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Johannesburg - The National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) and the Food and Allied Workers' Union (Fawu) will launch a campaign in support of speeding up South Africa's land reform programme, the two trade unions said on Thursday.
Their campaign would start on June 19 - the 100-year anniversary of the Native Land Act which severely limited black land ownership and led to forced removals.
"It is on the day of enactment of the 1913 Native Land Act that Numsa and Fawu have decided to launch their 'Campaign for Agrarian Transformation and Land Distribution in South Africa," said Numsa president Cedric Gina.
The unions wanted section 25(2)(b) of the Constitution changed so that courts were no longer the final arbiter on compensation.
This was because they believed the courts were not transformed enough to understand what was "just and equitable" compensation.
"Because the kind of judges that we have in our country are not progressive enough as far as we are concerned," Gina said.
Numsa wanted land to be expropriated without compensation.
The two unions also wanted:
- the land register to be finalised and completed;
- the Competition Commission to complete its investigation into the alleged abuse of dominance and anti-competitive conduct in the food and agri-processing sectors;
- the Green Paper on Land Reform unveiled in 2011 to be turned into a bill, as it "seems to be stuck in ever-expanding advisory teams";
- a clear strategy on tenure in communal areas after the Constitutional Court ruled in 2010 that the Communal Land Rights Act was unconstitutional; and
- evictions of farmworkers and labour tenants to stop, after 930 000 were evicted between 1995 and 2004 due to job losses on farms.
Sabelo said most of the land redistributed so far was not being used productively.
The campaign would include marches and a mock referendum in September on the proposed changes to the Constitution.
The two unions were working together because Fawu represented workers in the agricultural sector and Numsa represented workers in industries manufacturing agricultural equipment.
