More than half a million written submissions have been received on whether Section 25 of the Constitution should be amended.

CAPE TOWN - Parliament’s Constitutional Review Committee says it’s all systems go for next week’s public hearings on land expropriation without compensation.

More than half a million written submissions have been received on whether Section 25 of the Constitution should be amended.

Co-chair of the committee Vincent Smith says the hearings are intended to give South Africans a voice and are not to be dominated by party political views.

The committee is not saying exactly how many submissions it received by Friday’s deadline but almost 800,000 had been recorded the day before.

The committee says it will need external help to process the submissions and to produce a report on their contents.

But Economic Freedom Fighters’ Floyd Shivambu is, however, questioning the legitimacy of the submissions, saying he believes certain lobby groups like AfriForum are deliberately trying to prolong the process.

“There’s a high possibility that there are 500,000 submissions that came from a very small number of people.”

Smith says the public will have to stick to the question at hand and no more written submissions will be accepted.

“We’re not going to push our party line in those meetings. We should be sitting and ensuring that South Africans speak.”

Hearings will be held countrywide until August.

(Edited by Zamangwane Shange)