Their concerns echoed criticisms by the Democratic Alliance (DA), with one ANC MP warning against reintroducing race as a criterion for land ownership.

The report of Gutto’s expert panel, appointed in 2004, was approved by the cabinet in July and has since been published for public comment. It controversially recommended that the race and gender of those purchasing land be recorded on title deeds.

This led opposition MPs to say that nearly 15 years after the Group Areas Act was scrapped, the ANC was poised to introduce race declarations into the law. Yesterday ANC MPs joined the DA in calling for race not be included in the Deeds Act.

Land affairs official Sipho Sibanda, briefing Parliament’s agriculture and land affairs committee on the report yesterday, said that race and gender were recommended for inclusion so that the government could use the information to judge the success of land reform.

ANC MPs also criticised the length of time taken for the investigation. Hardline ANC MP David Dlali was concerned that the Land Use Management Bill was the chosen instrument of the department for achieving some of the recommendations.

“Come on, guys, the land use bill was started in 2001 and has only reached cabinet this year. This is a critical issue but we do not know how you are going to deal (with) it. It’s a joke,” he said.

DA MP Maans Nel said that including race in the disclosures required by the Deeds Act amounted to the “re-racialisation” of land ownership.

“You cannot go back to the past. This piecemeal approach is exactly how apartheid started,” Nel said.

He warned that property was the cornerstone of a free economy and the recommendations of the panel would result in disinvestment because banks would not grant loans in an uncertain environment.

ANC MP Salamuddi Abram said while he was in favour of controls over foreign land ownership “we must be extremely careful about returning into our law terms that caused considerable conflict in the past. To put race back into the law will be in conflict with the constitution.

“We should be talking about nationality and not race,” Abram said. “To put race back into the law will be in conflict with the constitution.”

He said the report and its recommendations were contradicted by the actions of the government. This was demonstrated by the fact that Cape Town’s prime Waterfront was sold by the government to an Arab-English consortium and not retained for all South Africans.

“But please, in God’s name, let the terms black and Indian never again appear in SA’s law,” Abram concluded.

DA MP Andries Botha wanted to know if with the introduction of race as part of the deeds disclosure there would also be a new race classification law.

“What are you going to do, go back to the pencil in the hair test? It’s ludicrous,” he said.

Sibanda, replying to the criticisms, said he appreciated the wisdom of the MPs but stuck to his guns on race being included because “we must look at the purpose for which it is included and that is to measure the success of land reform”.

Botha criticised the claims by the investigation that once the corporate ownership of farms in SA was unravelled it would show even higher levels of foreign ownership than now appeared. He said most commercial farms were registered as companies or trusts, and when this was taken into account the probability was the foreign ownership of agricultural land would be reduced rather than increased.

His colleague, Kraai van Niekerk, said there were many points made in the report such as black people being persuaded to front for white buyers, and the indiscriminate sale of municipal land in return for favours that the DA agreed with.