President Donald Trump’s concerns about South Africa’s recent legislation on expropriation were vindicated Wednesday when news emerged of new legislation to allow land to be redistributed along racial lines.
The Freedom Front Plus, a small right-wing party in the South African parliament that represents a primarily Afrikaans-speaking constituency, warned that the new proposal would seek to bring land ownership patterns — currently dominated by whites — into line with the demographic reality of a black majority in South Africa.
In a statement, the party said:
The Department of Land Reform and Rural Development today announced to the relevant parliamentary Portfolio Committee that the so-called Equitable Access to Land Bill will be launched this year.
The objective of the Bill is to bring landownership in line with the country’s demographics using race as basis.
According to the schedule, Cabinet is due to discuss the Bill in March already, followed by public submissions in April and May, a review by Nedlac [the National Economic Development and Labour Council] in August and tabling to Parliament in October.
Very few details are available as yet, but the objective is clear: correcting the so-called skewed pattern of land ownership in the near future.
The Expropriation Act, which President Cyril Ramaphosa signed into law earlier this year, is mentioned in the same breath as the proposed Bill as a mechanism whereby government could gain access to land.
The FF Plus wants to encourage everyone with an interest in landownership to be prepared. It seems as if the ANC wants to use this to rise to the MK’s challenge to move as fast as possible.
Neither the Department nor the Portfolio Committee has tried to hide the fact that this Bill is aimed at white landownership.
They view it as a part of the freedom struggle which was not fully carried out in 1994. In other words, they decided to unilaterally breach the initial agreement in yet another way.
The “MK” is an extreme party headed by former President Jacob Zuma. The reference to 1994 is a nod to South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy.
Trump’s recent executive order suspending aid to South Africa and offering refuge to Afrikaner farmers referred to the recent Expropriation Act, which critics have said could allow the South African government to conduct Zimbabwe-style land seizures in the future.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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