PETER BRUCE: Land expropriation, a reason to panic
The ANC is being rushed into taking radical steps because it keeps getting outmanoeuvred by the EFF, which is desperately looking for a new populist election tool
So stunned where his rivals by Cyril Ramaphosa’s narrow victory in the ANC leadership election last December that it took them a day to digest it. And another day to do something about it. They put forward a motion that the conference adopt a motion calling for the expropriation of land without compensation to be introduced into law via an amendment to the constitution. Ramaphosa’s advisers wanted to fight the resolution but were persuaded not to try because the pro-Zuma faction were ready to take the conference down if they didn’t get something in return for their loss at the leadership level. “We didn’t want the whole conference ending with a fight and chairs flying around and giving anyone the excuse to argue that the conference hadn’t been properly closed and was, thus, still open or vulnerable to a re-run,” a minister told me recently. So Ramaphosa has had to appear to be enthusiastic about expropriation without compensation, which we all know is not true. He voted against it i...
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