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LAND REFORM: EXPROPRIATION WITHOUT COMPENSATION RETURNS TO THE SPOTLIGHT?
- 28 July 2025
- Parliament
- SA Legal Academy
Input is sought by 27 August 2025 on the contents of a yet-to-be drafted Constitution Amendment Bill to be tabled in Parliament by MK (umKhonto weSizwe) MP Mzwanele Manyi – with the aim of ‘correct(ing) the structural legacy of inequality in land ownership’.
According to a pre-tabling explanatory summary of the Bill’s proposed objectives, it will seek to amend the Constitution’s section 25 to:
- ‘enable expropriation of land without compensation for a public purpose or in the public interest through the enactment of a law of general application’
- ‘recognise land as a collective national heritage held in custodianship’
- ‘affirm the role of traditional and Khoi-San leadership in the custodianship and administration of land’, and
- ‘extend the restitution cut-off date to 6 April 1652’.
A Constitution 18th Amendment Bill rejected by the National Assembly in December 2021 sought to achieve similar objectives. This is noting that legislation proposing amendments to the Constitution must be supported by at least two-thirds of the National Assembly to be passed and sent to the NCOP for concurrence. The Bill was prepared by an ad hoc committee established to give effect to the outcome of a comprehensive, lengthy review of section 25, which involved nationwide public hearings.
Readers are reminded that, once operationalised, the 2024 Expropriation Act will enable expropriation for nil compensation only in specific circumstances after certain procedures have been followed. There have been no official pronouncements on the Act since it joined the statute books in January 2025.
- explanatory summary also calling for input
- 2024 Expropriation Act
- rejected Constitution 18th Amendment Bill
Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch
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