On Thursday, President Cyril Ramaphosa signed the Expropriation Bill into law and in so doing repealing the Expropriation Act of 1975. Yes, South Africa has been using a 50 year old, apartheid era law to deal with the expropriation of land by the the state. This legislation was long overdue for a rework.

However despite the need to be updated, the Expropriation bill failed to be passed by Parliament in 2018 but reappeared in 2020. Since then the bill has be deliberated on, public hearings have been held and it has gone through the processes required to ascent it to the office of the President.

You can visit the Parliamentary Monitoring Group’s website here to see the progression of the legislation from a bill to an Act. We’ve also embedded the Bill as it was assented to the President last year below for your reference. The bill is lengthy but there is a summary of each chapter at the end of the bill.

The object of the Bill as written seeks to provide a common framework inline with South Africa’s Constitution that guides the processes and procedures for expropriation of land by the government and provide guidance on instances where expropriation with nil compensation is just and equitable.

It’s that last part that has people worried but only because those seeking to sow division and foment fear have failed to be forthcoming with the rest of the equation.

The Expropriation Bill outlines that the expropriation of land without compensation is relevant if:

• The land is not being used and the owner’s main purpose is not to develop the land or use it generate income but rather to benefit from the appreciation of its market value,
• an organ of state holds land that it is not using for its core functions and is not reasonably likely to require the land for its future activities in that regard, and the organ of state acquired the land for no consideration,
• where an owner has abandoned the land by failing to exercise control over it, where the market value of the land is equivalent to, or less than, the present value of direct state investment or subsidy in the acquisition and beneficial capital improvement of the land,
• when the nature or condition of the property poses a health, safety or physical risk to persons or other property.

The other key misunderstanding about this bill that keeps being repeated by folks online is that the government can just decide on any given Sunday that it wants to take your home.

This is not at all the case with the Bill explicitly stating that, “Despite the provisions of any law to the contrary, an expropriating authority may not expropriate property arbitrarily or for a purpose other than a public purpose or in the public interest.”

Furthermore, government must first enter into negotiations with a land owner and attempt to reach an agreement to acquire it before resorting to expropriation based on factors including:

• the current use of the property,
• the history of the acquisition and use of the property,
• the market value of the property,
• the extent of direct state investment and subsidy in the acquisition and beneficial capital improvement of the property,
• the purpose of the expropriation.

This however, doesn’t apply in instances where the state needs to use that land temporarily for no more than 12 months. This is known as urgent expropriation and the expropriating authority can only employ this in very special circumstances. Even then however, “The owner or the holder of a right whose right in property has been taken for temporary use in terms of this section is entitled to just and equitable compensation as calculated, agreed or decided by a court.”

Expropriation is also not an overnight process and land owners can contest attempts by the state to expropriate their land.

What is clear is that folks are being mislead by some loud voices online who are claiming that the state can just take land as it sees fit. While we can’t ignore that the government has had its fair share of controversies and corruption still appears to be a major problem, the arguments we see fail to give the full picture.

Could this Act be abused? Of course it could but the same can be said of every other piece of legislation that governs the country.

[Image – Shawn Konopaski from Pixabay]