Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) Leader Julius Malema on Tuesday said it took the formation of his party to revive the question of the link between the dignity of people and land.

He was debating the EFF's motion on the expropriation of land without compensation in Parliament.

“We would have failed those who came before us to pay for land that was taken through genocide,” he said.

He went on to explain how forced removals, because of the Group Areas Act, had displaced millions of black people and forced them to live in “prison camps”. 

“The so-called township is not a settlement of human beings. It’s a prison camp. Those who came in power in 1994 carrying the popular mandate of our people to restore the dignity of the African child by reinstating land to the dispossessed forgot their mandate,” he said.    

Malema went on to accuse the ruling African National Congress of becoming “drunk in luxury and glory” and building false reconciliation without justice. 

“It took the formation of the EFF 20 years later to revive the question of the dignity of our people in the need for our land. It took the arrival of the EFF in these chambers to return in the central agenda of human freedom, the need for the land that was dispossessed through brutal crimes against humanity,” he argued.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has also promised to speed up the issue of expropriation of land without compensation saying that it must be dealt with immediately and decisively.

Malema said the time for reconciliation was over and affirmed that it was time for justice.

“We do not seek revenge though they [colonisers] caused so much evil in our land, we do not wish for their suffering, though they caused [the] humiliation of countless generations. All we want, all our people ever wanted is their land to which their dignity is rooted and founded.

“Today let us close this question once and for all, let us unite and pay no one for benefitting from the crimes against humanity. Let us come together to the noble and human call to expropriate land without compensation for equal redistribution,” he pleaded.

He said there was no need to discuss food security without owning the land.

Malema added that the ability to develop policies on food security depended on land redistribution and not the other way around.

He said food security programmes could only be discussed after land redistribution.