Just took longer for the banditry in South Africa to begin than it did in Zimbabwe.
ZitatSouth Africa’s parliament voted Tuesday to move forward with an amendment to the country’s constitution that would allow the government to seize and redistribute white-owned land without compensation.
The motion was brought by the radical Marxist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party and was widely supported by the ruling African National Congress, which controls almost two-thirds of the parliament. The measure passed by a vote of 241 to 83, reports Reuters.
EFF leader Julius Malema, a longtime proponent of land expropriation, said the “time for reconciliation is over. Now is the time for justice.”
“We must ensure that we restore the dignity of our people without compensating the criminals who stole our land,” Malema told parliament ahead of the vote, according to South Africa’s News24.
The ANC has long promised land reforms aimed at evening the distribution of land among racial groups, still a highly contentious subject more than two decades after the end of apartheid. Whites own roughly three-quarters of South Africa’s farmland, according to a 2017 government audit.