'Mineral Resources Minister Gwede Mantashe, who was addressing the land reform dialogue at the Gordon Institute of Business Science (Gibs) in Johannesburg on Tuesday, said that "anarchy must not be allowed to flourish" after speaking to a panel of speakers discussing the issue of expropriation without compensation.
"As we debate‚ we must touch the emotional aspects of land dispossession. If we don't‚ we will not heal the wounds of the past," Mantashe said.
"When you restore land‚ you are not expropriating but restoring people's dignity through access to land."
Mantashe's "anarchy" comments were made in relation to the events in Hermanus in which a police station was partially burnt and a tense standoff escalated between police and "land invaders".
According to TimesLive, there have been several land grabs in and around Johannesburg and Tshwane, with authorities trying their best to stop people from illegally building shacks on unoccupied parcels of land.
"You can't talk land redistribution without talking to the wars of dispossession. We must be able to trace the movement of boundaries because they were results of wars," Mantashe added.