A delegation of the Joint Constitutional Review Committee today continued with public hearings into a possible review of section 25 of the Constitution at the Orient Theatre in East London. The committee received several oral submissions that dealt with where the ownership of land should lie.

Today, the committee met with traditional and communal leadership, and people interested in the protection of their communal land, who feel that they are land-locked and would want to add to that land. The committee also heard from commercial farmers who protect agricultural land for food security and production who are against the expropriation of land without compensation. The committee also heard from African farmers who are saying that they don’t have land and therefore they support the amendment of section 25 of the Constitution, because it is giving hope to them that they will get land for farming and that they will use it to implement the skills that they will be equipped with by government.

The committee also received submissions from people who have urban interests, which are about development and infrastructural land and who believe the state must release the land that is the state’s possession.

Going forward, the committee hopes that in Jansenville it will get more oral submissions of farm community interests that would be about land tenure issues, eviction issues and submissions from even the farmers themselves. The committee is scheduled to hold the next public hearings for the Eastern Cape Province leg at the Jansenville Town Hall on Saturday, 28 July 2018, from 11h00 until 16h00.