Tag: land reform

Mulder rewriting history, say Young Communists

Freedom Front Plus leader Pieter Mulder is trying to rewrite history and suggest that settlers and colonialists found South Africa as a “house to let”, the Young Communist League of SA said on Sunday.

“The fact is that land was dispossessed violently and through bloodshed, and ultimately legislated in 1913, leaving Africans with no choice but to subject themselves to wage exploitation in the mining industry,” YCLSA secretary Buti Manamela said in a statement on its lekgotla.

“Such utterances are nothing but archaic white denialism and [it] will defeat the very process of land redistribution and land restitution.”

On Wednesday, Mulder suggested in Parliament that black “Bantu-speaking” people had no historical claim to 40 percent of the country.

“Africans in particular never in the past lived in the whole of South Africa,” he said during debate on President Jacob Zuma’s state of the nation address.

Zuma later warned Mulder to tread carefully on the emotive issue of land reform.

On Sunday, the YCLSA called for Mulder’s resignation as Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

“We do not believe that a person such as Pieter Mulder should serve in government, especially in his responsibility in Agriculture and Forestry,” said Manamela.

“We call for his immediate resignation as he does not share the overall objectives of government, or for the president to release him from his duties.”

However, Mulder — in his capacity as the leader of the Freedom Front Plus — reacted later on Sunday saying the league had twisted the comments he had made in Parliament.

“I referred in my speech to the historical acquisition of land. This argument is at present purposefully being presented in a twisted manner.”

He said his argument was that the Koi and the San were the first residents in Southern Africa. Thereafter groups from the North and from the South moved inland and forced the Koi and the San to dryer parts.

“These Northern and Southern groups can not lay claim to the whole land. I referred furthermore to food security and the problems that emotional slogans about land in the fulfilling of this task are causing,” he said.

In its statement, the YCLSA said concerns about the use of judicial institutions for political gain were also raised at its lekgotla.

“We support the proposed regulations for members of the judiciary to declare their business interests and benefits like all other public office bearers,” it said.

It would campaign for constitutional amendments to require the judiciary to be subjected to popular and democratic elections.

“If they serve the public, then the public must determine who should serve in such offices at all levels of the judicial system.”

The lekgotla also touched on the disciplinary hearing against suspended ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema and his executive.

“… In the movement, individuals come and go, but the movement remains no matter how big we believe we are in comparison to the movement,” he said.

In November, Malema and other youth league leaders were found guilty of bringing the ANC into disrepute and of sowing division within the party.

This was after they, among other things, made comments about regime change in Botswana.

They were suspended for periods ranging from 18 months to five years and unsuccessfully appealed against the sanctions. They are now presenting evidence in mitigation. – Sapa

‘South African land grabs not an option’ – or is it?

The idea of claiming land without compensation is “out of touch with reality”, Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti said on Friday.

“Land grabs are not an option, there is no policy like that. By doing so you will have to change the Constitution,” he said.

“It is an option that is completely out of touch with reality.”

Nkwinti was briefing reporters in Boksburg on the East Rand after a meeting on the progress of the land reform green paper.

His deputy, Lechesa Tsenoli, said the National Reference Group, which constituted of representatives from traditional leadership, organised agriculture, emerging farmers and government, brought feedback on what had emerged from different aspects of the green paper.

The feedback focused on the three-tier land tenure system, the office of the Valuer-General, the Land Rights Management Board and the Land Management Commission, among others.

Tsenoli said the group was ensuring that work on the green paper proceeded at a “rapid pace”.

“These timelines are a key thing. We need to devise new timeframes to bring forward those projects that were meant to be done at a later stage,” Tsenoli said.

“We must take stock of where we are at and in mid-March complete and merge with consolidated reports — then be able to brief Cabinet.”

He said the issue of land reform needed to be dealt with “sensitively”.

“For some it is an issue of life and death. For the state, doing it speedily will prevent that,” he said.

“The right thing to do is to establish policy and legislation to redistribute land in a fair manner.”

He said several groups did not accept the historical statistic that 87 percent of the land was white owned.

“They said that we must commission professors to research the statistics.”

He said one of the pivotal issues in land reform was the idea of “willing buyer, willing seller”.

“When a farmer hears that the land could be bought, he trebles the price of the farm. ‘If it is the State then milk it,’ they say.”

Nkwinti said the idea of “willing buyer, willing seller” could not work when the State was involved.  – SAPA

“When the State enters the market, it disfigures it because it has a social responsibility and a political responsibility. The idea only works when it is done between two people,” Nkwinti said.

He said the office of the Valuer-General would address the flaws in the idea.

“With land distribution we need an institution to set the norms and standards so that there will continue to be normalised trade,” he said.

“We hope that this is the right thing to do… within the Constitution.”

