S.African law change plan to allow land expropriation fails to pass

A proposal to change South Africa’s constitution to explicitly allow expropriation of land with no compensation failed to win the two-thirds of parliamentary votes that it needed on Tuesday.

Lawmakers debated whether to change Section 25 of the constitution to enable authorities to seize land to address racial land inequalities left over from colonialism and white minority rule.

Redressing them has been a flagship promise of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) but little progress has been made on it nearly three decades since the end of apartheid.

“Today we stand to complete the fight against the original sin of land dispossession,” the amendment’s main champion, Justice Minister Roland Lamola, said in a speech in parliament.

He said the state was targeting land only under special conditions such as it having longtime informal occupants, being unused and held purely for speculation, or being abandoned.

But it was rejected by the ANC’s opponents on both sides of the spectrum. The main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) and right-wing Freedom Front Plus view the plan as an assault on property rights, while the radical Marxist EFF – which also voted against – wants the state to take control of the land.

In all, 204 lawmakers backed the amendment and 145 voted against, with no abstentions.