JOHANNESBURG: The ANC has proposed more taxes for unused land to force owners to sell their land to the state in an attempt to fast-track its failed land redistribution programme. Head of Economic Transformation Enoch Godongwana said the party was looking at a raft of taxes for unoccupied land or land bought for speculative purposes. Speculative land refers to land bought for investment, with owners hoping the undeveloped land will in time rise in value. “We, in a sense, unashamedly put a proposal to tax land used for speculative purposes to force people to sell,” Godongwana said. Godongwana was speaking during a media conference at the party’s Luthuli House headquarters to launch the governing party’s policy documents ahead of the June conferences.
In the document on economic transformation, the party again commits itself to “returning land”. It said the market-based valuation of land must be facilitated and accelerated by the passing of updated expropriation legislation by Parliament. Godongwana admitted that the party had no new policy proposals on land but they had “perfumed” past policy documents. “Unfortunately I have to concede… 20 years since the signing of the Constitution we don’t have an expropriation act which is in line with the Constitution,” Godongwana said.
