CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — South Africa's second biggest political party launched a legal challenge Monday against a new land expropriation law that was roundly criticized by U.S. President Donald Trump as a rights violation against a white minority and prompted him to cut all funding to the country.
The legal appeal by the Democratic Alliance, which is part of South Africa's government coalition, increases the pressure on President Cyril Ramaphosa. His signing of the law led Trump to issue an executive order Friday stopping U.S. aid and assistance to a key trade partner in Africa.
The law allows the South African government to expropriate land from private parties if it's in the public interest and allows for expropriation without compensation, but only if negotiations for a reasonable settlement have failed, the government says. The government has defended the law as targeting unused land and says private property rights are protected. It says it does not allow land to be taken arbitrarily.
The government has denied Trump's allegations that it will target land owned by farmers from South Africa's white minority Afrikaner group, who are descended from Dutch and other European colonial settlers who first came to the country more than 300 years ago.
The Democratic Alliance is South Africa's most popular white-led political party, although it draws support from all races. It has long been a political adversary of Ramaphosa’s ruling African National Congress party but joined what later became a 10-party governing coalition last year. It said the law was unconstitutional.
“We reject this (Expropriation) Act because we believe that no government in a democratic country should be given such sweeping powers to expropriate property without compensation,” the DA said. It said it wanted to have the law nullified entirely.
It said it wanted to remind Ramaphosa's ANC that it did not win a majority in last year's national election and now has to share power for the first time since South Africa became a democracy at the end of the apartheid system of white minority rule in 1994.
The law raised concerns among groups in South Africa, especially those who represent Afrikaners, who make up many of the country's farming communities and own a large number of commercial farms. Some of those Afrikaner groups had traveled to the United States in recent years to raise attention to the law when it was still a bill under consideration.
Trump's decision to punish South Africa has come with false statements, though. He said that land was being confiscated when there have been no confiscations, according to the main farmers' union. Trump also said the South African government was allowing violent attacks on white farming communities, a claim that has been made by conservative commentators in the U.S. and elsewhere for years and was more recently amplified by Trump adviser Elon Musk.
Although some white farmers have been killed, the government has condemned the killings and they form a very small percentage of South Africa's high violent crime rates across the board. Experts say there are no concerted attacks on white farmers.
Trump's executive order targeting assistance to Africa's most advanced economy was only partly about the land law.
His order also says South Africa is taking an anti-American stance in its foreign policy by accusing U.S. ally Israel of genocide in Gaza in an ongoing case at the United Nations' top court. It also criticized South Africa's ties with Russia, China and Iran and accused it of supporting Palestinian militant group Hamas.
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AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa
http://accesswdun.com/article/2025/2/1285734