The Department of Land Reform and Rural Development today announced to the relevant parliamentary Portfolio Committee that the so-called Equitable Access to Land Bill will be launched this year.
The objective of the Bill is to bring landownership in line with the country’s demographics using race as basis.
According to the schedule, Cabinet is due to discuss the Bill in March already, followed by public submissions in April and May, a review by Nedlac in August and tabling to Parliament in October.
Very few details are available as yet, but the objective is clear: correcting the so-called skewed pattern of land ownership in the near future.
The Expropriation Act, which President Cyril Ramaphosa signed into law earlier this year, is mentioned in the same breath as the proposed Bill as a mechanism whereby government could gain access to land.
The FF Plus wants to encourage everyone with an interest in landownership to be prepared. It seems as if the ANC wants to use this to rise to the MK’s challenge to move as fast as possible.
Neither the Department nor the Portfolio Committee has tried to hide the fact that this Bill is aimed at white landownership.
They view it as a part of the freedom struggle which was not fully carried out in 1994. In other words, they decided to unilaterally breach the initial agreement in yet another way.
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