dead after a vintage World War II aircraft crashed into a Swiss mountainside, local reports said yesterday.

The Junker JU52 HB-HOT aircraft, built in Germany in 1939 and now a collectors item, belongs to JU-Air, a company with links to the Swiss air force, the ATS news agency reported. Police have called a news conference for 12:00PM The Junker plane, which can carry up to 17 whether the “probable” cases tested positive for Ebola, which has no proven cure, were ongoing.

Almost 900 “contacts” — meaning people who may have come into contact with an infected person — have been registered by the health ministry.

Vaccinations were being deployed to the city of Beni, in North Kivu province, the statement said.

Ebola is passed from human-to-human by contact through the mouth, nose, or broken skin with blood or other bodily fluids by those infected. Humans contract the virus — which takes its name from the DRC’s Ebola River — from infected animals, typically fruit bats, chimpanzees, gorillas and monkeys. — AP passengers and three crew, crashed into the Piz Segnas mountain in the east of the country on Saturday, at an altitude of around 2 500 metres. According to German-language newspaper Blick, the plane was full for the flight, suggesting that up to 20 people may be dead. The flight had taken off from Ticino in the south of the country, Blick added, and had been due to land at the Duebendorf military airfield near Zurich on Saturday afternoon.