ANC: Land deal not a secret
2009-05-26 22:03
Cape Town - Western Cape Premier Helen Zille's description of a land transfer by the province's former ANC-run administration as "secret" continues to draw fire from the party that approved it.
If it was a secret, it was "surely the most publicised secret in the world", former ANC provincial housing MEC Whitey Jacobs said in a statement on Tuesday.
On April 21 this year, the then ANC administration signed off the transfer of more than 1 000 hectares of prime provincial housing land - most of it in the Cape Town metropolitan area - to national government's Housing Development Agency.
"This land, worth about half-a-billion rand, and large enough to accommodate nearly 100 000 houses, was transferred free of charge... without informing the public or the City of Cape Town," Zille told a media briefing in the city on Friday last week.
The attempted land transfer had been "done secretly, in bad faith and with an ulterior motive", she said at the time. Jacobs said plans to transfer the land had a long history.
Referenced in Parliament
He said there had been references to the land parcels during this period, including a reference to it by then housing minister Lindiwe Sisulu in her 2007/08 Budget vote speech in Parliament.
In 2007, a memorandum of understanding relating to the transfer of the land parcels had been signed between Sisulu and the then MEC for public works and transport in the Western Cape, Marius Fransman.
"Before my appointment as MEC for housing in July last year, I read about these land parcels being transferred from the province to national government in both national and regional newspapers.
"Immediately after my appointment, in an interview with the Cape Times, I made reference to the MOU between the province and national department of housing regarding the specific land parcels.
"That interview triggered a series of newspaper articles in a number of newspapers relating to one of the land parcels under discussion, in Constantia," Jacobs said.
'Areas specifically earmarked for development'
All the land parcels under discussion were specifically earmarked for the development of integrated human settlements.
"If this is what Premier Zille calls a 'secret', then perhaps my English is not up to scratch and I should go and look again what 'secret' means." he said.
On Monday, former provincial premier Lynne Brown said Zille was "being deliberately misleading again".
"How can she claim the deal was secret when it was raised in Parliament in the past two budget votes of the national minister of housing, and was the subject of press statements and articles in local and national media over a period of more than a year?" she asked.
- SAPA