Land Reform Green Paper: Minister Nkwinti must go back to the drawing board

At the presentation to the Portfolio Committee on Rural Development and Land Reform today, Minister Gugile Nkwinti confirmed that the Green Paper on Land Reform may be unconstitutional. He also said that institutional inadequacies in his department were not taken into account before the document was drafted.

The Minister should withdraw the Green Paper, go back to the drawing-board and present the South African public with a document that has been properly researched and is in line with the values of the Constitution. In its current form, the Green Paper offers no vision of how to redress the inequities bequeathed by apartheid in a coherent and sustainable way.

Today in the Committee, I asked about the possible unconstitutionality of the Office of the Land Valuer-General and the Land Management Commission as contained in the Green Paper. The Minister said that he would "appeal to Cabinet to change the Constitution". Cabinet does not have the authority to change the Constitution. Only a two-thirds majority in Parliament can do that.

I also asked why the Green Paper did not deal with the Department's internal challenges and how they have stymied government's land reform programme. The Minister responded that these issues were not included because there were "too many".

The Department has a seven-year history of maladministration, has received back-to-back qualified audits and is currently being investigated by the Special Investigating Unit (SIU). Yet the Minister did not think it was important to propose solutions to these problems in the Green Paper.

The Minister also confirmed, as we suspected, that the proposals aimed at regulating foreign land ownership are entirely ideological and not based on any research of South African land ownership patterns. Before any interventions on land ownership are instituted, thorough research must be conducted.

It is obvious that the Minister has not done his homework. He should now go back to the drawing board and present a Green Paper that will redress South Africa's land inequities in a sustainable manner that respects the rights of all.

Statement issued by Lindiwe Mazibuko MP, DA Shadow Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform, September 20 2011

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