‘SA should’ve passed Expropriation Bill in 1996’ – Ngcukaitobi

Advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi says South Africa should have passed a law to redistribute land equitably when the country’s final constitution was passed.

Ngcukaitobi’s remarks come after President Cyril Ramaphosa signed the Expropriation Bill into law, setting new guidelines for land expropriation without compensation.

The Bill, which replaces the Expropriation Act of 1975, allows land expropriation without compensation if it’s in the public interest or for a public purpose.

It has also irked US President Donald Trump, who claimed that South Africa’s expropriation law is aimed at ‘seizing ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation’.

Expropriation Bill

Ngcukaitobi told Cape Talk that of all the clauses in the new Expropriation Act of 2024, none had generated more heat than section 12(3), which enables the state to offer “nil compensation” in certain instances to an owner of expropriated property.

“We should have passed a law in 1994 already, or at least 1996 when the final constitution was passed to enable the state to redistribute land on an equitable basis. There is an injunction in the Constitution that requires the state to do that the state has never passed it, and it has no explanation why it didn’t pass it.

“In fact, the ANC, in its conference of 2022, resolved to pass a land redistribution bill. We should, at the very least, enable the state to redistribute land in its own hands. The state has a lot of land. It can recycle large numbers of communities, it can generate income for those communities and could start large-scale agricultural projects in those properties, but it never did. Its priorities were elsewhere,” Ngcukaitobi said.

ALSO READ: ‘The lies will be incomplete without you’: Ramaphosa’s spokesperson takes shots at US embassy

‘Inefficiencies’

Ngcukaitobi states that the land reform programme has been “hobbled by huge inefficiencies.”

“The last land claim process was opened up by Jacob Zuma, but before then, the first land claim process closed in 1998. It’s astonishing, but it’s true that those land claims launched in 1998 have not been settled.

“We have 5 700 of them that have not been resolved. That is an astonishing level of neglect and inefficiency in the system,” Ngcukaitobi said.

Corruption

Ngcukaitobi emphasised that “like everything in South Africa, the problem with land reform is that is beset by corruption.”

“In 2013, and I wrote about this in my book Land Matters, the SIU published a report in which it said, ‘in every four land claims, at least one has a corrupt element, where the claimants are putting dubious claims, the owners are asking for astronomical and corrupt amounts, and the state officials are part of either the claimants or the land owners.’”

ALSO READ: These countries have pledged support for South Africa amid Trump criticism [VIDEO]

‘Not a bill for land reform’

Ngcukaitobi said the combination of the country not passing the expropriation law earlier, inefficiencies and corruption is “toxic and resulted in where the country is now”.

“What can we hope under this bill? I’m afraid I’ve tried to be as positive about this bill as I can, but I think that the problem is that we are putting too much into this bill. This is not a bill for land reform. It is a bill for the expropriation of property so that it can be owned by the state and the state can make use of it for its own purposes.

“This is why this bill is located in the Department of Public Works, not in the Department of Land reform. So, it is a useful start, but it is by no means a sufficient end,” Ngcukaitobi said.

Does SA need a clearer land bill?

Ngcukaitobi was asked if South Africa needs a bill that is clearer about the conditions under which expropriation without compensation is a reasonable result.

“We don’t want a law that permits arbitrary action. We don’t need to look at Zimbabwe. We can look at South Africa and the devastation that apartheid caused because of the powers that were given to the state president and the powers that were given to basically an illegitimate regime

“We have to look at the hardship that the apartheid government unleashed on Africans. So we don’t want to go back there,” Ngcukaitobi said.

Ngcukaitobi said while much remains uncertain, “that uncertainty is inherent in any new piece of legislation. What we should avoid is the tempting conclusion that the past was better than today.”

LSO READ: US secretary Marco Rubio will not attend G20 summit because SA ‘is doing very bad things’