This article was first published by Asset Magazine – pgs 318-326 in October 2025 Issue
The year 2025 started in chaos for South Africa. Cyril Ramaphosa assented to the contentious Expropriation Bill despite overwhelming evidence of its brazen unconstitutionality and, combined with other decisions taken (and not taken) by the South African government, all but destroyed the country’s relationship with the United States. The United States rightly prizes property rights not merely as a matter of domestic constitutional tradition, but as a matter of geopolitical importance, which is why a clear commitment to secure private property is an eligibility requirement under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).
In response to this incredible misstep by the Government of National Unity (GNU), the Free Market Foundation (FMF) unveiled its report, “Constitutional Land Reform: Alternatives to Confiscation and Land Retribution,” in August 2025. This report is part of the FMF’s Liberty First initiative that seeks to place fundamental policy reform on the agenda of the GNU.
Political theatre
It is trite and beyond disputing that South Africa’s past – like in much of the world – is one of unjust dispossession of property from its rightful owners.
The socialist African National Congress (ANC) and its allies have made much ado about land reform to “redress” these injustices. “Correcting” inequitable “patterns of ownership” has been a key item of political discourse and policy, with it arguably reaching its climax at the parliamentary decision of February 2018 to amend section 25 of the Constitution to undo the right to compensation when a property owner is lawfully expropriated.
Despite this, research conducted by the South African Institute of Race Relations periodically over more than two decades reveals that land reform is one of the least important priorities for ordinary South Africans, with the polls being demographically representative. The latest survey was conducted in December 2024, and reveals that only 1% of respondents picked land reform as one of their two most important issues.
There is no “hunger for land,” as South African politicians often would wish society to believe there is.
Land reform, in other words, appears more an ideological imperative for the political elite, than an issue of concern for the population.
Even then, the land reform budget allocation for 2025/26 was only some R5 billion, compared to the some R12 billion allocated for the Department of Sports, Arts, and Culture.
Whereas much rhetorical ado is made by the political elite about land reform, therefore, they do not put (our) money where their mouths are.
Furthermore, with the money South Africa’s fiscus loses to corruption alone, government could have purchased most agricultural land in the country on the open market (i.e., with compensation) many times over. Between 2014 and 2019, this amount was estimated around R1.5 trillion. In February 2025, it was reported that the Unemployment Insurance Fund alone paid out approximately R57 billion in fraudulent claims.
This goes to show that there is no shortage of funds within the government ecosystem to fully prosecute its land reform agenda, while paying owners their deserved market-based compensation. The supposed fear of market-based compensation is a matter of political expediency, not true fiscal constraint.
However, perhaps most notably is the fact that, since the state’s redistribution programme began, the government has acquired some 2.5 million hectares of land (i.e., in addition to what the state already owned) and held it.
This is a growing number, and amounts to a landmass about the size of the Gauteng Province.
The political elite, therefore, hoards land under state ownership whilst decrying the lack of an equitable distribution of land among the peoples of South Africa.
Descendants of historically dispossessed owners were granted necessary relief in the form of the Restitution of Land Rights Act. This Act, rightly premised on the common law rei vindicatio remedy, simply requires that anyone (including descendants) who believes they are entitled to a certain piece of property, must prove in law that they are the rightful owners and that the property was unjustly dispossessed.
If this is proven, they are entitled to receive the property back, or to be financially compensated by the state for the loss.
Of course, the current owners of the property, as a matter of right, are required to be compensated if they must part with the property. Their hands are clean, and for the law to punish them for conduct they never engaged in would be profoundly unjust.
Restitution (to be firmly distinguished from redistribution), in other words, has been successful to the degree that it has been capacitated by the state’s meagre budget allocation. This programme has the potential of satiating any real “hunger for land.” It is doubtful that it would be pursued to the fullest extent, however, given that unlike expropriation without compensation, restitution grants the political elite no new power or control over society, but simply brings about justice.
Since 1998, shortly after the restitution programme began, some 64,354 claims have been settled in favour of the complainants, compared to 5,755 in favour of respondents. Of these successful claims, only 11.8% of complainants chose to take possession of the land, compared to 88.2% opting for financial reparation. So much for land hunger!
