Government has slept while land questions languished, scoffs Ngcukaitobi
12 March 2018
Cape Town - If the political will to implement land expropriation without compensation was determined by timing, the government’s latest motion shows that they are either unwilling to do it or have been asleep for the past 24 years.
This is according to Advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, who spoke to students at the University of Cape Town during a debate on Parliament’s motion to investigate the expropriation of land without compensation on Friday evening.
The question entered the constitutional realm when last month the National Assembly adopted a motion to investigate constitutional amendments to allow expropriation without compensation. This was a motion introduced by the Economic Freedom Fighters and amended by the African National Congress. The two parties joined forces to ensure the motion is adopted.
Ngcukaitobi told the students that to understand what chance the land question had of being addressed, it was important to understand that land was not merely an economic asset or a place where people live and produced. He said the deprivation of land by the past regime was “the debasement of people’s identity”.