‘In an unprecedented act of parliamentary process manipulation, the ANC has unilaterally decided to introduce a new clause in the Section 25 Amendment Bill that will see the land restitution cut-off date changed from the previous 1913 to January 1800’, according to Annelie Lotriet, Chairperson of the DA Parliamentary Caucus.
Lotriet describes the clause as being ‘essentially smuggled into the draft Bill by the ANC without the knowledge of other political parties represented in the Committee’.
The reason given was that this clause was introduced following input from the recently concluded public participation process. Lotriet describes this as ‘insincere and very misleading’. One submission on changing the cut-off date for land restitution, ‘cannot be taken as a sufficient threshold to introduce this contentious clause’.
Chair of the Section 25 Ad-Hoc committee, Dr Mathole Motshekga, claims that the Management Committee was responsible for requesting an extension to the lifespan of the committee and the drafting of the latest amendment. However, says Lotriet, any process that sidelines the Committee is ‘patently irregular and at variance with parliamentary rules’.
Lotriet says that in introducing this clause, the ANC hoped to bribe the EFF to lend its support to enable the ANC to obtain the two thirds majority needed to pass the Bill.
It also intended to force Parliament’s to extend the committee’s lifespan beyond the 2 weeks that it was already granted on Thursday by the Programming Committee. If this new clause remains, it would require that a new public participation process be initiated.
Lotriet says that the ANC is desperately trying to salvage legislative process over a Bill that is dead in the water. ‘Gutting the Constitution to appease ANC factions and EFF political hedging on land, was never going to proffer solutions for a sustainable land reform programme.’