Land in the Western Cape would be the first to be expropriated under an EFF government, its Commander-in-Chief, Julius Malema said at a party election event on Thursday.
The EFF’s Twitter account announced that Malema had told ‘the community of Khayamnandi in Stellenbosch that land expropriation without compensation will start in Western Cape because this is where the land thieves started’.
Accusing Stellenbosch of being a racist town, he added that ‘these white farms belong to us. We want all our land, it’s ours. And when we take over South Africa and the expropriation of land we will start here. We must take our land here.’
‘These wine farms, they are ours. Sizakuyisela le wine [we will drink this wine],’ he remarked.
The fate of the country’s high-end agricultural real estate – symbolised by the Western Cape’s winelands and their world-renowned reputation – has been a recurrent issue in the public discussion of land reform. It has been raised by agricultural stakeholders with the IRR.
While it has been widely assumed that they would be too valuable to be disrupted, this very value could make them attractive targets for expropriation at reduced or nil compensation.
The Stellenbosch area has also come under pressure from land invasions in recent years.