Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Land reform will help all of SA
LAST week marked the first deadline for public submissions on the proposed Expropriation Bill that was tabled in Parliament in December.
The government, whether under apartheid or post-1994, always had the powers of expropriation. It is nothing new. Part of the purpose of this bill is to repeal laws going back to 1975. The growing policy shift towards expropriation without compensation, which we see within the ruling party; in Parliament and; an imminent Constitutional amendment affecting all further laws, is also nothing new. Land has been expropriated without compensation in this country for hundreds of years.
Under apartheid, land was expropriated for the benefit of white people exclusively, and for the relocation, separation and subjugation of all black people specifically, and that was wrong. It does not mean the principle of state expropriation is wrong. If anything it proved the wisdom of state and government expropriation of property for the benefit of the nation, but now it needs to be done on an equitable basis. This law must action the land ambitions of those who say they feel the injustices of now. The radical movements of the youth, the landless, unemployed, women, rural people, fisher folk, NGOs, trade unions and political parties, testified across the country as to why there must be land expropriation without compensation. They did not make this call as if it was a solution to their oppression, but overwhelmingly it was the oppressed and downtrodden who made this call when we were asked, what should the country do? The call was by no means unanimous, it came from a very specific radical left section of the nation.
And some of the country’s elite – most government officials, presidents, some strong political parties, radical academics, political commentators, and landed black middle-class people – heard this call and amplified this call.
The bill is a terrible bill. It fails to capture the radical spirit of the debates on expropriation over the past three years, nor does it accommodate the envisaged change to the Constitution to explicitly allow for expropriation without compensation. It is a bill designed on many levels to thwart effective government action on land expropriation.
Despite the radical context of the debates around land expropriation, expanded government powers to expropriate property does not mean:
• A cancellation of private property and private ownership of land;
• That people will no longer be able to/or want to sell or buy property;
• That white people will loose their land and houses arbitrarily; or
• That black people will no longer have to save and aim towards buying land, as everyone’s up for a title deed.
Private property, and private ownership of land specifically, remains sacred and indeed under protection. It is no doubt a human right in a free market capitalist South Africa. Nevertheless, there is land that should not be owned; or private land that may be required for an urgent developmental need; or abandoned land; or under-utilised land, all of which, if expropriated does not cancel out the right to private ownership of land. The ANC, at its National Congress in December 2017, adopted a resolution on expropriation without compensation that precluded wholesale state ownership of land or arbitrary expropriation.
The public has an opportunity now to suggest exactly how this process can work, and what criteria should be employed.