On January 23, 2025, President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa signed an Expropriation Act. The law states that the government can legally take private property for public use — but also spells out fair compensation and only allows seizure in certain instances.
International debate about the law peaked with a dramatic spat with the US President Donald Trump.
When can land be seized without compensation?
Land can be seized without compensation if the owner is not using it. If the land has been abandoned, various factors have to be taken into account.
The law allows land, housing or infrastructure to be seized from any private owner — regardless of skin color — for public purposes, including infrastructure projects, public service expansion, environmental conservation or for a more equitable resource distribution.
In practice, the government has yet to seize any land without compensation.
Ramaphosa's African National Congress (ANC) party sees the law as a significant milestone in the country's transformation, but the Democratic Alliance (DA), its partner in the newly formed government of national unity (GNU) is challenging the law in court.
"Every country has legislation to ensure a state can, with fair compensation, build public infrastructure, but this Act goes too far outside these accepted international norms," according to a statement by the DA, the second-largest party in Congress.
The Freedom Front Plus, a party that defends the rights of the country's white minority, has said it fears a "possible threat to private ownership."
The DA, along with the predominantly white Afrikaner Freedom Front Plus and an AfriForum organization, wants the Expropriation Act to be declared unconstitutional.
They also approached US President Donald Trump for assistance.
The deep roots of South Africa's land issues
As a result of South Africa's violent colonial history and pre-1994 Apartheid policies, some 70% of commercial farmland countrywide is owned by whites, who make up just 7% of the population.
Anger at the slow pace of land reform, economic inequality and social injustices is widespread.
Previously, land reform was based on a 1975 Act provided for market value compensation, or "willing buyer, willing seller" deals.
In contrast, the new Expropriation Act allows for expropriation without compensation in circumstances where it is "just and equitable and in the public interest" to do so.
It aligns with South Africa's Constitution, Bulelwa Mabasa, an expert on land reform in South Africa, told DW.
The presidency has stated that "expropriation may not be exercised unless the expropriating authority has without success attempted to reach an agreement with the owner."
On February 7, only a few weeks after the Expropriation Act became law, the Trump administration issued an executive order stating that the law enabled the South African government "to seize ethnic minority Afrikaners' agricultural property without compensation."
White Afrikaner farmers would be given refugee status in the US, he said.
Afrikaners trace their heritage to Europeans who have settled in South Africa since the 17th century.
The first plane carrying Afrikaners allegedly "fleeing" South Africa landed in Washington recently.
There is no evidence to support claims of persecution or genocide of white people in South Africa, but the white 'refugees' say land reform laws target them and might lead to violent land grabs, as happened in neighboring Zimbabwe in the early 2000s.
How did land reform play out in Zimbabwe?
Land reform in Zimbabwe began in the 1890s, when European settlers dispossessed local people of fertile farmland. As part of the British Southern Rhodesia colony, farms were segregated between commercial and communal land.
White farmers, whose farms fell in high rainfall, fertile regions, benefitted from these land policies to the detriment of Black people.
From 1964 to 1979, the Rhodesian Bush War saw Black Zimbabweans rebel against white minority rule. Reclaiming dispossessed land was central to the liberation movement's identity.
After Zimbabwe became independent in 1980 under the leadership of Robert Mugabe, it officially launched a land reform program to redistribute land between white and Black farmers, under a "willing buyer, willing seller" policy. At the time, an estimated 4,500 white farmers owned 51% of the country's farmland, despite constituting just 3% of the population. In contrasts, some 4.3 million Black people had access to just 42% of the land.
The British government, as part of the Lancaster House Agreement of 1979, gave the post-independence government about 44 million pounds between 1980 and 1989 to spend on land reform programs. It stopped the payments in 1997, citing concerns over corruption and human rights abuses.
In a referendum in 2000, Zimbabweans rejected a new Constitution, which would have allowed the government to seize white-owned land without compensation. Despite this, independence war veterans led violent land invasions, displacing white farmers. Mugabe then implemented Fast Track Land Reform (FTLR), which saw expropriation without compensation. The vast majority of white farmers were evicted.
A cautionary tale for southern Africa
A few white farmers, and many of their Black workers, were killed in the land invasions, which were rife with human rights abuses. Land owners were often given just hours to leave the farms.
As a result, property rights in Zimbabwe were destroyed, and even though land was redistributed, the beneficiaries were largely decided through cronyism, despite the government's claim that Black people were being given land.
In less than a decade, Zimbabwe went from being a net exporter of food to being a net importer, and thousands of mostly-Black farmworkers lost their jobs.
The country now relies on UN food programs, and land reform policies are widely seen as an economic disaster.
Zimbabwe's land reform experience became a cautionary tale for southern African countries with sizable white farming populations, such as South Africa, Namibia and Zambia. Meanwhile, the words "land expropriation without compensation" continue to strike fear in white communities.
