Cape Town – President Jacob Zuma has sent the Expropriation Bill back to the National Assembly for review, some 10 months after MPs approved it, his office said on Friday.
Zuma confirmed last week in his State of the Nation Address that he would send the bill back to Parliament to allow for further public participation.
The bill, which has been in the pipeline since 2008, allows for expropriation of land in the public interest and seeks to address racial inequities in land ownership. It could speed up land reform in that it provides for the consideration of more criteria than just the market value when determining the compensation the state pays the current owner.
The Democratic Alliance last year petitioned Zuma not to sign the bill because it believed it violated sections 25 and 26 of the Constitution which respectively deal with the right to property and the right not to be evicted without a court order.