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Public to have a say as land expropriation discussion hits the road

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Constitutional review committee members Vincent Smith, Dr Mathole Motshekga and advocate Leks Makua. Picture: Ndileka Lujabe/City Press
Constitutional review committee members Vincent Smith, Dr Mathole Motshekga and advocate Leks Makua. Picture: Ndileka Lujabe/City Press

The land expropriation discussion will be coming to your province soon.

The Constitutional Review Committee, tasked by Parliament to review Section 25 of the Constitution for the purposes of expropriating land without compensation, will go to all nine provinces over the next two months to interact with the public in an attempt to get a clear understanding of whether people want the section to be amended and why.

Vincent Smith, who is the co-chair of the committee, said that the mandate given to them was to determine “whether Section 25 of the Constitution is a hindrance to land reform … and what mechanisms should be in place to facilitate land reform”.

The committee began its first face-to-face interactions this week at the Gordon Institute of Business Science in Illovo, Johannesburg.

“Normally we would get written submissions, but we took a decision to (interact) face-to-face because, normally, our people are unable to come to Cape Town from a cost point of view,” Smith said.

“So today we are going to the people, so that everybody has an opportunity (to submit their view) and not only the resourced people.”

A call for written submissions will also be made, within the next week, and will be open for a month. The authors of those submissions will then be asked if they would like to present to the committee when it sits in July and August.

Asked if the timelines for the committee were too short for such an important discussion, Smith said that the initial deadline for the committee was the end of June but it was extended to the end of August to facilitate discussion.

“I don’t want to go in, even before we start, and say we are going to extend it. I think it’s the wrong approach. We should be saying these are the timeframes; they might be ambitious but we are going to do our damndest and when we get to a point where we know we are not going to make it we will ask for an extension. But our deadline remains August 30.”

Smith also said the forums were important enough to be live-streamed but the committee’s budget would determine if this was possible.

Meanwhile, Rural Development and Land Reform Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane said on Tuesday that she was preparing for a test case to expropriate land without compensation as the committee’s work may take too long.

Nkoana-Mashabane, who was the keynote speaker at the dialogue, said her department would not wait till the end of August for Parliament to conclude its review process.

“We cannot wait for Parliament … if we need to expropriate your land, we are going to do that, because it is in the Constitution.

“We should always put this book we love so much, called the Constitution, to the test to serve our people,” she said, adding that that the Constitution contained elements that already allowed for expropriation of land without compensation which the previous ANC administration had not used.

ANC MP and fellow committee member, Mathole Motshekga, said the minister may have been misunderstood.

“Sometimes English is not our mother tongue. We haven’t utilised the Constitution to the full … if by what she said she means that she won’t wait for the parliamentary process, but to begin to utilise the Constitution [then] that would be correct.

“But it would not be correct to say that that she would disregard the parliamentary process and steam ahead because [it] was the decision of the majority of the Parliament in which the party she comes from is the governing party [which] fully embraces this process,” Motshekga said.

Smith added that it would be “[problematic] if the sentiment is that this committee is a waste of time”.

“I don’t think that’s what she was saying. I don’t think she genuinely meant this committee’s work must be put on hold because she doesn’t have the authority to do that,” Smith said.

During the two-day dialogue a variety of civil society, private companies and industry leaders made presentations on how the land could be expropriated without changing the Constitution as well as what challenges will be faced if the Constitution is amended.

The overriding sentiment was that more discussion was needed as well as clarity on what exactly had to be debated and discussed in these forums.

Smith and Motshekga did not want to say when the entire process would be concluded but hinted at the possibility of it extending to the next Parliament.

“There are processes in Parliament, there’s a programming committee so it all depends. Next year is an election year and it may be that the work will be finished by the next Parliament, so we will not be able to set the time frames for the conclusion of this. But the important thing for us is that the process has started,” Motshekga said.

Asked how the process of determining whether Section 25 should be amended will be done, Smith said that it will not be through a referendum style.

“There will be a sizable number that says change the constitution and there will be sizeable number that says don’t change the constitution. But it can’t be a mathematical exercise, it has to be on the strength of the argument,” Smith emphasised.

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