Helen Zille also accused the presidency of announcing the Act against the advice of the Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure, Dean Macpherson, who provided Ramaphosa with a legal opinion that there were issues with the Act that rendered it unconstitutional.
Image: Armand Hough / Independent Newspapers
The Democratic Alliance (DA) has filed papers in the Western Cape High Court to challenge the recently signed Expropriation Act, saying "the Act is unconstitutional, both substantively and procedurally."
DA federal council chairperson, Helen Zille announced the news in a statement on Monday.
"The DA has asked the Court for an order that will nullify the Expropriation Act in its current form," she said.
Zille stated that during the sixth administration, the DA firmly rejected the Act, believing that no government in a democratic country should possess such sweeping powers to expropriate property without compensation.
"We have not forgotten that the apartheid government used similar powers to forcibly remove communities from their land, often with inadequate compensation or none at all.
"This history teaches us that true redress requires protecting property rights, ensuring that no government is ever given unchecked expropriation powers ever again.
"It is for this reason that the DA will fight to ensure that every South African can have their property rights defended, protected, and advanced," she said.
President Cyril Ramaphosa signed the Act on January 23.
The Act aims to provide for the expropriation of land and other property for public and certain other purposes.
Zille accused the presidency of announcing the Act against the advice of the Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure, Dean Macpherson, who provided Ramaphosa with a legal opinion that there were issues with the Act that rendered it unconstitutional.
Zille stated that the purpose of the court action is to have the Act nullified in its entirety.
"Apart from compelling legal shortcomings, the DA strongly opposes the substance of the Act, which seeks to fulfill the mandate of the ANC’s elective conference in 2017, which mandated the ANC to include expropriation without compensation as an instrument of law.
"After the DA defeated the ANC’s plan to amend Section 25 of the Constitution to enable expropriation without compensation, amending this Act became a blunt instrument of ANC majoritarianism in the last Parliament," she said.
She further accused the ANC of trying to gain further powers of expropriation without compensation in an Act meant to provide for expropriation in circumstances where the state needs to develop infrastructure such as roads, railways, and dams.
"Every country has legislation to ensure that the state can, with fair compensation, build public infrastructure, but this Act goes too far outside of these accepted international norms.
"In the passage and signature of the Expropriation Act, the ANC wants to dramatically widen the purview of expropriation, and keep the window for land restitution open indefinitely," she said.
She also told the ANC that it was not in power alone anymore and should consider them.
"The voters require the ANC to be in a coalition, and the ANC is bound by a signed Statement of Intent for a coalition with the DA. This means that they cannot simply proceed to implement resolutions of ANC elective conferences.
"The ANC now has to share power for the first time in our democratic history, and the DA will not stand by and allow the ANC to act as though they won a majority," she added.
Meanwhile, MK Party opened a treason case against AfriForum but the group defended itself, saying the allegations had no basis.
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