The coalition government of South Africa has chosen to deal with one of its biggest disagreements in a way that seems almost theatrical. This week, the second-largest party in the ruling coalition, the Democratic Alliance, filed papers in the Western Cape High Court to challenge the Expropriation Act. This is a law that was signed by President Cyril Ramaphosa, who is also in the Democratic Alliance, just a few months ago, in January 2025. There are two ruling parties. An open courtroom. And a fight over land reform that has never really died down.
The Expropriation Act lets the government take land for public use, and in some cases, they can do this without paying the owner. The ANC says this is a necessary way to deal with the effects of apartheid, which gave white people control over most private farmland long after democracy ended. The DA has a different view. The party says that the law gives the government dangerously broad powers and that the lack of clarity will make investors look elsewhere.
It is important to note that the Act has not yet been used to take any land. Not yet. But the law has already done a lot of damage to relations between the two countries. This was the reason President Trump gave for cutting U.S. aid to South Africa last year: he said that white farmers were losing land without being paid for it. Pretoria strongly denied those claims, pointing out that the Act includes constitutional protections and needs judicial oversight before any taking of land can happen. The government of South Africa has always said that similar laws exist in many other countries and don’t cause the same problems.
Still, there’s a feeling in the business world that the way this law looks on a global scale has scared some people. International investors pay attention when a country’s most important reform law is at the center of a diplomatic standoff with Washington. This is true even if the actual law is less extreme than what the headlines say. The DA has played on that worry by saying that the law makes people less sure of their property rights at a time when South Africa needs foreign investment to come in, not leave.
The really strange thing about the court case is the political situation it was in. In 2024, the ANC failed to win a majority in parliament for the first time since the end of apartheid in 1994. This is when the ANC and DA formed their coalition. Some people have said that their relationship is rocky but functional. An expert in politics said that this lawsuit was like “shadowboxing” because it let both sides argue about land reform in public without actually breaking up the coalition. That frame looks about right. There is enough care in this confrontation so that both sides can go back into the same building afterward.
The case will be heard along with two other legal challenges. Both were brought by groups representing Afrikaner interests. The Afrikaners are the descendants of mostly Dutch settlers who Trump controversially gave refugee status to, saying they face systemic discrimination. South Africa has also said no to that description, but the High Court hearings are more important than a normal constitutional challenge because of the other cases going on at the same time.
If the Act is thrown out, the government might have to change one of its most important laws made after apartheid. If the ruling goes in its favor, it will probably speed up the process and give the ANC political momentum going into the November local elections. If something goes wrong in that Western Cape courtroom, it will change more than just land policy. It shows whether South Africa’s coalition government can stay together long enough to govern, even though the two parties have very different ideas about how the economy should work.
