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Lex Libertas welcomes the minister's willingness to engage, despite substantial political differences.
The Minister of Land Reform and Rural Development, Mzwanele Nyhontso, has accepted Lex Libertas’s request to meet with him regarding racial exclusion in the allocation and leasing of state-owned agricultural land. The meeting is expected to take place in November.
Lex Libertas welcomes the minister's willingness to engage, despite substantial political differences.
The organisation is currently finalising a report documenting the exclusion of white citizens from opportunities to lease state-owned agricultural land. The report also examines the broader pattern of racial legislation, the failure of existing land reform policies, false narratives regarding land ownership in South Africa, and a series of possible solutions to the crisis.
The report will be published ahead of the meeting.
‘We appreciate the minister's willingness to engage with us. While we have fundamental disagreements about land reform, we believe there should be room for constructive discussion about developing successful farmers, increasing agricultural production and creating employment opportunities,’ Roets said.
‘Land reform should be measured above all else by how many successful farmers have been established. We believe cooperation between established and emerging farmers could play an important role in achieving this.’
Lex Libertas’s central focus is the promotion of a viable political dispensation for the peoples of South Africa. The report will make it clear that political decentralisation is perhaps the single biggest step that could be taken to address the land reform crisis in South Africa.
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‘It is not enough to declare farm attacks a priority crime. A declaration to that effect would be nothing more than an administrative formality. What matters is whether practical measures are taken to prevent these attacks and bring perpetrators to justice,’ Roets said.
We therefore call on you to publicly and unequivocally condemn the attack on Mr Marx, and to express the government's commitment to combating farm attacks through practical and measurable interventions.
‘Most concerning, despite the severity of the crisis, this is the only crime phenomenon in South Africa that is both openly encouraged and actively denied by some of the most influential politicians in the country.’