'Petty political squabbles in ruling party have delayed land reform'

Congress of Traditional Leaders of SA secretary-general Zolani Mkiva has slammed the ANC for its petty political squabbles saying they're derailing the task of intensifying land reform in SA.

Mkiva said the ruling party and government were dragging their feet regarding transferring land to landless people.

Mkiva, speaking to Sowetan on Saturday on the sidelines of the ANC’s 55th national elective conference in Nasrec, Johannesburg, was reacting to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s statement during his political report on Friday. He said that the ownership of land and its transfer in rural areas under the control of traditional leaders was being addressed with their full participation.

Ramaphosa said through the presidential employment stimulus programme, more than 100,000 small-scale farmers were given sufficient equipment to do their farming.

Mkiva welcomed this financial support but urged the government to accelerate the transfer of land to people.

''The land question is a very important question which ought to be a priority for the ANC and government. I think we have lost time and our people are beginning to be impatient with the tedious process of restitution and redistribution of land in this country. We Africans are the natives of this country and the restitution of land should be to us, the African majority," said Mkiva.

"As we speak here today in this conference, 72% of land is still in the hands of people of European origin. That cannot be correct. It is very wrong. We ought to push and come up with a mechanism that is fast in implementing the policy decisions that get taken in a conference like this.

"We are confident that this conference will not spend more time on producing more policies. We have enough good policies. What is important is to implement them expeditiously because this is a matter of life and death, and bread and butter for our people.

"Indeed, progress has been made. There is room for greater progress. We cannot talk about land transfer without talking about support in the form of equipment and funding. We appreciate this and we need to upskill subsistence farmers, the majority of whom are in rural areas," said Mkiva.

He said ANC leaders should put their personal and political differences aside for the sake of ensuring that land expropriation without compensation becomes a reality. 

''We are calling for the leaders, even if they don’t love each other, to like each other enough, to say that we have a task at hand to deal with the aspirations of the people. We are not making progress because we are simply fighting amongst each other.

"I think we must draw a line in this December 2022 that personal fights, petty political squabbles of leaders at each other’s throats must come to an end and they should focus on needs of people,’’ said Mkiva.

kokam@sowetan.co.za