The Department of Public Works has started on the business of revising the laws on expropriation, which became a matter of urgency following the African National Congress national conference in Polokwane last month.
An announcement from the department on Wednesday said that it will start the ball rolling with a national workshop to be held in Gauteng next month.
The new law will replace or amend the Expropriation Act (of 1975). Thami Nchunu, speaking for the department, said: ”It is a restrictive piece of legislation that restricts the state to expropriate only for ‘public purpose’. It does not comply with the constitutional provision, which states that the state can expropriate ‘in the public interest’.”
Nchunu said the new Act will harmonise 140 pieces of legislation empowering various organs of state to expropriate.
”In many instances, such legislation lacks clear procedures or stipulates widely varying procedures,” he said. ”The revision of the Expropriation Act will furthermore aim to introduce consistency and uniformity in the way that all organs of state undertake expropriations.”
The department said that the workshop, planned for February 15, follows the official release last year of a discussion document for public comment on the envisaged law change. That document outlined the principles of the proposed revision. It elicited a lot of comments that will now be discussed in the workshop. — I-Net Bridge