The African National Congress (ANC) on Tuesday reiterated that the call for public submissions on whether the Constitution should be amended to explicitly provide for land expropriation without compensation was not a referendum but a call for "meaningful public participation".

Speaking during the debate in the National Assembly on a report by the Constitutional Review Committee recommending that section 25 of the Constitution should be changed, committee co-chairperson Stanford Maila berated opposition parties for insisting that written submissions which were overwhelmingly against an amendment should be given more weight than public hearings in provinces which showed support for an amendment.

"Though it is of no significance, 65 percent of the submissions were against amending the Constitution," said Maila.

"From the outset it should be clarified that this House did not give this committee the mandate to conduct a referendum. As a result, who makes an overemphasis on numbers would be grossly out of order."