The government is not specially selecting the land of Afrikaans South Africans for expropriation purposes, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs Dirk du Toit said on Tuesday.
Briefing the media at Tuynhuys at Parliament following discussions between a government delegation led by President Thabo Mbeki and the Afrikaans Discussion Group, he said this is ”simply not the case”.
”To tell you the truth, we never think when we do a project on a certain farm [or] whatever, whether the person is an English-speaker or an Afrikaans-speaker,” he said. ”Restitution is a priority in South Africa. We must finish it off. It’s a matter of right. It’s not a matter of pure economic development like you have in land reform as such.
”It must be finished off so that we can go into systematic land reform, scientific land reform, to a far greater extent than we are capable of at the moment. Most of the money is going to restitution,” he said.
However, the nature of restitution is such that if one has to get to an agreed transaction, delays are inevitable. It could take years to get to an agreement, if one is reached at all.
”There are some jobs that can’t be done without the quite democratic powers of expropriation.
”Every day … municipalities are expropriating. You never ask whether for a road, or some works, or whatever. You never ask whether it’s an Afrikaner, or an Englishman, or an Indian, or whatever, who is being expropriated.
”In some sense, expropriation is a very fair method in restitution matters. After a claim has been validated and gazetted, everything on that farm is [frozen, possibly for years]; while with expropriation, immediately ownership goes over after the due process has been followed, and the person can get his money immediately.
”If he’s not satisfied with the money, Section 25 of the Constitution compels a court to decide on the amount of compensation. Very fair process, very decent …
”I really don’t believe … government is looking around and picking on Afrikaners to expropriate their land. That is simply not the case,” Du Toit said.
A discussion group member, Naspers chairperson Ton Vosloo, said his group ”put very strongly to President Mbeki and his team” that the stumbling block regarding land reform is the lack of coordination between different levels of the government.
”That was accepted. I think the point that was put to us was one of delivery, in the sense that agriculture is far down the ranking order when it comes to budget allocations; it’s probably number nine; education is the top priority for instance, and job creation, and so forth,” he said.
Basically, the system is simply not working efficiently in terms of transfers, the development of skills and the formation of new capital.
”Those are the points that came out very strongly,” Vosloo said. — Sapa