Land restitution reverses legacy of apartheid

THE letter from Naushad Omar, "Land reform another ANC debacle" (June 26), is fallacious in all instances. Land restitution is an important national and sensitive issue, it is not about the ANC, individual beliefs or demagogy, as the writer seems to assert.

The 50-50 model proposed by Rural Development and Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti is not entirely new, as countries in the former Soviet Union, so-called Balkan states have followed this model and it worked. These countries include Belarus, Moldovia and Ukraine.

Poland has gone as far as expropriating land without compensation. To this end no one has questioned it (including the so-called investors) because land restitution is about bringing justice to the injustices of World War 2, nazism and, in our case, the injustices caused by the apartheid regime.

Furthermore, the writer seems to be confusing the state and government. For the record, the state and government are two different entities.

The government acts on behalf of the state and the state is independent of government, as governments come and go and the state remains. This is the case because the government champions the interests of the people under the name of the state.

To this end, the Nationalist government acted in the interests of the people who it represented, who were whites by default, when it enacted the 1913 Land Act and black people's land was taken without compensation of whatever nature. However, because the ANC government is a non-racial party and it is not interested in repeating the evils of apartheid, Nkwinti, and by extension the ANC, proposed the 50-50 model which is somewhat a compromise solution (lose-lose approach) towards land reform.

The writer maintains that South Africans cannot even run spaza shops and for him/her South Africans are not fit to run farms. This view is misguided and ill-informed.

The first point of departure is that land restitution is about restoring dignity, reversing the legacy of apartheid and empowering the landless people. Hence the writer used a false analogy and sweeping statements in supporting her or his conclusions.

Consequently, people who were dispossessed of land have an option for financial compensation mainly because some of them are too old and they cannot farm anymore. But that does not mean they mustn't be compensated for their land.

Patriotic South African citizen should be working together towards reversing the legacy of apartheid and defining the future in which their children would enjoy the fruits of democracy.

 Thobani kaMajwabana Mhlongo, Muckleneuk, Pretoria