ANC AND EFF SHOUT WHILE DA ACTS ON LAND REFORM

19 March 2015

According to the DA in the Western Cape, land reform in South Africa is locked in by a populist affair, an occasional shout-out from the side-lines of both the ANC and EFF with little substance or action. It is the reason why the country continues to fail in its objective to redress the past. The current failure rate of land reform across the country stands at 92%.

Beverly Schäfer, DA Western Cape spokesperson on agriculture, says "while Ministers rally around rhetoric that contradicts the NDP, while the President focuses on a tiny percent of foreign owners and sides-steps real issues - of communal and state owned land - we only see paying of lip service to something that impacts on the lives of the poor and vulnerable in this country."

The Department of Rural Development and Land Reform has lost R 205m in irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure between 2009 and 2014, leading to the disposed people of South Africa will remain as such.

Schäfer says that the DA run-WC has worked closely together with privately owned farms and found other ways to restore the dignity of the people through collective commitment to the NDP; their support programs such as the Land reform advisory desk that will take land reform in the WC to a 70% success rate with 5 years.

She claims that forums such as the African Farmers Association criticises the WC on our share equity schemes, but the WC is yet the only province to show a 62% success rate in shared ownership and a positive contribution to the agricultural economy. Schäfer asks how the ANC thinks that they can move towards meaningful transformation in land reform when Gwede Mantashe, Secretary General of the ANC is persistent on creating fear and uncertainty. She says the ANC should come clean with what its true intentions are with land reform in SA.

The DA run WC is the only province that is putting in measures to create and ensure meaningful land reform in this country. 

Statement issued by Beverley Schäfer MPP, DA Western Cape Spokesperson on Economic Opportunities, Tourism and Agriculture, March 19 2015

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