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(MnG) DA takes on Lamola over land reform comments

DA takes on Lamola over land reform comments
22 Jun 2012 15:31 - Sapa

DA MPL Anthony Benadie says criminal charges will be laid against ANC Youth League deputy president Ronald Lamola over his comments on land reform. He said he would lay charges of incitement to violence against Lamola on Sunday at 9.30am, at the Joubert Street police station in Middelburg.

“The recklessness of this statement at a time when a high number of violent crimes are taking place on Mpumalanga farms cannot be tolerated,” Benadie said in a statement.

“Mr Lamola obviously wants to carry on where Julius Malema left off. It would do him good to learn his lesson sooner rather than later,” said Benadie.

Lamola called for the expropriation of land without compensation at the Durban University of Technology on Tuesday.

“We need an act as forceful as war to bring it [the land] back to the Africans,” he said.

The Freedom Front Plus also condemned the remarks, saying they were creating conflict and polarisation in South Africa.

“The silence of the senior ANC leadership, especially President [Jacob] Zuma, about this is very disconcerting and makes the ANC an accomplice to this incitement to violence,” spokesperson Pieter Groenewald said in a statement.

“The farmers have no reason to apologise for possessing their land and have always fed the people of this country.”

[Actually, they stole the land under apartheid and colonialism, and made 'the people of this country' work for free for well over a century. The notion that 'they fed the nation' with stolen land, and that this would by implication be 'enough compensation' of course is as arrogant as it is desperate. - MrK]

Groenewald said some communities had resorted to taking the law into their own hands by executing criminals and government should not be surprised if the same happened as a result of farm murders.

The youth league is taking its views on land appropriation to the ANC’s national policy conference in Midrand next week.

Earlier this week, civil rights lobby group AfriForum bemoaned Lamola’s remarks.

Deputy CEO Ernst Roets said Lamola had blood on his hands.

“For as long as the ANC watches on while farmers are being killed and hate speech is rampant in its ranks, the ANC, too, has blood on its hands,” said Roets.

In a statement on Friday the youth league said it was meeting with AfriForum to discuss its stance on land reform.

“The meeting is expected to speak to a future platform for co-existence and sharing of land, underpinned by urgent, decisive, and radical economic transformation, to benefit South Africa’s black majority,” the league said.

According to a report, Henry Geldenhuys, deputy president of the Transvaal Agricultural Union, said Lamola was inciting violence.

“There’s no option left for the farmers but to prepare for a war.”

Hanno van Rensburg, son of murdered farmer Johan van Rensburg (77) blamed the youth league for Wednesday’s crime in which his mother Gloudien (65) was also critically wounded, according to a Beeld newspaper report.

“The ANC Youth League say they want to take our land by violent means and declare war.

If they want war, they must come. I’ll fucking shoot them. My family’s blood has been spilt on this land,” van Rensburg was quoted as saying.
- Sapa

Labels: AFRIFORUM, LAND REFORM, SOUTH AFRICA

posted by MrK @ 11:52 PM