EFF STATEMENT ON COSATU'S OPPOSITION TO LAND EXPROPRIATION WITHOUT COMPENSATION

Wednesday, 5 September, 2018

The EFF registers its deep disappointment at COSATU which sent a white messiah to parliament to oppose land expropriation without compensation. In essence COSATU, through a white messiah, argued that land expropriation can be achieved without amending the constitution. This is a lie that will only see the same repetition of land reform failures that characterised South Africa for the last 24 years. All forces opposed to the amendment of the constitution to allow land expropriation without compensation wittingly or unwittingly favour the maintenance of the status quo.

We call on progressive COSATU Members who want the land back and expropriation without compensation to resign from COSATU Unions in their numbers and look for alternate Unions, which will appreciate that black workers need the land back. COSATU membership subscriptions are being used to sustain an anti-Black neoliberal union establishment that is selling out workers on a daily basis. COSATU, representing thousands of black landless workers, cannot take an opposite side to the return of the land without compensation. White people have always joined in the ranks of COSATU and used non-racialism as a praxis in struggle, to dilute worker's interests and desire to crush the colonial capitalist forces.

Non-racialism must never be confused with silencing the black experience which is not seeking to privilege a white supremacist reading of constitutionalism. Amending section 25 of the constitution does not mean taking property rights from workers. It is simply making it clear that the state can expropriate land without compensation, instead of leaving it to be interpreted by the courts. That land must be expropriated without compensation must be as clear as the right to vote in our constitution.

In our view, it should necessarily result in the de-commodification of land and land being treated all the time as common property of the people, under the custodianship of a democratic state.

Members of COSATU, particularly black workers, must reject the leadership's dilution of the mission for expropriation without compensation through a white messiah. The white messiah they sent to parliament must be rejected for what he truly is, a great grandson of the white settler colonialists whose presence in South Africa to this day is based on the land dispossession of the black indigenous populations through genocide and systematic anti-black racism all of which were crimes against the humanity of black people.

Statement issued by the Economic Freedom Fighters, 5 September 2018