News / Africa
ANC talks left on land as unrest flares
08 Feb 2015 at 17:15hrs | Views
SOUTH Africa's government has built close to four million houses for low-income families since the end of apartheid in 1994.
Lizzie Mboweni is one of millions still waiting for one.
Last Saturday she joined scores of squatters from Diepsloot, a shantytown north of Johannesburg, in a violent attempt to grab plots in an unused field across the road.
The move was part of a campaign of land invasions launched by the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), an ultra-left opposition party.
The frustration of millions of impoverished black South Africans like Mboweni is not lost on the ruling African National Congress (ANC), which is resorting to brute force to thwart the invasions while signaling a populist shift to the left on land.
This includes proposals to ban foreign ownership of land and limit the size of farms.
Police firing rubber bullets drove Mboweni and the EFF back across the road, a small skirmish in the wider battle for the hearts, minds and ultimately votes of South Africa's underclass.
"I think it is better to give the people land. It is squashed in here," Mboweni told Reuters, pointing to the cramped and make-shift shacks of Diepsloot.
The local council says the field that was briefly invaded is owned by the province and has been ear-marked for housing.
Although most of the protests by the EFF, led by Julius Malema, the former head of the ANC's youth wing, have been about urban housing, the party says it wants to expand it to farms.
These threats have sowed fears that South Africa may suffer a violent spate of invasions of white-owned farms that wrecked the economy in neighbouring Zimbabwe 15 years ago.
Land is an emotive issue in South Africa, where most of it remains in white hands despite ANC efforts at redistribution.
Lizzie Mboweni is one of millions still waiting for one.
Last Saturday she joined scores of squatters from Diepsloot, a shantytown north of Johannesburg, in a violent attempt to grab plots in an unused field across the road.
The move was part of a campaign of land invasions launched by the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), an ultra-left opposition party.
The frustration of millions of impoverished black South Africans like Mboweni is not lost on the ruling African National Congress (ANC), which is resorting to brute force to thwart the invasions while signaling a populist shift to the left on land.
This includes proposals to ban foreign ownership of land and limit the size of farms.
"I think it is better to give the people land. It is squashed in here," Mboweni told Reuters, pointing to the cramped and make-shift shacks of Diepsloot.
The local council says the field that was briefly invaded is owned by the province and has been ear-marked for housing.
Although most of the protests by the EFF, led by Julius Malema, the former head of the ANC's youth wing, have been about urban housing, the party says it wants to expand it to farms.
These threats have sowed fears that South Africa may suffer a violent spate of invasions of white-owned farms that wrecked the economy in neighbouring Zimbabwe 15 years ago.
Land is an emotive issue in South Africa, where most of it remains in white hands despite ANC efforts at redistribution.
Source - Agencies
