It is an honour to have South Africa\u2019s land reform process compared to what happened in Zimbabwe, SA Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti told MPs yesterday. <\/p>\n
\u201c(President Robert) Mugabe is reversing what the British did to the people of Zimbabwe. It\u2019s an honour,\u201d he said in the National Assembly following an often angry and emotion-filled debate on his department\u2019s 2013\/14 budget.<\/p>\n
Mr Nkwinti was responding to remarks made earlier in the House by Freedom Front Plus MP Pieter Groenewald, who warned the minister he was \u201cplaying with fire\u201d by whipping up emotions on the land issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are creating insecurity. I want to say to the honourable minister, you are creating a typical Zimbabwe situation\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are busy, before the election, to blame whites and apartheid [for the land situation],\u201d Groenewald said. Nkwinti told Groenewald he was right. <\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018You were right . . . about whipping up emotions, just like Zimbabwe. Yes, President Mugabe is the president of Zimbabwe, and here we have President Zuma. But he (Groenewald) says we\u2019re like him (Mugabe). That is a praise, by the way.\u201d<\/p>\n
At this point, Nkwinti was interrupted by loud cries and heckling from opposition benches. The minister responded to these by repeating he considered the comparison with Zimbabwe to be praise for the work government was doing on land reform.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, it is praise . . . he (Groenewald) says we\u2019re like Zimbabwe. That is praise, thank you very much.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an honour. It is an honour. What did you expect? Would you have been happier if he (Groenewald) had said, we were like the British colonialists who killed South Africans to take our land? Would that have been an honour?\u201d Nkwinti asked, to loud cheers from ANC benches.<\/p>\n
Earlier, he spelled out the ANC government\u2019s aims on land reform and the future of South Africa in this regard.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Mangaung conference of the ANC has given us very clear instructions on this – go and change the skewed land ownership pattern in South Africa so that we can have black people taking control of the economy of the country,\u201d Nkwinti said, to loud acclamation from ANC MPs.<\/p>\n
{Sapa}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is an honour to have South Africa\u2019s land reform process compared to what happened in Zimbabwe, SA Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti told MPs yesterday. \u201c(President Robert) Mugabe is reversing what the British did to the people of Zimbabwe. It\u2019s an honour,\u201d he said in the National Assembly following an often angry and emotion-filled […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-8193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8193\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8193"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=8193"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=8193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}