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The GOOD Party welcomes the President signing the Expropriation Bill into law.
 
The Bill is a much-needed improvement on the 1975 Act.
 
Land dispossession, the original sin, has been so inadequately addressed by land reform policies since the demise of apartheid.
 
South Africa needs both the tools and political will to set this straight.
 
The sustainability of the constitutional democracy depends on it.
 
Expropriating land in appropriate circumstances is one of the tools at government's disposal to accelerate land reform.
 
This is not new. For over 40 years the State has been expropriating land under the 1975 Expropriation Act, which has now been replaced.
 
Nor is expropriating land without compensation new. Section 25 of the Constitution provides for nil compensation in circumstances in which it is just and equitable. And the matter has been settled in law for over 20 years.
 
In 2002 the Constitutional Court, In First National Bank of SA Ltd vs The Minister of Finance,  the Constitutional Court ruled that: "...there are appropriate circumstances where it is permissible for legislation, in the broader public interest, to deprive persons of property without payment of compensation."
 
This new law articulates the circumstances under which nil compensation would be just and equitable.
 
It is not the loaded gun to chase landowners into the sea that opponents to the Bill projected it to be.
 
The campaign launched against the Bill during the public consultation process, warning that citizens stood to lose everything they own including their cars, was dishonest and inflammatory.
 
Ramaphosa once again assured the nation today that ”Expropriation may not be exercised unless the expropriating authority has without success attempted to reach an agreement with the owner or holder of a right in property for the acquisition thereof on reasonable terms.”
 
Colonial and apartheid land grabs, never reversed, are a major contributing factor to the state of acute inequality in our land today.
 
Historically excluded from land ownership, the vast majority of citizens remain excluded today because they can't afford the price of entering the property market.
 
Their exclusion from the property market means they lack tangible assets to leverage cash from the financial sector, which leads to their economic exclusion.
 
It's a cruel and vicious cycle.
 
Twenty Three years ago, the Constitutional Court ordered that, "No one may be deprived of property except in terms of law of general application, and no law may permit arbitrary deprivation of property", we support the Expropriation Bill being signed into law.
 
Now let's accelerate land reform.

Issued by Brett Herron, GOOD: Secretary-General & Member of the Western Cape Parliament