President Jacob Zuma confirmed on Thursday night that the Expropriation Bill would be returned to Parliament for reconsideration on the basis that the proposed law might not pass constitutional muster.
Zuma said in his state of the nation address that he had sent the bill back to Parliament due to inadequate public participation during its processing.
“We had stated our intention of using the Expropriation Act to pursue land reform and land redistribution, in line with the Constitution…. I have now decided to refer the Bill back to Parliament for reconsideration,” said Zuma.
The government is under pressure to complete the land reform programme.
In February 2016, Parliament passed the Expropriation Bill, paving the way for the government to pay for land at a value determined by the valuer-general. The bill also allows for expropriation of land for the “public interest”, ending the willing-buyer, willing-seller approach to land reform. The government said this would speed up land reform.
But the DA later petitioned Zuma to refer the bill back to Parliament.
The party said the bill was unconstitutional. The DA also said there were procedural irregularities in its passing.
The DA's main concerns were that in its current form the bill was a violation of the Constitution, mainly the right to property and the right not to be evicted without an order of the court.
The Presidency said in a statement on Monday that "Zuma has requested speaker of the National Assembly and the chairperson of the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) to advise him on the process followed by Parliament in passing the Expropriation Bill".
Zuma said in Sona on Thursday that the reopening of land claims was still on hold because the Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Act, 2014, was declared invalid by the Constitutional Court.
The Constitutional Court found that the public consultation process facilitated by the National Council of Provinces and some provincial legislatures, did not meet the standard set in the Constitution.
The president appealed to land claimants to accept land instead of financial compensation. He said more than 90% of claims were currently settled through financial compensation, which does not help the process at all as it “perpetuates dispossession. It also undermines economic empowerment.”
Zuma said it would be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve true reconciliation until the land question was resolved. Only 8-hectares of arable land had been transferred to black people, which is only 9.8% of the 82-million hectares of arable land in the country.
There had also been a 19% decline in households involved in agriculture, from 2.9-million in 2011 to 2.3-million households in 2016.
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