ANC must take land, Mantashe tells Young Communists

The ANC cannot be a liberation movement if it does not tackle the issue of land reform, ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe said on Thursday.

“The land question is at the centre of the struggle. If we raise it in the ANC some are irritated. It can’t be a liberation movement that refuses to deal with the land question,” he said.

Mantashe, who is also the chairman of the SA Communist Party, was speaking at a Young Communist League meeting at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

He said land could not just be claimed without compensation, as unskilled workers would not be able to successfully care for their land.

“When the people were dispossessed, they were also de-skilled. Land distribution must go together with a support mechanism for emerging farmers.”

He said historians needed to focus on the indigenous people of South Africa.

“The first war in the country [with colonialists] left what they call the ‘Khoisan Genocide’,” he said.

“This left [the Khoi and San] believing they are extinct, and they say now that they are the ‘coloured’ people. They are the first indigenous people in Africa… they are a part of the African identity.”

He said subsequent wars forced the Basuto nation into the mountains as a means of defence.

“We need to see history through the eyes of the lion. We cannot allow hunters to write the history of lions.”

He was talking in reference to the claim made by Freedom Front Plus leader Pieter Mulder in Parliament on Wednesday.

Mulder suggested that black “Bantu-speaking” people had no historical claim to 40 percent of the country. “Africans in particular never in the past lived in the whole of South Africa,” Mulder claimed during debate in the National Assembly on last week’s state-of-the-nation address.

Mantashe said the ANC and SACP were both fighting different sides of the same “monster”.

“We are fighting the monster at the same time. The ANC is fighting against racial exploitation and the SACP against economic exploitation.”

He said both parties needed to clear themselves of members with “negative tendencies”.

“It is like taking a mouse to a cheese factory, it will eat itself to death. We need to fight these tendencies wherever they are… things like corruption and the use of money to balance forces in conferences, or singing songs that are decisive.

“The ANC needs to reinforce that the only thing that is yours is your salary,” he said

DA says Pieter Mulder needs ‘history lesson’ on land

Freedom Front Plus leader Pieter Mulder needs to be reminded about the “real history” of South Africa, the DA said on Thursday.

“Instead of denying our history, as Mr Mulder does, we must do everything we can to ensure that people have access to land. We have to put right the wrongs of the past,” Democratic Alliance national spokesman Mmusi Maimane said in a statement.

“We cannot simply wish it away. Redress is a democratic imperative. But we have to remedy the sins of apartheid in a way that is sustainable so that all South Africans may benefit from the richness of our soil.”

On Wednesday, Mulder suggested in Parliament that black “Bantu-speaking” people had no historical claim to 40 percent of the country.

“Africans in particular never in the past lived in the whole of South Africa,” he said during debate in the National Assembly on last week’s state-of-the-nation address.

Maimane said there was plenty of land available for land reform, and South Africa needed a land reform programme which was fair and economically viable and the answer was not to do away with the willing-seller, willing-buyer model.

“The solution is an efficient department of rural development that can process claims quickly and can facilitate the efficient and fair distribution of land.

“If we can get that right there will be no need for anybody — whether it is Julius Malema or Pieter Mulder — to use the emotive issue of land to pander to their own narrow constituencies,” said Maimane.

Mulder’s remarks on Wednesday provoked an angry buzz from ruling party benches, which rose in pitch when he explained: “There is sufficient proof that there were no Bantu-speaking people in the Western Cape and north western Cape.”

These areas formed 40 percent of South Africa’s land surface, he told MPs.

Mulder serves in President Jacob Zuma’s Cabinet as deputy agriculture minister.

In his state-of-the-nation address, Zuma said the willing-buyer willing-seller option had “not been the best way to address” land redistribution.

Mulder said the question of land ownership was an emotional issue that had caused many wars. He took issue with land ownership figures cited by Zuma in his address.

“The president quotes in his address the department of rural development’s figures on land reform.

“According to [these], white people possessed 87 percent of the land, and the government had reached only eight percent of its 30 percent [land reform] target. I seriously differ from these figures.

“How does the department calculate the eight percent? There isn’t a completed land audit against which we could correlate these facts.”

The Development Bank of SA calculated in 2001 that 44 percent of the country’s land belonged to whites, 20 percent to blacks, nine percent to brown people and one percent to Asians.

“The way in which the department has calculated the 30 percent and eight percent figures creates the impression that they are setting themselves up to fail.”

Mulder said he seriously differed with the claim that white people had stolen land.

Referring to Zuma’s remarks on the willing-buyer, willing-seller option, he said that, in plain language, this meant the government now believed in the nationalisation of agricultural land. However, anyone who had dealt with land reform knew the problem was not with the willing-buyer, willing-seller principle.

Mulder said he hoped there would come a time when both white and black commercial farmers did not have to look for opportunities elsewhere in Africa.