The land expropriation policy of South Africa’s ruling party, the ANC, will specifically target white people, according to Zweli Mkhize, the minister of cooperative governance and traditional affairs. Neither the property of black citizens nor land controlled by traditional (black) leaders “would be targeted”, he said.
The ANC, which has a long-standing and close relationship to the South African Communist Party, is an Afro-Marxist party that has long threatened to nationalise all farmland in South Africa. Last year the party adopted a policy of “land expropriation without compensation”, which was also adopted by the South African parliament in February this year (2018).
The party also wants to change the South African constitution to allow it to confiscated land at will from white citizens.
The government met with representatives of the National House of Traditional Leaders over that body’s worries about the planned redistribution process, Mkhize’s ministry said in an emailed statement on Friday.
“A wrong impression has been created that the discussion on land expropriation includes land in the hands of traditional leaders,” Mkhize stated.
The Zulu king, Goodwill Zwelithini, had threatened to secede if land given to his tribe by the country’s previous white government were to be expropriated. In 1994, shortly before the ANC takeover of the country, the Zulu land was placed in the Ingonyama trust, presided over by the king. But on Saturday, South African president Cyril Ramaphosa stated that such land under the trust “would remain untouched”.
“We have no intention whatsoever to even touch the land engaphansi kweNgonyama [under the Ingonyama Trust],” Ramaphosa said.
