Landless warn of growing anger
2004-09-28 22:18
Johannesburg - South Africa's landless people would react "destructively" if the government failed to keep its land reform promises, the National Landless Movement (LPM) warned on Tuesday.
LPM vice-chair Patrick Mojapelo said only 3% of the country's land has been redistributed over the past 10 years.
"If the government makes promises which they cannot fulfil, the people's anger will break out," Mojapelo told reporters in Johannesburg.
"We want the government to fulfil its promises because if they fail, our people will react destructively."
He said the government has dismally failed to redistribute
30% of South Africa's land between 1994 and 1999 as it had promised.
"There is nothing that we can quote that we can say is the success. There is absolutely nothing.
"We don't see any success in as far as land reform is concerned," he said.
Josia Gaseheete, the LPM's national chair, urged the government to use the Expropriation Act to meet the targets of the land redistribution programme.
'Use Expropriation Act'
"Why can't the government of South Africa use the Expropriation Act?
"We would like the government to use the law of South Africa for the benefit of the people of the country," he said.
The act gives the minister of agriculture and land affairs the power to expropriate land when the owner does not want to give it up.
Mojapelo also accused the government of working closely with farmers to the detriment of poor and landless South Africans.
"We will not standby when our people are still facing constant evictions from the farms, when there are still many incidents of human rights abuse...
"If the farmers and the government continue to ignore the LPM, they will have to take responsibility of... the anger of about 10 million in rural areas."
He said the settled restitution claims report for the financial year ending March 2004, indicated that the government had not redistributed any land in Gauteng and the Western Cape.
But it has "spent R300m in cash compensation in these provinces".
"We, as a movement, believe that this is not land reform because no land was transferred," Mojapelo said.
- SAPA