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President Cyril Ramaphosa has again moved to allay fears over the amendment of section 25 of the Constitution, emphasising that property rights will remain secure.
Ramaphosa addressed the land question during a media briefing that followed a meeting with German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who is in South Africa on a three-day visit.
“Even as we are dealing with some of the most challenging and intricate problems that emanate from our past, such as land reform, the land reform process is being conducted in the most judicious and proper manner by going through our structures. Parliament is one of those structures. It is being debated by the representatives of the people of South Africa,” Ramaphosa said.
Last week, Parliament’s joint constitutional review committee signed off on a report recommending to Parliament that section 25 of the Constitution be amended to explicitly allow for land to be expropriated without compensation.
The move was championed by the ANC and the EFF, despite the two having vastly different perspectives on how much land should be expropriated. The EFF supports wholesale expropriation, which would see all land nationalised and owned by the state. The ANC is pushing for a more moderate form, in which land is expropriated without compensation only in very particular instances.
The committee’s report will now be debated by the two houses of Parliament, the National Council of Provinces and the National Assembly.
“As we debate it we are going to find solutions; solutions that are going to ensure that there is respect for property rights for all the people of South Africa and that property rights are secure for all the people of this country and that as we secure those rights we also unlock the utilisation of land in South Africa to grow our economy, to expand economic activity that will include all the people of South Africa.
“We have said there will be no land grabs, we have also said investors who invest in our economy should have no fear that if they invest, their investments are going to be grabbed, we are not wired like that,” Ramaphosa told a media gathering that included a delegation of German journalists.
“We cannot invite people to come and invest and thereafter take their investments. It is like inviting a guest to your home and thereafter rob them of their possessions. We don’t do that. Investors should know that their investments will be secure. We are in the process of reforming a land process in South Africa, so that we can have more stability. The more stability we have, the more everybody’s interest is safe guarded including everybody’s investment.”
The German president, who hailed the Zondo commission that is investigating state capture and generally the fight against corruption, said that Germany had also undergone a process of giving back land that was dispossessed during the time of the Berlin Wall.
Steinmeier said that after the fall of the wall, the country, “saw a need to deal with dispossession”.
He said that necessary mechanisms – which included a parliamentary process – unfolded to facilitate the move to return land.
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