Killer turns spotlight back on land reform
THERE are very few topics in South Africa today — other than President Jacob Zuma and his fitness to hold public office — that stir emotions as much as land reform.
The slow pace at which the government is redistributing land has angered its critics and supporters.
They are impatient and angry that there appears to be so very little progress in redistributing land to the poor black and rural population. The programme lacks coherence and offers little support to emerging black small and commercial farmers, they argue.
And they are right. The government acknowledges that not much has been achieved and that it failed to meet its target of redistributing 30% of land by 2014. So far, little more than 6.7-million hectares have been transferred to just over 230 000 beneficiaries.
But there appears to be a concerted effort to fast-track the process. Speaking earlier this year, Zuma announced that at least 124 000 new land claims had been received by the Commission on the Restitution of Land Rights since the reopening of claim submissions in late 2014. In total, the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform expects 397 000 new land claims to be lodged by December 2018.
Most, if not all, political parties in this country agree there ought to be a clear road map and programme for how land should be redistributed.
The ANC wants to speed up redistribution as it is feeling the pressure from the two major opposition parties —-the DA and the EFF.
The DA supports a land reform process that promotes economic inclusion to lift rural people out of poverty and achieves redress in rural communities, while the EFF advocates radical land reforms.
The government’s land reform processes have never been without controversy and have often been used as a political football, but the revelations today that an apartheid murderer is benefiting from a programme designed for victims of apartheid will win it no admirers.
There has been no logical explanation of how Louis van Schoor, an unrepentant mass murderer, qualified to be a beneficiary of land reform.
Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform Gugile Nkwinti owes the country an explanation of how this happened when millions of black South Africans who meet the criteria to be beneficiaries are still waiting on the sidelines.
Van Schoor was once described by The Guardian newspaper as one of the most prolific apartheid killers. In a three-year killing spree between 1986 and 1989 Van Schoor shot more than 100 South Africans, killing 39. His victims were all black.
In an interview with the London-based newspaper on August 4 2006, after his release from jail, Van Schoor remained unrepentant. He said he saw nothing wrong with what he had done.
“I was doing my job — I was paid to protect property. I never apologised for what I did,” he said.
Accepting people like Van Schoor as beneficiaries of this programme is tantamount to showing the poor and the downtrodden of our country the middle finger.
The land reform programme was designed to assist previously disadvantaged South Africans from African, Coloured and Indian communities to access land for agricultural purposes or to make better use of land already accessed.