Adj.pres. Paul Mashatile (Photo: Jairus Rabbit/GCIS)
If adj.pres. If Paul Mashatile was really interested in speeding up land reform, he would have done more a long time ago to confront the relevant department about his failure to make public a list of land claims in terms of a court order.
This is what Saai said on Monday in response to Mashatile’s latest statements about land reform in South Africa, which according to this organization is a clear indication of Mashatile’s “ignorance”.
On Thursday, during a session in the National Council of Provinces on how planning and cooperation between the three spheres of government can be improved, Mashatile said that “the eradication of unfair and unequal patterns of land ownership in the country must be speeded up”.
According to Mashatile, land ownership is of key importance to the realization of the goals of economic inclusion, food security, social cohesion, inclusive urban planning patterns and rural development.
“This is a matter of social justice and solving it will also help us tackle other problems such as illegal land occupations,” said Mashatile.
He believes that the government and neighboring landowners are the hardest hit financially and politically by land occupation, and says that South Africa will have to find a balance between the “legal obligations regarding respect for property” and the “necessity of social justice”.
“Mashatile hammers on ‘social justice’, but is silent on the lack of justice in criminal cases and civil cases involving ANC high-ranking officials and which have been languishing in our courts for more than a decade,” said Dr. Theo de Jager, board chairman of Saai, said.
“If Mashatile was at all interested in speeding up land reform, he would have confronted the relevant department about his failure to comply with a court order regarding the disclosure of a list of land claims. He would have supported Saai’s insistence on transparency of hired labor trips and insisted on an explanation of why beneficiaries of the redistribution program are increasingly being kicked off leased land to make way for cadres with good connections.”
De Jager says Saai’s regular feedback to embassies about the state of land reform proves unequivocally that land reform is not delayed by the principle of “a voluntary seller”, but rather by a “hopelessly incompetent and corrupt buyer”.
“State enterprises, public health and so many other state functions have collapsed not because of inherited or external factors, but because of cadre deployment and associated corruption and incompetence.
“Similarly, the failure of land reform is the result of inefficient practices in the relevant department. If the deputy president wants to straighten out land reform, it would benefit him well to start in the department.”
