S. Africa MPs Reject Controversial Land Expropriation Bill

Cape Town, Dec 7 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 8th Dec, 2021 ) :A bid to allow South Africa's government expropriate land without compensation as a way to redress past injustices flopped on Tuesday after lawmakers rejected a bill to change the constitution.

But the government was not perturbed saying it would turn to alternative legislation to redistribute land.

The proposed law failed to garner the required two-thirds majority in the 400-seat parliament, with 204 lawmakers voting in favour and 145 against.

Black South Africans were dispossessed of their land during three centuries of colonialism and apartheid, the system of white-minority rule that officially ended in 1994.

When the African National Congress (ANC) came to power in 1994, the government pledged to redistribute 30 percent of South Africa's 60,000 commercial farms to black ownership.

But as of today, whites who comprise eight percent of the population "possess 72 percent of (the) farms", according to figures cited by President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Only around 10 percent are owned by blacks, who make up four-fifths of the population.

A multi-party committee had for the past few years been working on the proposals, which would have allowed the state to take farmland from private owners without paying for it, and parcel it out to landless blacks.

The issue of whether to take land without compensating its current owners is highly divisive and emotive in South Africa.

The ruling ANC's pointman on the land reforms, Mathole Motshekga, told fellow lawmakers before the vote that the bill had sought "to address this inhuman crime, crime against the African majority." But his argument was shot down by the largest opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, which contended that the proposal violated property rights and stoked uncertainty.

"This is not what the country needs now in the time of economic devastation during the Covid pandemic," said DA lawmaker Annelie Lotriet.

She lauded the failure of this "disastrous piece of legislation" as a victory for constitutional order.

"In Venezuela and Zimbabwe, tampering with property rights collapsed their economies, led to widespread hunger and resulted in wholesale capital flight," she said.