The ANC in parliament says it will be irresponsible for the EFF to walk away now as the two parties drift further apart on the exact wording of the proposed controversial amendment to the constitution to expropriate land without compensation.
The EFF leadership was due to meet senior members of the ANC on Wednesday outside parliamentary processes to try to find common ground on the expropriation without compensation matter. However, it is unclear whether the meeting took place. EFF deputy leader Floyd Shivambu did not respond to text messages and phone calls, while ANC spokesperson Pule Mabe could not be reached for comment on Thursday.
“We are waiting for the EEF to return to the bilaterals at parliamentary level. We are engaged in a parliamentary process. They can’t walk away from this process at this critical stage, it is irresponsible,” Cyril Xaba, an ANC MP and one of the leaders of the talks in parliament, told Business Day on Thursday. He referred questions on whether the meeting had taken place between the EFF and the ANC’s top leaders to Shivambu.
He pointed out that the EFF were the sponsors of the motion to amend the constitution in parliament that initiated the review of section 25 of the property clause of the constitution.
“They owe it to themselves to marshal all other parties in parliament to its logical conclusion,” Xaba said.
The ANC is due to meet other smaller parties on Friday, but this will not have a real impact since the governing party will not be able to get the required two-thirds especially without the support of either the EFF or the DA, the second-largest party in parliament.
The DA vehemently opposes any change to the constitution.
The ANC and the EFF are at loggerheads over the exact wording of the proposed amendment to section 25, or the property clause, of the constitution — particularly on the issue of state custodianship of land, in other words nationalisation, and compensation to be paid.
This means the change to the constitution could be dead in the water as the two parties continue to differ as the deadline to table a report to the National Assembly by the end of August looms. Both parties need one another to pass the amendment, which requires a two-thirds majority.
Last week, Shivambu said the party would not back any amendment that does not support nil compensation or “anything that says custodianship is only for certain land”.
“We have realised that the engagement with committee members has not been very useful because the majority of the time they are not decisionmakers in the ANC, they still have to consult at a different level ... so we have been in engagement with the top five of the ANC with the latest developments to then say ‘let’s sit down and discuss’ and if that discussion does not bear fruit, we will just have to agree that we do not have the common perspective in terms of amendment of section 25.”
The EFF, the third-largest party in parliament, insists that all land be under state custodianship and no compensation to landowners be paid.
On the other hand, the ANC has all along favoured mixed land ownership: private, state and communal tenure.
According to Xaba, the ANC is proposing that the state retain ownership of certain land until it is redistributed to beneficiaries. “So our position is still markedly different from the EFF, which wants all land to be nationalised,” Xaba said.
President Cyril Ramaphosa told journalists earlier in June that the ANC’s approach has always been to give tenure to South Africans.
“The hunger for land has always been about tenure. The notion that we have had a blanket approach, that we will own all the land [from land reform] may be impeding the entrepreneurial spirit. Our people want to own the land and hold the title,” Ramaphosa said.
The leasehold system that has been used for most land reform beneficiaries over the past decade is widely regarded as a failure because it prevents people from using their land as collateral to raise loans.
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