Trevor Manuel, former Finance Minister and one of four investment envoys appointed by President Cyril Ramaphosa to sell SA to investors, said yesterday that explaining SA’s ongoing land debate had been tougher than expected. ‘Communicating this (issue), I think, is a bigger challenge than what we thought,’ said Manuel, adding that land was a ‘complex’ and ‘unresolved matter’.

According to a Business Day report, he said section 25 was added to the Constitution at the dawn of democracy to uphold property rights, ‘and we also recognised within that clause that some of the properties that people had accumulated in SA were by means not fair. The Constitution required us to draft a piece of legislation to create an instrument that would allow for judicial oversight, (but) we failed to actually produce the legislation required by the Constitution,’ he said.

He pointed out that subsection 6 of section 25, which ‘Parliament must enact’ according to the Constitution, says: ‘A person or community whose tenure of land is legally insecure as a result of past racially discriminatory laws or practices is entitled, to the extent provided by an Act of Parliament, either to tenure, which is legally secure, or to comparable redress.’

Manuel also said section 26 of the Constitution, which requires the state to provide access to adequate housing, ‘hasn’t been dealt with. And so in the process of inward migration and urbanisation, people basically just set up where they can and many of the battles are actually about urban land.' Government needed to take heed of the opinions aired at public hearings and then draw on expert advice within a ‘rational, orderly and inclusive’ process. Addressing the issue would require ‘outside agency, such as the judiciary’.

Full Business Day report