EFF statement on the signing of the restitution of land rights amendment bill
30 June 2014
The Economic Freedom Fighters rejects the reopening of land claims through the Restitution of Land Rights Amendments Bill which has been singed by President Jacob Zuma into law today. The Restitution Act was the first Act promulgated by the democratic government in 1994. However, it has failed dismally in the past 20 years to restore stolen land to the people. The process is super expensive and this is evidenced by the more recent Mala Mala Game Reserve claim which was settled at more than a billion rands on state cost.
The restitution processes also distorts the history of land dispossession by pegging 1913 as the main point of land dispossession instead of 1652. The process further divides our people into ethnic groups such as the Khoi and the San instead of treating all as deserving of land equitably. In addition, the process reproduces apartheid pattens of racial identification through its racist compensation criterion which forces blacks to take "standards settlements offer" when white land owners are paid at market value. The consequence of this racist compensation criterion is that whites end up earning billions of rands and blacks getting as low as R5000 a household.
The restitution is also unethical because it is driven by the exhausted "willing buyer willing seller" principle which forces the democratic people's government to buy back stolen property. The reopening of the lodgment date is therefore a mere postponement of meaningful land redistribution. It is an attempt to silence the real popular program of EFF on land, where government wants to be seen to be doing something. Yet it is in actual fact paralyzed by the fear of white monopoly capital hence it undertakes piece meal activities to avoid fully returning land to the people.
The only solution to the land question is Land Expropriation Without Compensation for Equal Redistribution. The Economic Freedom Fighters has offered its 6.3% of the vote to the ruling party in order to amend section 25 of the constitution (the property clause). This is the only way to end the process of buying stolen property; and the offer still stands. There is no reason to rejoice at the re-opening of the failed restitution process which will lead to more failed when our people need land now.
If the ruling party is serious about meaningful land redistribution, it must demonstrate by taking the EFF offer to amend the constitution to allow for land expropriation without compensation. Colonization and apartheid were crimes against humanity; we must never reward these crimes through buying the land they forcefully and violently took from the people.
Statement issued by the Economic Freedom Fighters. June 30 2014
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