Sol Plaatje must turn streetlights on for festive season
by Andrew Louw – DA Northern Cape Provincial Leader
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Date: 07 March 2018
Release: Immediate
Yesterday’s utterances regarding land expropriation without compensation, by Premier Sylvia Lucas during her reply on the State of the Province debates, proves yet again that the ANC is playing a dangerous game of politics with private property.
Lucas said that the EFF had lost relevance now that the ANC had implemented land expropriation without compensation. What she really meant, however, is that the ANC has hijacked the EFF’s treacherous policy position in a desperate attempt to retain power after the 2019 elections.
The EFF’s reckless drive to expropriate land without compensation is a manipulative attempt by Julius Malema to sow division amongst South Africans, launch this country into a state of chaos and legitimize land grabs that will not benefit the poor but will further enrich him and his militia. This, however, is what we have come to expect from him and his crazed army in red.
The ANC’s ploy to ride the wave of “land expropriation without compensation”, however, is just downright irresponsible, opportunistic and an attempt to divert attention away from the party’s own failures. And it has placed our entire country on a knife’s edge that now threatens to slit the throat of our hard won democracy.
The ANC knows that, over the past 24 years, it has failed to effectively distribute land to Historically Disadvantaged Individuals. According to the latest land audit, the state still owns approximately 17 million hectares of property which should have been transferred to black ownership but hasn’t. This is to a large extent due to national government’s own policy position to withhold title deeds from black farmers.
The ANC should take responsibility for having dismally failed the transformation agenda instead of piggybacking on the EFF’s ill-informed nationalization agenda and hurling this country into a state of panic that is threatening banks, threatening investment, threatening jobs, threatening food security and threatening our very existence as autonomous citizens of this country.
Aside from poverty and unemployment, land distribution is the most pressing problem that this country faces. It is a real and very emotional issue and it is preventing South Africans from becoming a truly unified and successful nation.
The simple truth, however, is that we don’t need to change the property clause in section 25 of the Constitution to effectively resolve the land issue. The real barrier to land reform has never been compensation for the acquisition of land, it has been the ANC’s own reluctance to hand over state land.
If the political will exists, land distribution can be dealt with in a fair, transparent and urgent manner that compels the transfer of title deeds to black South Africans and that doesn’t kill the South African economy and damage food security.
In the DA-run Western Cape, we have managed to accelerate the pace of land reform compared with the rest of the country and we have delivered 82 830 title deeds since 2009. This not only provides black farmers with the dignity of owning their own property but it also provides access to funds through financial institutions. Surely this is true economic freedom, as opposed to the EFF’s intention to steal ownership of property from all South Africans, making them lease that which they have earned and are entitled to.
The people of South Africa are faced with a choice. They can vote for the DA and look forward to fast, fair and equitable land redistribution that will bring a future of peace, unity, and prosperity or they can vote for the ANC and the EFF, who will not think twice about sacrificing our constitutional rights, making us mere tenants in a barren and broken homeland.
Media Enquiries
Andrew Louw
DA Northern Cape Provincial Leader
082 383 6914
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Researcher
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