EFF Calls on the competition commission to decline the selling of 1600 hectors of Gauteng land by AECI to Shanghai Zendai

06 November, 2013

Economic Freedom Fighters learns with disgust the news of the continued selling of our country and people's land to private local and foreign hands. This happens within a context of increasing concern amongst the people of the slow pace of land reform and redistribution in South Africa following centuries of land disposition of the native population.

AECI, an explosives and chemicals company which was formed in the early 1920s by a British group and diamonds company De Beers, owns 1600 hectors of Gauteng land which it now wants to sell to a Chinese company, Shanghai Zendai. 1600 hectors of land roughly equal to 1600 Ellis Park Stadiums of land transferred to a foreign owned company for R1 billion.

The Shanghai Zendai company plans to use this land for a New York type of City development worth more than R80 billions. This, they say, is in light of the population density that has fast developed in Johannesburg CBD and Sandton, thus they plan to own our new Central Business District, providing more than 20 000 jobs in the process.

So, South Africans must be happy because they are going to get 20 000 jobs, working as foreigners in their own land. How much of the country are we willing to sell, and for how much just so we can get jobs?

The Shanghai Zendai company does not say anything about the quality of these jobs. Are they the same low paying, bastardising jobs that have characterised the development of Down Town over the centuries? And since it will be a new CBD, all of us in South Africa will do city activities on a land privately owned by people in China. Yet, this is forbidden in China itself, as it is in many other countries of the West; no one can own Chines land if they not be Chinese.

We cannot be so desperate for jobs we cannot guarantee that they will change the lives of our people or simply launch them into even deeper levels precariousness. South Africa should be pursuing a different developmental path that relies as much as possible for such infrastructure development on local labour, skills and ownership.

Economic Freedom Fighters rejects this as a completely illegal activity since all privately owned land in this country is stolen land through the violent crimes of colonisation and apartheid. The land belongs to the people; it is a collective social property that must never be for sale, whether the private owners are South Africans or Foreigners.

In the EFF Founding Manifesto, EFF calls on "All land to be transferred to the ownership and custodianship of the state in a similar way that all mineral and petroleum resources were transferred to the ownership and custodianship of the state through the Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA) of 2002. The state should, through its legislative capacity transfer all land to the state, which will administer and use land for sustainable-development purposes. This transfer should happen without compensation, and should apply to all South Africans, black and white."

Furthermore, "the state must be in control and custodianship of all land, and those who are currently using the land or intend using land in the immediate must apply for land-use licences, which should be granted only when there is a purpose for the land being applied [the lease must be only for 25 years]... The state should, within this context, hold the right to withdraw the licence and reallocate the land for public purposes."

In light of the Competition Act of 1998 (Act No. 89 of 1998) which says the Competition Commission should "promote a greater spread of ownership, in particular to increase the ownership stakes of historically disadvantaged persons"; Economic Freedom Fighters calls on the Competition Commission to reject this transaction as it aims to have such huge chunks of local land privately transferred to private, and foreign hands.

The development of another CBD, which is indeed an important pursuit, should be a state led developmental project, together with mainly local companies. Such development must happen within the context of state owned land that only gets leased to developers.

Finally, the EFF reads this purchase as part of ANC's directionlessness when it comes to macroeconomic planning costing us the country's basic resource, its land. It is a proof that ANC is not committed to land reform and rules to perpetuate land dispossession and putting South Africans on sale in the world's markets for the benefit of global ruthless capital.

Statement issued by the Economic Freedom Fighters, November 7 2013

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