The process to amend section 25 of the Constitution in order to fast-track expropriation without compensation suddenly gathered speed on Tuesday when a draft bill to amend the Constitution was tabled by the parliamentary legal services.
The Constitution Eighteenth Amendment Bill was tabled at a sitting of the ad hoc committee tasked with amending the Constitution.
This first bite at the wording of the constitutional amendment states that when the state and the land owner cannot agree on the price to be paid, a country may – where land and any improvements thereon are expropriated for the purposes of land reform – determine that the amount of compensation is nil.
Parliamentary legal services furthermore proposed inclusion of a section which requires national legislation to set out specific circumstances where a court may determine that the amount of compensation is nil.
The draft bill does not delete any part of the Constitution, but adds to it, meaning
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