Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka has dodged giving a definitive answer on whether government will pay a market-related price for land it might appropriate under its land reform programme.
Speaking in the National Council of Provinces on Tuesday, she said the answer to this question was ”a yes and a no”.
She was responding to the Democratic Alliance’s Wilhelm le Roux, who asked if she did not agree ”that land owners should be paid market price; will [the deputy president] say yes or no on that please”.
Mlambo-Ngcuka responded by saying the government had not said it would concentrate on the willing-buyer, willing-seller principle. She said they were reviewing everything that contributed to the current slow pace of land reform.
”We are going to be doing everything, tightening up our administrative process and so on. As to you wanting me to give a yes or no answer, I think it’s a yes and a no,” she said.
Earlier, Mlambo-Ngcuka said it was not the market that had created the skewed pattern of land ownership in South Africa.
”The market on its own did not… create this; it cannot, also, be expected to change the situation.
”The concern expressed on the willing-buyer, willing-seller principle was shared by the [August] Land Summit, which recommended that the state should intervene more actively in the land market, by, among others, using expropriation… ,” she said.
She said the government was considering the Land Summit’s proposals.
”Government will do everything within its power to avoid a situation where people become so desperate about the land situation that they resort to desperate means.
”Let me also assure all the stakeholders that in its endeavour to address the snail’s pace at which land reform is moving, government will always… be guided by the principles of the Constitution.
”In this regard… the willing-buyer, willing seller approach is not something specified in our Constitution,” Mlambo-Ngcuka said.
The government is seeking to settle all land restitution claims within the next three years, and deliver 30% of agricultural land to previously disadvantaged people by 2014.
At the end of last year, only three percent of commercial farm land had been redistributed.
Most opposition political parties and bodies representing white farmers are against scrapping the willing-buyer, willing-seller principle. – Sapa