Media Statement

he African National Congress (ANC) notes the legal challenge brought by the Democratic Alliance (DA), Afriforum and the South African Institute of Race Relations (IRR) against the Expropriation Act before the Western Cape High Court. This challenge does not come as a surprise, given the sustained opposition by the DA and its allies to legislative measures intended to advance transformation, equity, restitution and redress.

The Expropriation Act is a constitutionally mandated instrument intended to give practical effect to section 25 of the Constitution. The property clause protects property rights while also requiring the democratic state to advance land reform, equitable access to natural resources and restitution for those dispossessed of their land. The DA has opposed the Expropriation Act, the National Health Insurance Act, the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act and the Employment Equity Amendment Act, virtually every decisive intervention aimed at dismantling apartheid’s structural inequalities and transferring dignity, opportunity and economic power to the black majority.

Its conduct exposes a party that embraces the Constitution when it suits them, but attacks its transformative mandate when it demands restitution, redress and substantive equality. The DA cannot claim fidelity to the Constitution while fighting every law intended to realise its promise for those dispossessed and excluded by colonialism and apartheid. This is constitutional hypocrisy in its most naked form; an anti-transformation agenda, clothed in legal language, calculated to preserve racialised privilege and condemn the black majority to the economic margins of their own country.

The ANC remains unwavering in its commitment to transformation and the historic vision of the Freedom Charter that South Africa belongs to all who live in it and that the land must be shared among those who work it. Land reform, restitution, equity and redress are neither acts of retribution nor negotiable political preferences; they are constitutional and historical imperatives. The ANC will continue pursuing the creation of a united, non-racial, non-sexist, democratic and prosperous society in which the dignity of the dispossessed is restored and all people share meaningfully in the country’s development and wealth.

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