Cape Town - Government will not be paying for 'tears', or the emotional value attached to farm land that is expropriated.
The state will, though, pay the amount of the valuation.
This is the view of enlightened parties close to the process of bringing the controversial 1975 Expropriation Act Amendment Bill into line with the constitution.
Now, for the first time, there is greater clarity about the role that market value will play in expropriation. On Monday Tozi Gwanya, Director-General of Land Affairs, told Parliament that the state could not afford the "emotional value" that farm owners wanted for targeted land.
According to Gwanya, this type of calculation boosts valuations by an average three times - an unacceptable state of affairs for a department that has long received too little money to achieve government's target of transferring 30% of the agricultural land to previously disadvantaged persons by 2014.
Gwanya explained to budget standing committee MPs that land valuation was not a precise science. Valuations differed from valuer to valuer. The current focus was not only on market value, but also on the historical amount, how the land had been purchased, what improvements had been effected and also whether any state subsidies for the land in question had been granted.
He said that in South Africa, as in Brazil and Kenya, land prices shot up as soon as government became a buyer.
The policy proposal on the Expropriation Amendment Bill had been quietly published for public comment in the Government Gazette during the December 2007 summer holidays. Few interested parties had therefore noticed the policy document which dealt with land expropriation since the time of Jan van Riebeeck's arrival in the Cape.
The Bill disappeared off the table last year because of constitutional incompatibilities, but all of these unconstitutional aspects are apparently being ironed out. The proposed amendment bill, as it stands, relates to all private property.
- Sake24.com
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