Statement: R2K demands that the land discussions must be about people’ dignity and bread and not about rhetoric!

18 October 2018

“For a colonized people the most essential value… is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity.”

The Right2Know Campaign has carefully been observing the processes that Parliament has initiated on amendments to section 25 of the Constitution.

R2K fully supports the expropriation of land without compensation to meet the basic needs of the historically and currently dispossessed.

First, R2K commends the efforts taken by Parliament in attempting to ensure access to land.

Secondly, R2K believes that all efforts that are aimed at addressing historical and current injustices involving land must be informed by the voices and lived experiences of the landless people and movements; the people who have been waiting for their land claims to be dealt with; people who have been at the receiving end of state violence when they have occupied vacant land; the people who received land but did not receive any support from government for purposes of farming; the people who are constantly facing evictions from their homes by municipalities and corporations across the country; the vendors who have been moved, attacked, evicted by municipalities in the cities of KwaZulu Natal, Johannesburg, Durban and elsewhere; people who have been waiting for their RDP houses without an end to the waiting; people who are being victimized and have been on the threat of being killed, have family members and community members who have been killed by corrupt government officials as a result of housing lists and allocation of land; people who have no idea where to go in order to submit a land claim and people who suffer because government continues to sell and lease land it owns to corporations instead of providing low cost housing, or giving to landless people who want to farm it.

We demand that political parties desist from making these processes about rhetoric and electioneering. The crucible of land in South Africa goes beyond mere party politics.  It is one of the cardinal instruments that was used by settler-colonialism and Apartheid to, as Sol Plaatje says: “Awaking on Friday morning, June 20, 1913, the South African native found himself, not actually a slave, but a pariah in the land of his birth.”

R2K demands that the discussions and resultant processes must be informed by sound, reliable information and statistics on land.

Issued by Busi Mtabane, Right2Know Communicator, 18 October 2018