ANC’S LAND DREAM DIES
EFF U-turn on constitution means it’s plan B, says Ronald Lamola
The ANC’s attempt to amend the constitution to allow for land expropriation without compensation is in tatters following the collapse of the party’s negotiations with the EFF.
Justice minister Ronald Lamola, who has been leading the ANC delegation in the talks between the two parties, this week said his party will now go it alone as it will not support the destructive Zimbabwean route entailed in the EFF’s demand that all land be put in the custodianship of the state in return for it supporting the ANC’s constitutional amendment bid.
The EFF has vowed not to support the Constitution Eighteenth Amendment Bill, which is before parliament. Without its support, the ANC cannot muster the two-thirds majority required to amend the constitution.
Lamola said state custodianship amounts to nationalisation of all land, something that would completely reorganise and disorganise land ownership.
“That is where we are differing. They want us to take all land and put it under the custodianship of the state. We asked them: ‘What is this, what does it mean, how are you going to do it, to take all this land and put it under the custodianship of the state?’
“They said it’s repossessing of the land, that is what it means. But in reality, in actual practice, it is nationalisation of the land when you look at it practically. That is what it means,” said Lamola.
“That would not only disorganise the forms of land ownership, it would disorganise the social structure of our country and the whole economy for that matter. I think the Zimbabwe situation is a good example of what it would do to the economy.”
Lamola further described the EFF’s proposal of state custodianship as “antiblack”.
“The people are not fighting for land to go to the state; they are fighting for the land to come to them. That is the ANC position. We are saying once we expropriate this land, we must give it to the people.”
For the amendment to pass, the ANC — which has 230 of the 400 seats in the National Assembly — needs the EFF’s votes to reach the two-thirds majority threshold of 267 votes for a constitutional amendment.
EFF leader Julius Malema told the Sunday Times in an interview last week that the party wants state custodianship of the land in the same way the state is a custodian of mineral resources and water.
“It will come to parliament soon with the ANC proposed amendment, which we are going to object to. We will not support anything that says we can expropriate land but with compensation, because we know compensation is meant for corruption,” he said.
Lamola said the ANC will now seek to achieve its objective through the Expropriation Bill.
The Expropriation Bill, which is also before parliament, allows for the expropriation of certain categories of land at nil, with the courts being the final arbiter on the matter.
This includes vacant land, unused land, or that which is earmarked for land reform, land that is in the hands of state institutions, and land that is considered unsafe.
Expropriation of land without compensation was one of the resolutions passed by the ANC at its elective conference in Nasrec in 2017.
Parliament set up an ad hoc committee to initiate legislation that would pave the way for a constitutional amendment to make expropriation without compensation possible.
The ad hoc committee has held public consultations around the country and is working towards finalising the amendment.
Lamola argued that the ANC conference resolution did not instruct the national executive committee of the party to amend the constitution to achieve its aim.
“It did not instruct us to say for you to achieve this, you need to amend the constitution … We said: ‘How do we then move forward and achieve this perspective of expropriation without compensation. Can we achieve it without amending the constitution? Can we achieve it with secondary legislation?’”
Professor Ruth Hall of the University of the Western Cape’s Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies was not surprised
at the stalemate.
“It was entirely foreseeable that this is likely to lead into a stalemate because the parties have always disagreed on what they meant,” she said.
Hall said whether the constitution is amended or not, it will be important for the government to put its cards on the table and say what it is that it wishes to do. The key issue is not the legal constraints but a lack of a political direction.
The Expropriation Bill, she said, does not give enough clarity.
ANC MP Mathole Motshekga, who chairs the parliamentary ad hoc committee tasked with initiating legislation to amend section 25 of the constitution, downplayed the stalemate between the ANC and EFF, saying it had no real effect as the matter is no longer in their hands.
Motshekga said all political parties represented in the committee had held behindthe-scenes
bilaterals, and the outcomes of those negotiations were considered and included in the revised bill, which is out for public comment.
Chair of the DA parliamentary caucus, Annelie Lotriet, who also sits on the ad hoc committee, said they would be relieved if the constitution was not amended, but added: “You never know, there is still a bit of water to run into the sea. We will only know once the National Assembly sits.”