NATIONAL NEWS - The Western Cape High Court is expected to hear an application to challenge parts of the Expropriation Act.

The matter is expected to be heard before the court on Monday, 3 August.

Legal challenge

AfriForum, the DA, and the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) want certain provisions of the Act struck down.

President Cyril Ramaphosa. Public Works, the National Assembly, the Speaker, and the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) chairperson are respondents in the matter.

‘Interest of everyone’

AfriForum CEO Kallie Kriel said their fight against expropriation of land without compensation is in the interest of everyone in the country.

“AfriForum cannot and will not just stand by and watch how the country will be destroyed. Through irresponsible legislation, such as the Expropriation Act that allows for expropriation without compensation,” Kriel said.

“That is why we appointed the top-tier legal team to fight this act, this coming week in the Cape Town High Court. We want the Act to be declared unconstitutional. We have seen what happens when a country does not respect property rights.

“Just across the border in Zimbabwe, we’ve seen it was not only land owners that were negatively affected. Everybody, including poor people, when they get effectively affected. The political elite were enriched. While we saw growing poverty and growing unemployment, to an extent that millions of Zimbabweans have fled to South Africa,” he said.

‘Protecting South Africans’

DA leader Geordin Hill-Lewis said the party’s constitutional challenge to the Expropriation Act is about protecting every South African’s right to own property.

Hill-Lewis warned that the law threatens the foundations of ownership and economic freedom.

“The right to own property is fundamental to freedom, dignity and economic opportunity, and no government should be given vague and sweeping powers to take what belongs to South Africans without compensation,” he said.

Landowners

The DA leader stressed that the case is about more than landowners, saying it affects “every family’s home, every entrepreneur’s business, every worker’s pension and every South African who hopes one day to own something they can call their own.”

Rejecting expropriation without compensation in any form, Hill-Lewis said lawful expropriation must remain subject to due process, judicial oversight and “just and equitable compensation.”

“Expropriation without compensation will not create one new job, build one new home or place one additional title deed in the hands of a South African family. It will frighten away investment, weaken confidence and leave ordinary people poorer.”

Ramaphosa signs bill

Ramaphosa signed the Expropriation Bill into law in January 2025, setting new guidelines for land expropriation without compensation.

The Bill, which replaces the Expropriation Act of 1975, allows land expropriation without compensation if it’s in the public interest or for a public purpose.

It also irked US President Donald Trump, who claimed that South Africa’s expropriation law is aimed at “seizing ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation”.

Redistribution of land

In February 2025, Advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi said South Africa should have passed a law to redistribute land equitably when the country’s final constitution was adopted.

Ngcukaitobi said that of all the clauses in the new Expropriation Act of 2024, none had generated more heat than Section 12(3), which enables the state to offer “nil compensation” in certain instances to the owner of expropriated property.

“We should have passed a law in 1994 already, or at least 1996 when the final constitution was passed to enable the state to redistribute land on an equitable basis. There is an injunction in the Constitution that requires the state to do that; the state has never passed it, and it has no explanation why it didn’t pass it.”

Ngcukaitobi emphasised that “like everything in South Africa, the problem with land reform is that it is beset by corruption”.

Article: Caxton publication, The Citizen

‘We bring you the latest Garden Route, Hessequa, Karoo news’