Hands off the constitution, parliamentary hearings told

Presenter after presenter at the joint committee on constitutional review’s parliamentary hearings called for the constitution to be left alone.

There were many other ways, including in the constitution, that already allowed for land expropriation without compensation or that could be legislated into existence, they pointed out.

North West associate professor in law Elmien du Plessis said the constitution should be left as it was, as legislation could deal with the technicalities.

“There are no perfect solutions for the land question in South Africa, there are only better solutions.

“We, as a country, must first figure out what the best option is,” Du Plessis said. “How things should be done is set out in legislation.”

Constance Mogale for the Alliance for Rural Democracy said talk about expropriation of land without compensation had been going on since 1991.

“The failure of land reform since 1994 to date and the reasons, which are clearly articulated in the Motlante High Level Report, shows it’s a problem,” said Mogale.

She noted there were policy gaps and blind spots in current land reform law.

“The property rights of our people, especially those living on farms, homelands and urban informal settlements, remain insecure.

“So our members suffer expropriation and deprivation of their property rights at communal and informal settlements,” Mogale said.

“We are saying hands off the constitution,” she said, noting that their interpretation was that the hearings were a way for government to hide from the failure of land reform to deliver on section 25 of the constitution.

University of the Western Cape Professor Ruth Hall from Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies said the track record of land reform over the past 24 years had been “very, very, disappointing”.

“This is not the fault of the constitution. This has been a massive political failure,” Hall said. “We have a strong constitutional mandate which not only empowers, but obliges the state to embark on land reform.”

For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.