The reason black people don’t have land is because of the failure of the ANC to undo the legacy of the spatial act and the colonial dispossession of land.
This is what land researcher and advocate Tembeka Ngukaitobi told this newspaper shortly after parliament rejected the ANC-sponsored bill to expropriate land without compensation on Tuesday.
He is right.
Putting the bill to a vote in the National Assembly, the ANC presented this piece of legislation as the magic wand the government needs to reverse what the party termed “the original sin” against black people – the dispossession of their land.
Despite the emotive language, the ANC failed to convince even left-leaning parties to support it.
It could not muster the two-thirds majority vote it needed to pass an amendment and so three years of deliberations over this legislation ultimately came to naught.
The EFF, which was the initial agitator for the amendment of the constitution labelled the bill a “sell-out arrangement” as it did not make provision for automatic non-compensation where land is expropriated for public use.
The bill also did not give the state wholesale ownership of land as the EFF demands.
The latter proposal has been rightly rejected by the ANC and other parties as a one-way ticket to economic ruin.
Ultimately, security of tenure must be at the heart of our land reform policy.
The DA argued that this bill should never have been brought to parliament as it would not help landless South Africans who have been let down by the ANC’s failing land reform programme.
On this score, they too are correct.
The truth is that the expropriation and redistribution of land is not held back by any legal impediments in the constitution.
Our supreme law provides for the expropriation of land without compensation provided it meets fair and just provisions.
There is no basis to suggest that our constitution, in its current form, is the primary reason black people remain landless.
The government’s failure on land reform is a result of its own ineptitude, systemic corruption and a lack of political will to use existing legislation – or even test its limits – to restore the dignity of those who are dispossessed.
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