Government can take your home, farm, or business premises under Constitutional Amendment Bill
Effective land reform is still required, but the Draft Constitution Eighteenth Amendment Bill of 2019 (the Draft Bill) will needlessly undermine the property rights of all South Africans: from the 1 million whites with home ownership to the 8.5 million black, ‘coloured’ and Indian families who own houses too. It will also hurt the 17.5m black people with customary plots, and the thousands of black South Africans who have bought more than 6 million hectares of urban and rural land since 1991.
The Draft Bill has two key clauses. The first allows the courts to decide that ‘nil’ compensation may be paid for land and ‘the improvements thereon’ if these are expropriated for land reform purposes. Improvements include all fixed structures: from houses and office blocks to shopping centres, factories, hotels, and hospitals. The ANC has thus reneged on its earlier promises that expropriation without compensation (EWC) would be confined to land alone.
The second key clause gives Parliament the power to adopt, by a simple (51%) majority, any number of new statutes setting out ‘the specific circumstances’ where the courts may decide that ‘nil’ compensation should be paid.
This will vastly expand the instances in which EWC may apply. It will clearly pave the way for the enactment of the Expropriation Bill of 2019, with its vague and easily expandable list of six instances (already up from the original five) in which nil compensation may apply.
This second clause could also pave the way for a new statute vesting the custodianship of all land and improvements in the government – and stating that this vesting falls within ‘the specific circumstances’ where nil compensation may be paid. Under such a law, title deeds would ‘mean nothing’ (as the EFF has put it) and every individual and business would need a revocable land-use licence from the government for the homes or buildings in which they live or work.