The civil rights organisation AfriForum today launched a comprehensive campaign against the Expropriation Bill that threatens private property rights. This campaign has a local, national and international component.
Nationally, this campaign involves a manifesto signed by 13 civil rights, agricultural, political and other organisations from across the country opposing the Expropriation Bill. AfriForum’s legal team also wrote a letter to President Cyril Ramaphosa today. This letter highlights the Expropriation Bill’s unconstitutionality and dangers and on that basis it requests the president to refer the bill back to the legislature and that it be referred to the Constitutional Court beforehand.
AfriForum is going to mobilize its branches at local level to hand over the manifesto to their provincial governments. As part of the international component of this campaign, AfriForum will address letters to the embassies in the country. In these letters, AfriForum requests that these embassies inform their home countries of the latest threat to private property rights in South Africa. AfriForum also plans to inform the extensive network of contacts that the organisation has built up abroad about the dangers of the Expropriation Bill.
Ernst van Zyl, Campaign Officer for Strategy and Content at AfriForum, says that the organisation has already taken a strong stance against the Expropriation Bill during the comment period and that AfriForum will do everything within its power to stop this destructive bill.
“We cannot allow the government to have the power to just grab any property they want. So AfriForum launched this comprehensive, multi-level campaign. Bills have already been stopped in their tracks during this phase where they are sent to the Council of Provinces and then the President for approval, due to public or international pressure,” concludes Van Zyl.
AfriForum now requests that our members and the public also put their name behind this manifesto by visiting www.onteiening.co.za/en/.
