Ramaphosa’s SONA Misses Opportunity To Decisively Deal With Land Issue

Lucas Ledwaba

President Cyril Ramaphosa tactfully avoided making any commitments with regards to the issue of land restitution in his State of the Nation Address in Parliament on Thursday night.

The land issue remains an emotive issue that threatens to divide the country along racial lines and parliament is meant to finalise the decision to amend section 25 of the Constitution; however Ramaphosa glanced over the topic in a non-committal way.

Pressure has been mounting on the government to amend the section to allow for expropriation of land without compensation after the EFF succeeded in forcing the ANC to support the motion in parliament in 2018.

The issue has dominated the political discourse in the last two years and it was expected that Ramaphosa, in his third SONA since ousting Jacob Zuma in a carefully mastered party engineered putsch in 2018 would make some bold pronouncements.

But he chose to