EXPROPRIATION BILL TO SPEED UP LAND REFORM AND BRING JUSTICE TO DISPOSSESSED
23 February 2016
The Office of the ANC Chief Whip welcomes the National Assembly’s passing today of one of the most important transformative pieces of legislation post 1994, the Expropriation bill. The Bill empowers the State to expropriate land for public purpose or in the public interest through a just and equitable compensation.
The passing of this draft legislation is without a doubt key to our transformation trajectory, and it will intensify the land reform program and bring about equitable access to South Africa's land, natural resources and food security. The past racially based injustices of land dispossession; economic deprivation and subjugation have condemned the majority of South Africans to devastating generational suffering, resulting in the poverty, inequality and unemployment which continue to confront their daily lives today.
The Bill repeals the apartheid era Expropriation Act of 1975 and is a progressive departure from the ineffective willing-buyer, willing-seller approach, which has not assisted our land reform program. The willing buyer- willing seller principle has in the past forced government to pay extortionate amounts for land, frustrated the redistribution process and hamstrung its ability to achieve redistribution targets.
The principle of expropriation through just and equitable compensation is firmly in line with Section 25 of the Constitution, which empowers the State to expropriate land by offering a “just and equitable” compensation to correct the current racially skewed land ownership created by the past apartheid and colonial injustices.
While through the willing buyer-willing seller principle the State was unable acquire land without the owner’s consent or the owner’s determined exorbitant amount, the State will now be allowed to expropriate by paying an amount determined by the Valuer-General, even without the owner consenting to the amount offered or the expropriation itself. The Court of law shall serve as a final arbiter in an event the owner wishes to challenge the compensation offered.
The adoption of this Bill today is a culmination of years of extensive consultations, considerations of stacks of submissions and robust multiparty discussions in the committee.
As we have said, this important Bill, amongst other things, sounds a death knell for the ineffectual willing buyer-willing seller approach to land reform, and heralds a new era of intensified land distribution process to bring the long-awaited justice to the dispossessed majority of South Africans.
Statement issued by the Office of the ANC Chief Whip, 23 February 2016
