Last round of feedback on land expropriation
The debate around the land reform programme in the country is drawing to a close.
Parliament's Joint Constitutional Review Committee will convene on Thursday to consider the final draft report on the submissions made pertaining to land expropriation without compensation.
A service provider was appointed to work through all the comments received regarding the possible amendment of section 25 of the Constitution.
The committee was instructed by the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces to establish whether a change of the property clause was necessary to make it possible for the state to expropriate land without compensation.
Committee chairperson, Lewis Nzimande says the report considered all the written submissions received in this regard.
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"Over 600 000 written submissions were made, but we know now that we will be dealing with at least 449 000 that gone through as legitimate submissions. These exclude the duplicates, blank, emails with just one line and WhatsApp group messages."
Nzimande says the report will give the rationales that were argued for and against the possible amendment.
It will then be combined with two reports already handed in and tabled in the National Assembly later this year.
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"The target we have is to finalise our work by 28 September but in view of the amount of work in front of the committee, we have recommended that the Speaker must extend the deadline for the submission."