House Chairperson, the DA will not be supporting the motion on the Order Paper as it appears today. Because what this motion is today, is the greatest hoax perpetuated on the people of South Africa.
Let's be very, very clear, South Africa suffers desperately from the history of systemic exclusion of black people from land ownership in South Africa through a variety of discriminatory laws. And that is the truth. You can trace it
back, it was legislative dispossession of property and ownership in South Africa.
What this has done is that it has left many, many black South Africans, particularly, without security of tenure, without ownership of land and we fully support efforts to ensure that we have redress and redistribution of land in South Africa. We have to put land in the hands of more previously disadvantaged South Africans.
But the problem with this motion is two fold. First of all it's premised on a Constitutional Review Committee, which itself is legally, procedurally and constitutionally flawed. You cannot have a consultation process that culminates in a report that ignores over 600 000 written submissions because they weren't to the liking of what you wanted to achieve. [Applause.] That is not consultation, that is not consultation, that is a farce. It says we have a predetermined outcome, we ask people to give their opinions and we just regarded them anyway.
It completely ignored the overwhelming amount of oral submissions held by the committee here in Parliament where by
far the majority showed very clearly that they were against the amendment of the Constitution.
It ignores the fact that people like Judge L B Sacks have said:
Far from being a barrier to radical land redistribution, the Constitution in fact requires and facilitates extensive and progressive programmes of land reform. It provides for constitutional and judicial control to ensure equitable access and prevent abuse.
And as I said the other day, this cluster that you're trying to use to fix this problem is a smokescreen to the government failure of the last two decades. It doesn't address the root causes of how land reform and land restitution in South Africa is not working, and why it does not move at the pace to ensure that we have land at the hands of more previously disadvantaged South Africans.
It will also have serious unintended consequences for our economy. Most agricultural land is bonded and will have impacts on the financial services in South Africa.
There's also no such thing, including VBS Mutual Bank, it will have an impact on them as well, there's no such thing as expropriation without compensation because what the government expropriates without compensation will be paid for by the negative effects on the economy.
And if you want to see the end road of what you want to do here today, have a look at Venezuela, biggest human displacement in human history [Applause.] biggest human displacement in human history, go and have look, go and have a look at what happened in Zimbabwe when Robert Mugabe went down the same road, ended up with ... the are actually doing the opposite now in Zimbabwe because they realised the folly of their ways. [Interjections.]
But let's be serious, let's get past this hoax, because now you're going to wait till March next year, which is the rising date of this committee's reporting date, to actually grapple with this problem. This problem is far more urgent than that. And if this House and this government were really serious about land reform and land restitution, we would be sitting here over the recess period processing the Expropriation Bill. No special majority required, no amendments of the
Constitution, we could do it in three months her, in Parliament. [Interjections.]
If this government was serious about restitution and redistribution we would speed up the hundreds of thousands of land claims that remain unprocessed in South Africa. [Applause.] We could do that easily.
This government could spend the next three months doing a comprehensive land audit on well-placed state-owned land near urban centres where the real pressure for land and opportunity exist in South Africa.
And this government would sit for the next three months and this House should sit for the next three months giving people title in tribal trust land so that they own the land they live and they work. [Applause.] That is what a serious party would do if it was caring about land reform and land redistribution.
This is a hoax and the people of South Africa are going to see through it pretty soon. [Interjections. [Applause.]