Issued by Daniela Ellerbeck on behalf of the FW de Klerk Foundation on 24/01/2025

On 23 January 2025 President Cyril Ramaphosa assented to the Expropriation Bill. Now known as the Expropriation Act, 2024, this law allows the State to expropriate land for “nil compensation”. 

“South Africa faces serious risks if the Expropriation Act, 2024 does not protect property rights, but rather limits and undermines them,” says Christo van der Rheede, Executive Director of the FW de Klerk Foundation. “Who is going to invest on land where the ownership is not secured? Banks and food security are directly affected as South Africa’s homeowners owe banks approximately R4 trillion and South Africa’s farmers produce food on the back of debt,” explains van der Rheede 

The Act is legally unsound according to Daniela Ellerbeck, an attorney and the Foundation’s Constitutional Rights Programme Manager, “Section 25 of the Constitution explicitly states that such expropriation is subject to just and equitable compensation being paid by the state to the person whose property is being expropriated,” says Ellerbeck. “The Constitution is the supreme law in South Africa, which means that any law that contradicts the Constitution is null and void. Given that the attempt to change the Constitution to allow for nil compensation was rejected by Parliament back in December 2021, the Expropriation Act, insofar as it attempts to allow for nil compensation, is immediately open to a court challenge for being inconsistent with the Constitution,” explains Ellerbeck.

“This sounds alarmist, but every citizen in the country will face impoverishment and hunger if the Expropriation Act, 2024 is not changed to align with the Constitution and with sound economic principles in mind,” says van der Rheede. “For this reason, the Foundation urges Members of Parliament’s National Assembly to find each other. If at least a third are concerned about the Expropriation Act’s constitutionality, they have a month to bring a direct application to the Constitutional Court asking the Court to find the law unconstitutional (section 80 of the Constitution).”