23 May 2012
Sapa

CAPE TOWN — The chairperson of parliament’s land reform committee wants people out of the over-crowded former “Bantustans” and said the government must make use of its right to expropriate land to do this.

Stone Sizane said after a briefing by the land reform department in Parliament yesterday that the government was not making sufficient use of its right to expropriate land. “South Africans living in greater South Africa should not be over-crowded in Bantustans. Let’s not blame the barrenness of the land, the over-grazing and the soil erosion … let’s take people out of Bantustans.”

Sizane said the Constitution gave the state an instrument of expropriation. If there was a land dispute, the government should “go to court and let the judges adjudicate”.

Democratic Alliance MP Athol Trollip dismissed a suggestion by the department that it would take 54 years to reach the government’s target of redistributing 30% of the land.

One ANC MP said the pace of land reform was “slow and ineffective” and was “a ticking time bomb”.
“The majority of blacks capable of farming are not credit worthy to be loaned [money] by banks to buy farms,” he said.