COMMENT: Land issue must be settled soon

THE land question is a stubborn ghost that will haunt us for years.

The sooner it is resolved, the better for our quest to build an equal and just society.

With the arrival of the Economic Freedom Fighters in our mainstream politics, the land question has taken on another dimension. The EFF is calling for the expropriation of land while the ruling party is romanticising the land debacle with its ineffective policies.

How long should this question be allowed to go unresolved in a country characterised by inequality?

Does the ANC realise that its policies amount to gatekeeping of white privilege?

FF+ MP Pieter Groenewald is suffering from apartheid nostalgia, reminding us of the divide and rule policy. It is morally wrong for him to claim that black people stole Khoisan land. He must not be allowed to separate Khoisan and their fellow black people.

Displacements of people in Africa can be traced back in to our early history and should not be interpreted as a way of acquiring land from others.

The land debacle should be resolved before it is continuously used as an instrument to further divide Africans. How can we steal land on the continent of our origin?

There must be another Codesa if we are to resolve this question and spare ourselves further division and inequality arising from landlessness.

• Tiyiselani Mathe, Malamulele