EFF statement on settlement of land claims and land expropriation

26 May 2016

The EFF reiterates the statement by the CIC Julius Malema that our people should not take money in the land claims settlements as encouraged by Zuma at the Kruger National Park Land Restitution Claim in the Mpumalanga Province. 

During his visit to the Mpumalanga province, the CIC met with the Tenbosch Land Claimants in Nkomazi municipality. Here, the CIC Julius Malema reiterated that the point of land reform is to empower our people with property ownership and control, not to buy them out of ownership and control of the land.

The option should have been to give our people a share in the ownership of the Park, empower them for generations, instead of buying them out with a few hundred thousands of rands. This means our people will always be visitors on their country of birth. We condemn this approach and call on our people to refuse the option of compensation, and demands ownership and control.

The EFF further notes the adoption of the Expropriation Bill by the National Assembly as yet another piece of legislation based on an ethically unjustifiable logic. The only new thing in the bill is that the government no longer needs to have a consent from those it wishes to expropriate land from for public use. This means once government has proved that it requires to use the property for public purposes, it can force the owner to sell it. 

The bill however, is not an answer to the colonial question of land. Land in South Africa was acquired through a crime against humanity; colonialism and apartheid. These crimes were crimes of mass death, mass destitution and systematic dehumanisation of all black people. We reject the idea that for the purposes of land reform there must be money spent by the government or anyone else to redistribute land. 

The ANC government still does not have an ethically justifiable tool to expropriate land to resolve the colonial crime against black people. No government money must ever be spent to restore ownership and control of the land by black people. The foundation for peace and reconciliation must be justice on the land question, otherwise, we are merely postponing a social time bomb. 

The EFF government will expropriate land without compensation for equal distribution as a way to deal with the reality of the colonial and apartheid crimes against black people.

Issued by Mbuyiseni Quintin Ndlozi, National Spokesperson, EFF, 26 May 2016