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More calls to amend section 25

Informal settlement north of Johannesburg by Dinilohlanga Mekuto.
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The Foundation for Human Rights says section 25 of the Constitution must be amended to address the slow pace of land reform, social inequalities, racial and gender discrimination to access land.

The Foundation made an oral presentation to Parliament’s Constitutional Review Committee on a possible amendment to allow expropriation of land without compensation.

Section 25 (1) stipulates that “no one may be deprived of property except in term of law of general application” and also that “no law may permit arbitrary deprivation of property”.

The Foundation’s Dumisa Ntsebeza  says a balance has to be struck.

“What are the key concerns: slow pace of land reform; the racial and gender inequality in land ownership which continues to exist; control of land by individuals especially women in communal areas is still a challenge; access of land in urban areas; high levels of hunger and the high failure rate of land reform projects. Our submission is that section 25 (1) of the constitution should be amended to make it less ambiguous in its attempt to balance the existing property owners and the vast majority of those who were dispossessed of the property.”

Meanwhile, Afriforum CEO, Ernst Roets told the Constitutional Review Committee that  white people never stole land when they arrived in South Africa.

“It is regularly argued and especially in this house that Whites stole the land. This is the single biggest historical fallacy of our time. There are three ways white people acquired land, namely- the settlement on empty land, the purchase of land through treaties, co-operation and agreements, and most controversial but least significant by conquest. Then of course there was legislation such as the native land act of 1913 and the Group areas act of 1950. These injustices must be dealt with but they must be dealt with  specifically and not  to use to construct grand false narrative.”

For more on this see video below:

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