The bill deals with issues such as land ceilings and the regulation of foreign ownership of agricultural land.

Agri SA’s Parliamentary representative, Annelize Crosby, says the draft bill has been under development since a green paper was first introduced in 2011. Crosby says Agri SA has been against the land ceiling proposal in principle since the outset.

“The Minister has decided to go ahead with it nonetheless. He had a big consultative workshop last year where he tried to get a mandate to go ahead. Now it’s been before cabinet in a draft form and it sounds like cabinet has given the go-ahead for the bill.

“That means it will now be published for comment. Normally they would allow at least 30 days. Hopefully, with something like this, which is quite controversial, there will be a longer period of time for comment.”

Crosby says she has not yet seen the bill and is also awaiting its publication in the Government Gazette.

Commenting on other parliamentary issues, Crosby says they find the debate on possible Constitutional amendments to allow for expropriation without compensation very worrying.

“What was interesting is that it was then opposed by the ANC. So the EFF basically said they’d heard President Jacob Zuma talking about expropriation without compensation and also heard Minister Nkwinti make some utterances in this regard.”

She says the EFF then said they are there to offer their 6% vote in the National Assembly to the ANC if the party was prepared to amend the Constitution.

While a few minor opposition parties threw their weight behind the EFF, Crosby says the ANC majority voted against the motion.

- OFM News