The announcement on Thursday, 24 January 2025 that President Cyril Ramaphosa has signed the Expropriation Bill into law has drawn expressions of concern and legal threats. But what does it actually mean?
Listen to this article 8 min Listen to this article 8 min How long has this law been in the works?
Years. In fact, the whole issue of land used to be a much hotter topic in the South African political discourse than it is currently. It probably reached its highest temperatures around 2017, when the ANC adopted the principle of land expropriation without compensation at its Nasrec conference.
In 2018, Parliament held often extremely fraught public consultations on whether the Constitution was impeding land restitution on the grounds of Clause 25, which protects property rights.
At that point, the more conservative view was that the Constitution should be left untouched and the Expropriation Bill should be passed instead.
After further national consultations, the National Assembly adopted the Expropriation Bill in September 2022 and sent it on to the National Council of Provinces for various small amendments. The bill was ultimately passed by Parliament on 27 March 2024 and has been awaiting the president’s signature ever since.
Why has Ramaphosa signed it now?
There are certain pieces of legislation in the works which are sure to inflame tensions within the Government of National Unity (GNU). The obvious examples in…
