Expropriation bill ‘to accelerate land distribution’

Cape Town - 100813 - National Assembly at Parliament in Cape Town - Photo: Matthew Jordaan

Cape Town - 100813 - National Assembly at Parliament in Cape Town - Photo: Matthew Jordaan

Published May 28, 2016

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Johannesburg - The Expropriation Bill passed by Parliament on Thursday this week has paved the way for government to intensify land distribution and achieve equity in land ownership, the South African National Civic Organisation (Sanco) said on Saturday.

“The frustrations of the landless majority who were becoming impatient with the slow pace of land redistribution to redress their dispossession and forceful removal from their ancestral land will be addressed once the [bill] is signed into law,” Sanco national spokesman Jabu Mahlangu said.

The bill was adopted on Thursday.

Mahlangu said that the bill brought to an end the willing seller, willing buyer system that “impeded the state from exercising the right to expropriate land without the consent of the owner”.

“The current skewed land ownership undermines agricultural development and food security. The notion that the landless are not interested in farming is a fallacy,” he said.

The “exorbitant monies paid out of the fiscus have not contributed towards accelerated land reform and redress of past atrocities”.

He urged the rural development and land reform department to – through the valuer general – do proper planning and responsible execution of the law in the best interest of the public.

“Implementation of the new act will end land dispossession, economic deprivation, and subjugation that had condemned the dispossessed and undermined their dignity in the land of their birth turning them into hewers of wood and drawers of water to perpetuate poverty, unemployment, and inequality,”Mahlangu said.

– African News Agency

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