No need to panic about land, says Magashule
The ANC will have an internal workshop about the land question, as well as a summit that will include "almost everybody", ANC secretary general Ace Magashule announced on Sunday.
"There is no need for any panic," he said, as he reported back on the ANC national executive committee's meeting which was held at the four-star Fire and Ice Hotel in Cape Town over the weekend, with former president Jacob Zuma also in attendance.
"In this country land has been expropriated without compensation several times," he said, adding that there never was a problem when the apartheid government did it.
Magashule said the ANC's internal workshop on land is scheduled for late April, which will include the party's structures and its alliance partners.
Thereafter the summit will be held.
"We will engage almost everybody, including international stakeholders," he said.
This announcement comes on the back of Parliament's Constitutional Review Committee, which last week set out its programme for public participation in reviewing whether Section 25 of the Constitution should be amended to explicitly allow expropriation without compensation.
Last month the committee was tasked by the National Assembly to look into amending the Constitution to allow expropriation without compensation, after the ANC supported an amended EFF motion on expropriation without compensation.
A year earlier, the ANC opposed a similar EFF-motion, but at its national conference in Johannesburg in December it adopted a resolution that it must be investigated whether the Constitution should be amended to allow expropriation without compensation.
At the start of next month, the committee will publish advertisements for oral and written submissions from the public. The public will have a month to respond, committee co-chairperson Vincent Smith told journalists on Tuesday.
Then, in May, the committee will split in two, with one group visiting each of the inland provinces, and the other each of the coastal provinces.
