NEELS BLOM: What is that smell? The abattoir or something fishy?
Stalling the Expropriation Bill is beginning to smell like a red herring, writes Neels Blom
Some good news, finally. The Fourth Estate was beginning to smell like an abattoir with so many of the nation’s institutions being dragged out for public scrutiny by, um, other rotting carcasses. But to the good news just dragged out, ironically, by SA’s First Carcass, our self-styled president of radical stuff. Anyway, the news is that the much-regurgitated Expropriation Bill has been returned to Parliament on the grounds of insufficient public participation. The bill is intended to replace the Expropriation Act of 1975, which contradicts the Constitution, particularly in that it limits expropriation to serving a public purpose. It now includes provision for expropriation in the public interest, in line with the Constitution, expressly to allow land reform. If the bill helped to fill in this policy-bending money pit, it could be a good law. But why has First Carcass sent the thing back? The bill ticks all the boxes, doesn’t it? First, it irritates certain white people, which can be...
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