The civil rights organisation AfriForum today argued during a submission to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee charged with reviewing Section 25 of the Constitution that the ANC/EFF alliance’s initiative to carry through expropriation without compensation was nothing but an attempt to centralise as much power as possible in the State, and that the leaders of this policy had no respect for the pleas of poor South Africans.
In his submission on behalf of AfriForum, Ernst Roets, Deputy CEO of AfriForum, argued that the campaign of the ANC and its alliance partner, the EFF, was built on a series of false arguments. “The first false argument is an oversimplified, twisted perspective of history. The second is the ideological viewpoint that centralisation of the power in the State will be to the benefit of the public. Third, the policy is built on the false argument that the eroding of property rights and tampering with healthy market principles will lead to economic growth,” Roets said.
Roets further argued that there were more sensible steps to take to implement land reform in a healthy way. These include:
- Acknowledging property rights as point of departure;
- Effectively curbing corruption, especially corruption related to land reform;
- Restitution based on a factual, provable perspective of the past; and
- Issuing title deeds to millions of the members of public who already live on state land.
AfriForum’s presentation to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee can be found at this link: https://www.afriforum.co.za/wp-content/uploads/20180423-AfriForum-Land-and-land-reform-Draft-2-compressed-1.pdf.
