{"id":269639,"date":"2018-09-06T08:12:24","date_gmt":"2018-09-06T06:12:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=269639"},"modified":"2018-09-06T08:12:24","modified_gmt":"2018-09-06T06:12:24","slug":"anc-ally-sees-no-need-to-change-land-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/269639\/anc-ally-sees-no-need-to-change-land-rules\/","title":{"rendered":"ANC ally sees no need to change land rules"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"article\">\n<div class=\"article-content\">\n<p>The South African ruling party\u2019s labour partner sees no need to change the country\u2019s constitution to make it easier to expropriate land without compensation.<\/p>\n<p>The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), which is the country\u2019s biggest labor federation and is in a political alliance with the African National Congress and the Communist Party, is opposed to changing the constitution, which already enables the state to tackle land reform, restitution and redistribution.<\/p>\n<p>The clause that deals with land rights and expropriation \u201cis important because it protects the poor from a possible abuse by a future government,\u201d the federation said in an emailed statement on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn our quest to expropriate land from white people, we need not be shortsighted and throw the baby out with the bathwater.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Government data shows more than two-thirds of farmland is owned by whites, who constitute 7.8% of the country\u2019s 57.7 million people &#8212; a status quo rooted in colonial and white-minority rule.<\/p>\n<p>The ANC decided in December that the situation is untenable and tasked a parliamentary committee to review the constitution to address it. The panel is holding public hearings in parliament in Cape Town this week.<\/p>\n<p>President Cyril Ramaphosa has given assurances that the government isn\u2019t embarking on a land grab and any policy changes won\u2019t be allowed to damage agricultural production.<\/p>\n<p>Even so, data released on Tuesday showed farm output dropped an annualized 29.2% in the second quarter and was a major contributor to the country falling into its first recession since 2009.<\/p>\n<p>Agri SA, a farmers\u2019 lobby group, has observed sharp slowdown in farm sales.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/banking\/268555\/south-africas-banks-speak-out-on-concerns-surrounding-land-reform\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">South Africa\u2019s banks speak out on concerns surrounding land reform<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The South African ruling party\u2019s labour partner sees no need to change the country\u2019s constitution to make it easier to expropriate land without compensation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":221605,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[1875],"class_list":["post-269639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-anc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269639"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":269643,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269639\/revisions\/269643"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}