Those who specifically want the government to have the authority to seize property at random in exchange for nothing are to be found exclusively in the halls of government power and the universities, not in the townships or suburbs. The supposed “need” for expropriation without compensation the state seeks to achieve with the Expropriation Act is nothing more than dangerous political theatre.
True land reform
The first of the FMF’s “Constitutional Land Reform” recommendations is therefore that Parliament should repeal the Expropriation Act and enact an Expropriation Control Act to uphold section 25 of the South African Constitution, ensuring property owners are treated with the respect and deference they deserve.
This Act must prohibit compensationless confiscation, except in those cases recognised by common law (criminal asset forfeiture, for instance), and state-owned property needed by another government sphere, property recognised as truly abandoned by a court of law, or (vanishingly rare) exceptional cases justified under section 36(1) of the Constitution. Adequate judicial oversight by an ordinary court of law (and not the new Land Court with its watered down version of due process) must always be present.
To foster equitable land access, the FMF further recommends, Parliament, provinces, and municipalities should liberalise property transactions by outsourcing deeds registries, eliminating fees, waiving formal building plan requirements, abolishing capital gains tax, and capping property rates. This will reduce the high cost of being a property owner, especially for the indigent who are necessarily excluded.
Restrictions on agricultural land subdivision should also be repealed to enable affordable access to rural property in particular.
| New homeowners in Phiritona, Heilbron, registering to collect their title deeds. |
| Housing in Tumahole, Ngwathe (Parys) where the FMF initiated Khaya Lam. |
Government must audit all state-owned or controlled property and commit to transferring ownership to lawful occupants, as demonstrated by the FMF’s Khaya Lam Project. Khaya Lam has just achieved the milestone of facilitating over 20,000 title deed transfers to rightful owners since 2010. This is real empowerment.
The aforementioned Restitution Act, furthermore, should be strengthened. Time limits for claims should be removed, and funding increased ensure the land claims process is swiftly and adequately completed. Restituted properties must then henceforth be immune from any further land reform consideration, enabling the new owners and potential buyers to be secure in the knowledge that the rent-seeking state will not come knocking again.
The Communal Land Tenure Bill should be refined to grant traditional communities true private ownership, free from back-door state control, by removing provisions reserving land for the state or granting the executive excessive discretion in communal land matters. The Bill should then be placed back on the parliamentary agenda.
Finally, and perhaps most contentiously, Parliament should divest state ownership of natural resources like water, minerals, and petroleum by amending the National Water Act, Mineral Resources Development Act, and Upstream Petroleum Resources Development Act.
These resources, now mismanaged by the state for decades, and increasingly utilised for partisan political purposes, should return to prior owners or be transparently distributed to deserving South Africans, with landowners owning subsurface resources per the common law ad coelum principle.
The difference property rights makes
Property rights profoundly shape a country’s prosperity.
In Cuba and Venezuela, where Marxist-Leninist policies undermine property security, basic goods are scarce, and the diaspora grows involuntary every year.
A similar story can be told about Zimbabwe, closer to home. Zimbabweans did not start fleeing into South Africa in the 1980s or ‘90s. It was only after the principle of private property was destroyed in that country in the early 2000s that South Africa was seen as a desirable safe heaven.
North Korea’s even more strict adherence to socialist imperatives, unlike neighbouring “Communist” China’s pragmatic embrace of capitalist characteristics, has to be masked with Potemkin villages whenever foreign dignitaries visit. Nobody from the property-owning South flees into North Korea – there is only one-way traffic.
In all these countries, the political class absolutely thrives while the rest of society suffers. This is the ultimate goal of those who push for expropriation without compensation.
Expropriation without compensation is a dangerous political ploy that threatens South Africa’s constitutional order and economic stability. Far from addressing historical injustices, it risks entrenching state control and undermining the very property rights essential for a free and prosperous society.
The evidence is clear: ordinary South Africans prioritise jobs and services over land reform, and viable alternatives like the Restitution Act and the FMF’s Liberty First proposals offer just, market-based solutions. By rejecting property confiscation and embracing secure private property, South Africa can achieve equity, restore global confidence, and build a future where justice, not political theatre, truly prevails.
