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  • 6 - The Constitution’s Mandate for Transformation

  • from Part II - Potentials and Pitfalls of South African Land Reform
  • Edited by Olaf Zenker, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Germany, Cherryl Walker, Stellenbosch University, South Africa, Zsa-Zsa Boggenpoel, Stellenbosch University, South Africa
  • Book:
    Beyond Expropriation Without Compensation
    Published online:
    28 March 2024
    Print publication:
    04 April 2024, pp 143-164
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  • Summary

    ‘Expropriation without compensation’ has crystallised in South African discourse into a symbolic rejection of inherited privilege, with calls for a constitutional amendment that presupposes a legal constraint on the property regime. The intentions of the lawmakers in the ‘property clause’ debates of the 1990s were to craft what I term a ‘mandate for transformation’. Yet the state has failed to override property owner interests in favour of the landless. Second, the battle over ‘expropriation without compensation’ since 2018 has not been about what is written in the Constitution. Third, the counterpoint to the fixation on state power to acquire property is the right of citizens to gain access to land on an equitable basis. This under-developed idea languishing within the property clause offers the basis for constitutional claims for a right to land. Inverting attention from state powers to enact reform to citizens’ powers to claim rights, it could serve as a focal point for emancipatory politics grounded in real struggles.