South Africa: land redistribution back on the agenda
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- Created: Thursday, 04 October 2018 13:08
- Written by Charles Chinweizu
The question of land remains unresolved in South Africa 24 years after the official end of apartheid. Apartheid was a system of separate and racist 'development', with black South Africans brutally dispossessed and denied access to land, infrastructure and resources, while their white counterparts were given preferential treatment and access to the economy. On 27 February 2018, the National Assembly decided to review the property clause, Section 25 of the 1996 Constitution to allow 'land expropriation without compensation'. This followed the decision by the governing African National Congress (ANC) at its December 2017 conference, to implement a constitutional amendment to Section 25, provided it was 'sustainable and did not harm the agricultural sector or the economy’. In 2016, a law was passed allowing the state to expropriate land in the 'public interest'. Section 25 of the constitution, itself a compromise with imperialism, only allows for land expropriation for a 'public purpose or in the public interest', hence the need to amend the constitution to allow expropriation without compensation.
