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By ANA Reporter 
8h ago
Cape Town: The government has published the long-awaited expropriation bill that aims to repeal existing apartheid-era legislation and determine when land can be expropriated without compensation.
The bill will amend the conditions under which the state can claim land in the public interest, and marks a shift from the narrow focus of the Expropriation Act of 1975 on the market value of expropriated land and the actual loss to the owner. .
Clause 12 of the bill stipulates that it may be fair and equitable to offer zero compensation for private land if it is abandoned or used simply as a market investment, and not for development and income generation.
Similarly, state lands can be expropriated if they are not used by a state entity in accordance with its primary mandate.
In terms of the bill, land can also be seized if the actual market value of the land is equal to or less than the value of a state subsidy with respect to it.
And it can be expropriated for agrarian reform purposes when a court or arbitrator determined that, in the particular case, “it may be fair and equitable that no compensation is paid.”
Public Works Minister Patricia de Lille told a news conference on Sunday that the state legal adviser had certified that the bill was constitutional and that the existing law was unconstitutional.
Replacing it with post-apartheid legislation was therefore long overdue, he said. Current law is considered to protect property rights acquired during the colonial and apartheid eras, and the bill crucially allows compensation for those who have unregistered rights to property when it is expropriated by the state.
The bill has gone through several drafts and follows expropriation court cases where judges have grappled with disputes over compensation issues, including timing, in the absence of clear direction from the Constitution.
De Lille emphasized that the bill was part of a revision of the legislation related to land, and that it should be read in conjunction with the parliamentary process to amend Section 25 of the Constitution to make explicit the circumstances under which land could be expropriated without compensation.
The current reading of the section has been seen as an impediment to agrarian reform and to correcting property patterns of the past.
But critics of a constitutional amendment have argued that the need for one would disappear if the Expropriation Bill were adopted.
The measure was published on Friday and will now be processed by Parliament.
A key aspect of the thinking surrounding the bill is that it can be used to obtain land for development purposes and thus accelerate the reversal of the spatial legacy of white minority dominance.
African News Agency (ANA)
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