Expropriation Act challenge: what the Western Cape High Court is actually deciding
The Western Cape High Court is hearing a constitutional challenge to the Expropriation Act from 3 to 7 August 2026, brought by the DA, AfriForum and the Institute of Race Relations. The Act, signed into law by President Ramaphosa on 23 January 2025, is accused of containing unworkable and arbitrary provisions. All parties agree land reform is necessary. The real dispute is whether South Africa’s institutions can execute it through law at all.
South Africa’s courts are now deciding whether a law designed to fix what the ANC calls a historic injustice is itself too broken to fix anything. The policy in question, the Expropriation Act, was designed and driven through Parliament by the ANC and signed into law by President Cyril Ramaphosa on 23 January 2025. From 3 to 7 August 2026, the DA, AfriForum, the Institute of Race Relations and other parties are asking a full bench of the Western Cape High Court to strike parts of it down.
Everyone involved in this case agrees that land reform in South Africa is necessary. The ANC has said so. The DA has said so. Even AfriForum, while opposing this specific legislation, acknowledges that land dispossession under apartheid was real and that redress is owed. That is not what this case is about. What is being tested is whether the Act, as written, can actually be implemented, whether it was passed lawfully, and whether it treats property owners equally under the Constitution.
Why the case is being heard in Cape Town
The challenge is being heard in the Western Cape High Court, not in Johannesburg or Pretoria, where most major constitutional matters are argued. The Western Cape is DA-governed territory. The choice of venue was not accidental. Whichever way the first ruling goes, it sets the tone for what is expected to be a long road toward the Constitutional Court on appeal, meaning the arguments heard this week are the opening move in a legal battle likely to run for years rather than the final word.
The legal arguments
The DA’s strongest argument centres on Section 19 of the Act, which the party says creates a circular requirement. Expropriation cannot proceed without a court order, but a court order cannot be sought until expropriation has already been issued. The DA argues this makes the section impossible to execute as written. The party is also arguing that the National Council of Provinces process used to pass the Act was unlawful, on the basis that some provincial delegates voted without valid mandates.
AfriForum’s case focuses on Sections 12(3) and 12(4), which allow expropriation without compensation in specified circumstances. AfriForum argues these provisions are arbitrary and unconstitutional.
The Institute of Race Relations has taken a narrower and, on its face, harder to answer position. The IRR argues that the Act allows expropriation without compensation for certain categories of owner, including speculators, municipalities holding investment property, and land reform beneficiaries treated as second class owners, while requiring compensation for identical land held by someone outside those categories. The IRR’s argument is that this is not neutral policy but arbitrary discrimination based on who the owner is, which raises an equality problem under the Constitution rather than a pure property rights one.
Government’s position is that the Act provides a constitutional framework for expropriation that did not exist under the apartheid-era 1975 Act, and that it is needed to give effect to land reform obligations under Section 25 of the Constitution.
The political pressure behind the case
The DA is part of the Government of National Unity, sitting in Cabinet alongside the ANC, yet it is now suing government in court over legislation from its own coalition. Public Works Minister Dean Macpherson is cited as a respondent in the matter, despite the DA noting that he did not vote for the bill, which was passed under his predecessor, Patricia de Lille.
The placement itself is worth noting. Public Works is the kind of portfolio where administrative failures surface publicly and someone has to answer for them. The ANC has retained the higher profile ministries, including foreign affairs, while ministries carrying inherited administrative risk, including this one, sit with the DA. In February 2026, Ramaphosa told Parliament directly that no minister or deputy minister should claim GNU work as an achievement of their own party, stating that GNU successes are the achievements of the collective. In practice, that principle means the ANC continues to shape the dominant narrative of governing while the DA inherits political risk without being able to claim credit even where it performs well.
South Africa’s 2026 elections, set for 4 November, are local government elections rather than a general election. That distinction matters, but it does not remove the incentive for the DA to draw a clear, public line on property rights now. Local election results shape momentum and funding heading into the next general election, and a party seen to be absorbing blame for legislation it did not write has reason to make its opposition visible well before voters go to the polls.
The Zimbabwe comparison
AfriForum and other critics of the Act have repeatedly invoked Zimbabwe’s land reform programme as a warning of what unchecked expropriation can lead to. The comparison is not without basis. Zimbabwe’s land seizures under Robert Mugabe were carried out largely outside any legal framework and were used for political patronage rather than development, contributing to economic collapse. But Zimbabwe did not have legislation resembling South Africa’s Expropriation Act. South Africa is, at minimum, attempting to build constitutional constraints and court oversight into the process, oversight Zimbabwe never had. Both countries had constitutional property protections on paper. Whether South Africa’s courts prove more willing to enforce those protections than Zimbabwe’s did remains an open question.
What happens next
Whatever the Western Cape High Court decides when arguments conclude on 7 August, the matter is unlikely to end there. An appeal to the Constitutional Court is considered likely regardless of outcome, meaning South Africa faces years of further litigation over a piece of legislation that both its supporters and its critics agree was, at minimum, poorly drafted in parts. Until Parliament revisits the drafting or the courts settle the constitutional questions definitively, land reform under this Act remains effectively frozen.
