What Parliament’s withdrawal of the Expropriation Bill means

A Parliament public works committee has withdrawn the Expropriation Bill pending the conclusion of a parliamentary process to review the merits of changing the Constitution to expropriate land without compensation.

The move by the committee doesn’t necessarily mean that the Expropriation Bill has been ditched by Parliament for good, but that it might be re-introduced at a later stage. The public works committee said in a statement on Tuesday that it has temporarily withdrawn the Expropriation Bill to give the constitutional review committee time to complete its work.

The constitutional review committee is tasked with holding public consultations across the country about government’s proposal to expropriate land without compensation and weighing up the merits of doing so.

The committee was set up after MPs voted in favour of a motion in February to begin a process to amend Section 25 of the Constitution – known as the property clause. It has to report back to Parliament on its findings by September 28. President Cyril Ramaphosa recently stepped up SA’s land reform efforts by saying that the ANC had decided to change the Constitution to push ahead  with plans to expropriate land without compensation. 

The public works committee said the published findings of the constitutional review committee might result in a “new parliamentary process including legislative processes and new directions” before the end of 2018.

In other words, the findings of the constitutional review committee might require the minister of public works Thulas Nxesi to redraft a new Expropriation Bill. This will bring the Expropriation Bill in line with government’s plan to expropriate land without compensation. The redrafted bill would also include clauses that would provide guidelines and processes for the state to follow in expropriating land without compensation.

Law observers have argued that the current Expropriation Bill, which was passed by Parliament in 2016, is at odds with government’s plan to expropriate land without compensation. Chiefly, the Expropriation Bill provides for land to be expropriated in the public interest – for example, to build a road, dam or power station – and it doesn’t provide for expropriation without compensation. Instead, under the bill, expropriation must be “just and equitable.”

Meanwhile, the government want to enact provisions in the law that allow it to expropriate land in the public interest and with no compensation.

“That bill [the redrafted Expropriation Bill] will give more clarity on how South Africans should deal with the land question and the property issues that today still favour the minority at the expense of the majority of South Africans, in particular black people,” the public works committee said.

Bulelwa Mabasa, a director at Werksmans Attorneys, recently told Moneyweb that government’s plans to amend section 25 of the constitution might result in other pieces of legislation being repealed including the Expropriation Bill. Pieces of legislation are connected and if the state attempts to amend one aspect of legislation, it affects another, she said.

And the withdrawal of the Expropriation Bill, allows the state to redraft a new bill that would be in sync with government’s plan to expropriate land without compensation. “The committee is of the view that rejecting this Bill in its current form will assist and avoid running a parallel process, while there is a committee of Parliament that is still busy with the possible reviewable of section 25 of the Constitution,” the public works committee said.