Land expropriation: plan for the worst

JOHANNESBURG – As the country is eagerly waiting for the government to finalise the expropriation of land without compensation, I suggest that we may as well start to plan for the worst.

South Africans are well within their rights to exercise their sovereignty in dealing with the exclusive and discriminatory laws passed by apartheid government.

As it were, we must be cautious as we digest what US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said about our efforts as a country to deal with the land question. He said the proposed policy to change section 25 of the Constitution to allow us to expropriate land without compensation would be disastrous for the South African economy and its people.

I wish that the US Secretary of State could take a leaf out of a book by the leader of the Conservative Party and the current British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, who openly admitted during a campaign speech that his country played a “shameful” role in Zimbabwe’s economic woes.

We also hear that the US government has asked the Zimbabwean government to return land to white farmers as a condition to lift economic sanctions. This is rather shameful.