Cape Town - Parliament is gearing to vote on a Bill calling for the expropriation of land without compensation with the ANC insisting that it does not back the whole nationalisation of land.
The ANC still insists that the state can only be custodian of certain sections of the land.
The National Assembly will require a two-thirds majority or 67% of MPs to vote on the expropriation of land without compensation.
But for the bill on the amendment of the constitution for the expropriation of land without compensation to be passed the ANC would require the support of more parties to get to 67%.
The DA, Freedom Front Plus, the ACDP and other parties do not back the bill.
The EFF and ANC had been in talks a few months ago on land expropriation, but their negotiations collapsed after they failed to agree on the custodianship of land.
The EFF believes that the state must be the sole custodian of all land in the country.
But the ANC is of the view the state can only be custodian on certain portions of land.
ANC chief whip Pemmy Majodina said yesterday they have been dealing with the issue of land expropriation in the last two years.
“The ANC does not subscribe to the wholesale nationalisation of land or wholesale state custodianship of land. After lengthy deliberations internally and given the complexities of the sub clause and restitution legislation that has been introduced in 1994 and the likelihood of protracted and time delaying litigation in driving a land reform process, the ANC decided not to amend Section 25 (7) whilst acknowledging that it must be dealt with going forward. The proposed amendments by the ANC took cognisance of the fact that the mandate of the Ad Hoc Committee was to make explicit that which is implicit in the Section 25 of the Constitution in order to make possible the expropriation of land without compensation, and further noted that the law of general application, the Expropriation Bill, deals with the circumstances under which expropriation of land without compensation can take place in land under the auspices of the Minister of Public Works. Parliament is in the process of finalising the Expropriation Bill,” said Majodina.
POLITICAL BUREAU