HON. NDUNA: Thank you Madam Speaker. I hope the issue has been well ventilated. On the issue of Section 52 that speaks to Land Tax, it is my fevervent view that Land Tax be suspended for now and there should be a moratorium, or there should be three seasons from the time the person has been given land or the time pronouncement has been tabled of an anticipated payment of land tax for the land that is inhabited by whichever farmer, to the Minister of Lands. There should be a grace period. In my view, that should not be less than three years from the date that the pronouncement has been made so that our people are not used to reverse the gains of land and the Agrarian Reform Programme of 2000.
Madam Speaker, whatever it is that was carried out on the land reform; it was done to remove the bottlenecks, the impediments, the barriers and all hindrances towards the empowerment of the formerly marginalised black majority. We are utilising archaic, moribund, historic and antiquated ways of dealing with the formerly marginalised black majority. Madam Speaker, we cannot go that route – [HON. MEMBERS: Inaudible interjections.] – I am being requested to repeat but I will not repeat that statement. Madam Speaker, I say so because some of the land that is currently inhabited by these farmers, some of it is on red soils, some on sand soils and some is on not so rich soils. If there is a uniform and constant way of making remittances or payments in terms of what is required by the Minister of Lands, it is both unfair and antiquated. It is not the right way to approach a modern day situation. It is not the right way to approach the formerly marginalised black majority. Whatever it is that we are doing, we should do it for the empowerment of the indigenous community.
Madam Speaker, I beg to differ and say, by making sure we are paying land tax without a moratorium and without a grace period, we are not doing justice to our formerly marginalised people. The Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Agriculture touched on issues to do with women’s rights that they are human rights. The issue of the women to be aligned to their men when it comes to issuance of offer letters in terms of land, should be a thing of the past. There is a Beijing Protocol which speaks to 50:50, I believe it should be automatic. When the spouse passes on, the wife should take over without any impediments and they should also have the power to go and be allocated land on their own. The land commissioners should look into this and bring with them new and dynamic ways of parcelling out land because women are also human and women’s rights are also human rights.
I also see issues to do with disputes on land that the Minister touched on. The Land Commission Bill should seek to align itself to the Mines and Minerals Act because in the present state, the Mines and Minerals Act supersedes or has power over the Land Act. Without the powers that Land Act currently does not have, which are residing in the Mines and Minerals Act, we have no reason to have another Act which speaks to repealing and amendment of those other Acts that were in place in 1963 and 1969. The Agrarian Reform Programme was solely enacted to empower the formerly marginalised black majority. As long as we do not have the Land Act also having equal powers with the Mines and Minerals Act, what is going to happen is, armed with a Mines and Minerals certificate, the miner is going to eject and remove the farmer from the land which they have got an offer letter to.
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