AfriForum announces three-point plan to fight Expropriation Act

The civil rights organisation AfriForum today announced its three-point plan for fighting the controversial Expropriation Act at a media conference in Centurion. AfriForum maintains that this act significantly jeopardises private property rights and must be opposed to the end.

The three-point plan will include an anti-promulgation action, legal action and an international awareness campaign against the Expropriation Act.

The first step of the plan will focus on preventing the act’s promulgation. On Friday, AfriForum already appealed to Dean Macpherson, Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure, to refuse to be a co-signatory of the act’s proclamation. Under Section 101(2) of the Constitution, a minister must countersign if the act affects a function assigned to the relevant minister. However, if Macpherson countersigns the act, AfriForum is prepared to take him and President Cyril Ramaphosa to court due to the irrationality of their actions.

The second step of AfriForum’s three-point plan will be to test the constitutionality of the Expropriation Act in court. According to AfriForum’s legal team, the organisation has good grounds to test the constitutionality of the act. AfriForum already sent a letter to Ramaphosa on 15 April last year to set out the grounds. The main objection that AfriForum has against the constitutionality of the act is the fact that the Constitution requires just and equitable compensation. However, the act expressly provides for nil compensation in specific cases, but those cases are not limited. AfriForum maintains that this creates serious risks for arbitrary actions by expropriation authorities.

Sound clip: Willie Spies, AfriForum’s legal representative from Hurter Spies Inc.

The third aspect of AfriForum’s plan involves a targeted international campaign, through which the organisation will approach international role players and inform them about the risks and AfriForum’s criticism of the law. The aim of AfriForum’s international campaign is to mobilise opposition to the act’s threat to private property rights from abroad.

Ernst van Zyl, the Head of Public Relations at AfriForum, asserts that AfriForum and other organisations serve as the final line of defence between the government and private property owners.

“Wherever the undermining of private property rights has occurred, such as in Zimbabwe and Venezuela, it has had catastrophic economic consequences. We must therefore use every option available to us in our resistance against this destructive law,” concludes Van Zyl.

Sound clip: Ernst van Zyl, Head of Public Relations at AfriForum

In the interest of protecting private property rights, AfriForum also today undertook to take legal action on behalf of those whose property is targeted by the government for expropriation without compensation.

AfriForum encourages the public to pledge their support to the campaign against expropriation at www.onteiening.co.za.