Briefly, the eighteenth amendment will change the Constitution to allow government to seize private property without paying for it, and tasks Parliament with defining – in legislation – under which circumstances this may happen.
In open and democratic societies, a standard the Constitution commits South Africa to reaching, only criminals are liable to having the property they used in their crimes seized without compensation. It is precisely the kind of invasive discretionary power that the imperatives of the rule of law – another fundamental postulate of our constitutional order – try to guard against.
Indeed it might happen that just before the amendment is adopted government will abandon its plans to have the executive determine when zero compensation is payable, which would understandably create the impression that government has been beaten by the forces of reason. Whether the legislature or the courts are said to be the final arbiter on expropriation without compensation, both those institutions will in time be the lapdogs of the executive, as has happened in every society that abandoned constitutionalism to satisfy passing political whims.