Seven new Bills have been approved by South Africa’s Cabinet to be submitted to Parliament. They include the already controversial Expropriation Bill, as well as the Land Use Management Bill that will be associated with it.
The other Bills are the Agricultural Debt Management Repeal Bill, the Social Assistance Bill, the Medical Schemes Amendment Bill, the Protection of Information Bill and the National Space Agency Bill.
The Expropriation Bill seeks to replace the Expropriation Act of 1975, which, Cabinet spokesperson Themba Maseko said on Thursday, does not conform with the Constitution.
The 1975 Act, for example, only provides for expropriation for a public purpose, while the Constitution extends this to allow it ”in the public interest”.
Similarly, the Act requires compensation for market value, actual financial loss and ”solatium” — a consolation for loss — while the Constitution provides that the compensation must be just and equitable ”reflecting an equitable balance between the public interest and the interest of those affected”.
The Constitution goes on to explain that compensation must have regard to the current use of the property, the history of its acquisition and use, the extent of government money that has been spent on it already and the purpose of the expropriation. It also requires regard to be paid to the market value of the property.
It seems clear to many observers, and not only those in organised agriculture, that the idea of the Act is to speed up the acquisition of land for land reform, restitution and redistribution, and to make it cheaper to get hold of the land.
The new law will allow the minister of land affairs to make the final decision on the amount of compensation to be paid after being advised by an expropriation board. — I-Net Bridge