The time has come for South Africans to seize land without compensation and to mull the overthrow of the state, former Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) MP Andile Mngxitama told a seminar in Pretoria on Wednesday.

Mngxitama raised the issue of land redistribution at a seminar on state capture hosted by the SA Association of Public Administration and Management (SAAPAM), in conjunction with the Pretoria News and Tshwane University of Technology, and said it could not be left to the African National Congress (ANC).

“We can’t keep on asking on the ANC to do what must happen. What must happen is the land must return to black people by force. The ANC is not going to legislate on it. We must organise who must occupy this land,” said the former Economic Freedom Fighters member of parliament.

“I’ve studied the land question. In the past 100 years, there is no single society which has returned land without (use of) force. Even if you go to Japan and South Korea. That is why I love Zimbabwe so much. In 1994 there was no change of the state, there was new management of the same anti-blacks state.”

Mngxitama said instead of concentrating on state capture, concerned South Africans must be mulling “overthrowing the state”.

“The state as we speak today, is not transformed. We cannot talk about state capture, we must go back to the idea of overthrowing the state. The idea is not to capture the state because you will just manage it in the interests of the status quo,” he said.

Another panellist, former ANC Youth League deputy president Ronald Lamola, said the undue influence on top African National Congress and government officials, exerted in particular by the wealthy Gupta family, can only be halted by South Africans taking mass action.

“These seminars we are having, I told the co-ordinator that I’m tired of this. I have run many political lectures. I think it’s now time for mass action in this country. It’s no longer time for sitting, speaking, phoning to radio stations, and (posting on) Facebook. It is now time for members of the ANC to say the ANC cannot continue like this,” said Lamola.

“It is also time for South Africans to stand up and say ‘we must recapture the state for ourselves, for the benefit of the poor, working class and the youth of this country’.”

Lamola said the ANC’s top structure, the national executive committee “is not the ANC”.

Last weekend, Lamola and others protested outside the Saint George Hotel where the NEC members where meeting.

Lamola said the NEC should remove Jacob Zuma immediately.

“This is the last warning shot to the ANC. If they don’t fire or remove him this weekend society must stand up and remove him,” he said at the time.

Some placards at the protest read: “We want Zuma out”, “Third force is Guptas”, and “Save the soul of the ANC”.

The NEC’s scheduled meeting at the weekend followed a turbulent week for the ruling party.

Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas dropped a bombshell on Wednesday by confirming reports that the wealthy and influential Gupta family, whom Zuma acknowledges as friends, had approached him to take over as finance minister a few days before the president fired Nhlanhla Nene from the post.

However, on Thursday, Zuma told Parliament that the Gupta family had never appointed any Cabinet minister.

Also last week, former ANC MP Vytjie Mentor said Zuma was present several years ago when the Guptas offered her the post of public enterprises minister, held at the time by Barbara Hogan.

On Sunday, the Sunday Times reported that former Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) CEO Themba Maseko had directly implicated Zuma in a push to give government business to the Gupta family.

At the seminar on Wednesday, policy analyst Professor Lucky Mathebula said state capture was not unique to South Africa but had reached obscene levels here.

“It might be happening in other countries, in the same way it is happening in South Africa, but not in the pornographic levels we see in South Africa.”