White fear, black anger: Zweli Mkhize on why getting the land issue right is so important
‘You want to try a middle road,’ he says. But ‘if you don’t talk about land, you stand alone’
The ANC has decided to push for the right to seize land without compensation for redistribution to black citizens because it feels that the time is right to tackle an issue that still divides the country, Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Zweli Mkhize says. An earlier attempt to take land without paying for it could have jeopardized investor confidence in the economy in the sensitive years after the end of white rule while waiting further could stoke anger in a country where more than a quarter are unemployed and inequality rates are among the highest in the world, said Mkhize.
"You want to try a middle road," he said in an interview in Johannesburg on Friday. "Today if you don’t talk about land you stand alone." Land and the access to it is one of the symbols of inequality in post-apartheid SA, with wealth and poverty still largely divided along racial lines. White people own almost three-quarters of agricultural land, according to a land audit by farm ...
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