Land audit: Government’s hoax to deceive the public

The Department of Rural Development and Land Reform’s delay in making the government’s latest land audit report available is nothing but a hoax to keep certain facts from the public in an attempt to deceive the people with regard the matter of land in South Africa, says Dr Peter Groenewald, leader of the FF Plus.

According to Dr Groenewald, information regarding the report that was leaked out in the media point to a number of serious factual errors in the report.

“One example is that the report allegedly indicates that South Africa has 112,9 million hectares of agricultural land, while research that was conducted in 2016 by experts in the field, namely Agri Development Solutions (ADS) in cooperation with Agri SA, indicated that there is only 93,25 million hectares of agricultural land in the country.

“According to Professor Ruth Hall from the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), the report by the government also plagiarised an old UN report.

“Prof. Hall asserts that the recommendations in the government’s report are pure plagiarism, taken from a UN report that was compiled years ago and that dealt with East Europe, so it has nothing to do with South Africa.

“Clearly, the government and the ANC want to deceive the public when it comes to the issue of land in South Africa. They know very well that it is nothing but propaganda to say that 80% of the land in the country is owned by white people.

“Through this deception, the government is driving its own political agenda in order to justify its view on land expropriation without compensation, while they know very well that land reform failed due to corruption and the Department’s inability to properly manage the process.

“I have already requested, with a parliamentary question, that the Minister must make the entire report available so that South Africa can see for itself how the government and the ANC are trying to deceive the people of the country by spreading lies about the issue of land,” says Dr Groenewald. 

Statement issued by Dr. Pieter Groenewald, FF Plus leader, 12 February 2018