The constitution’s mandate for transformation From ‘expropriation without compensation’ to ‘equitable access to land’

Abstract

Expropriation without compensation’ (EWC) is a politically potent and simultaneously ambiguous term. It is politically potent not despite but precisely because of its ambiguity, in that it signals a radical departure from a land property regime that is patently illegitimate and unjust while obscuring how it is to be changed. It centres exclusively on the acquisition of land – thus on the nexus between the state and landowners – rather than on the distributive agenda – and thus on the nexus between the state and landless citizens. In this way, the EWC narrative sidesteps foundational questions of who should get which land, on what terms, for what purposes, where, and any wider agrarian reform agenda. These questions, which I have summarised as ‘who, what, where, how, why’, constitute the real politics of land reform and have been the focus of intense political negotiation, public debate and policy deliberation since the start of the political transition over three decades ago (Hall, 2010, 2015). Their scale and complexity have frequently been contracted into ‘the land question’.