Expropriation Bill – Land will not feed people

South Africans are “hungry” for jobs, housing, effective policing, roads without potholes, affordable fuel and available electricity!

This is the reaction of Friedl von Maltitz, vice-president of Free State Agriculture (FSA), to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s statement that the “Expropriation Act is necessary to satisfy the ‘hunger for land’”.

President Ramaphosa is out of touch with the real challenges of his countrymen. “He should rather be concerned about the corruption saturation point that the public has reached. Corruption in the state is a much greater threat to social stability as it (together with poor policies) impoverishes every citizen.”

“25 years after the Zimbabwean state expropriated farmers, the people face hunger every day. Land does not feed people, the food that farmers produce does.”

The government’s real agenda, which aims to obtain a general expropriation power through the Expropriation Act, must instead be questioned.

In the processes that are underway, there is a dangerous attempt to try to whip up citizens against each other and the statements seem to insinuate that farmers and the agricultural community are the cause of poor people’s economic circumstances. There is a danger that such statements make a (already soft) target of farmers and their workers.

“During his state of the nation address, the president mentioned that the government will take steps to speed up the provision of title deeds for subsidized houses. It is a positive, workable proposal that will make a real difference to millions of households and should rather be the president’s focus.”