Unfinished land reform ‘a festering wound’, says Cyril Ramaphosa
The African Farmers Association of SA says black farmers needed three things to transform the agricultural sector: land, water and energy
A "festering wound" is what President Cyril Ramaphosa calls the unfinished business of land reform in SA, saying that only by returning the land to the people from whom it has been taken, will the wound heal. "Black people want their land back," he said on Monday night. Ramaphosa reiterated his previous statements that the government looks to agriculture to drive SA’s economic rejuvenation but that this is constrained by the lack of transformation in the sector. He also repeated the ANC’s commitment to see the constitution’s section 25, the property-rights clause, amended to make "explicitly clear" how the provision will allow expropriation without compensation. This, Ramaphosa said, will accelerate land reform and thus transform the sector. Land reform began in earnest with a number of laws enacted to reverse the effects of the Native Lands Act of 1913 by way of restitution, land-tenure reform, and land redistribution based on market-led agrarian reform. Successive ANC governments ...
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