Johannesburg - Parliament yesterday approved a bill allowing state expropriations of land to redress disparities in land ownership.
The bill, in the works since 2008, will enable the state to pay for land at a value determined by a government adjudicator and then expropriate it for the “public interest”, ending the willing-buyer, willing-seller approach. Economists and farming groups said the reform could hit investment and production as the country was emerging from drought.
Read: Expropriation Bill to be sent to Zuma for assent
The groups, who pointed to the economic damage that arose from farm seizures in Zimbabwe, complained about a lack of clarity on how it would work. But experts said the bill would not signal the kind of often violent land grabs that took place in Zimbabwe.
“The passing of the bill… is historic and heralds a new era of intensified land distribution programme,” the ANC said.
The South African Institute of Race Relations (IRR) said yesterday that land reforms needed to be redesigned to acknowledge that land was just one of the essential elements needed for farming it, and turning it into a profitable business.
IRR policy fellow John Kane-Berman said even though land reform was a contentious issue, “neither land, nor farming should be romanticised”.
He said that it was only now that government was beginning to recognise that “no restitution or land reform project can go ahead without a viable business plan, training, mentorship, partnerships and other forms of support”.
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