Could AfriForum be prosecuted for treason?

Legal minds have expressed varying views about whether the civil society organisation, AfriForum, should be charged with treason for lobbying for the isolation of South Africa by the United States.

This after many posts on X called for AfriForum to be charged with treason for instigating the Trump administration to complain about the Expropriation Act and farm killings.

Can AfriForum be charged with treason?

A Joburg-based advocate, Mzukisi Mgxashe said AfriForum could be prosecuted in terms of Protection of Constitutional Democracy against Terrorist and Related Activities Act pertaining to extra-territorial jurisdiction.

The courts have jurisdiction to try terrorist acts committed abroad beyond the financing of terrorism.

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He cited Section 54(1) of the Internal Security Act.

“In essence if the communication which is misleading and not truthful about the Expropriation Act was conveyed by AfriForum and Solidarity endanger the Republic they could be prosecuted.

“If the information conveyed to President Donald Trump that led to the manner he reacted poses risk and damage to the republic, this law allows our law enforcement agencies to act against them,” Mgxashe said.

AfriForum’s lobbying doesn’t constitute treason

However, Themba Langa, an attorney from Durban, said AfriForum’s action did not constitute treason as it was a trip to mobilise on behalf of the Afrikaner farmers it believed were being targeted for criminal political attacks.

“I don’t think the political mobilisation done by AfriForum constitutes treason as they went to the US to highlight the plight of Afrikaner farmers who they deemed to have been singled out for violent criminal attacks for political reasons,” Langa said.

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However, he fingered the DA as the one that might have committed treason after it approached the US department of justice to prosecute President Cyril Ramaphosa for the foreign currency that was found at his Phala Phala farm.

DA leader John Steenhuisen stated the party had approached the FBI to act because dollars were used.

Ramaphosa denied any wrongdoing, and the matter was probed by various law enforcement agencies that all absolved him of wrongdoing despite a parliament sponsored panel finding that he had a case to answer.

Misleading narratives

Langa believed Trump’s executive order sanctioning South Africa resulted from the government’s poor political management of the Land Expropriation Act.

“Politically, the government and the ANC projected the Expropriation Act as an instrument that would allow the expropriation of land without compensation when such rhetoric is ostensibly false and misleading.

“The Act speaks of land being expropriated as required by the Constitution on a compensation basis, as well as on nil compensation.

“However, only when the court would have made such a determination on a just and equitable basis and a case-by-case basis.”

This misleading rhetoric is what has been used by the likes of AfriForum to amplify their equally misleading narratives that the Expropriation Act would be used by the ANC to achieve expropriation without compensation.

Ramaphosa escalated tensions

The lawyer said poor political management (by the ANC) was allowed to be weaponised when Minister Gwede Mantashe said African countries should consider using their minerals as political leverage against Trump.

Mantashe was responding to the cancellation of the US secretary of state Marco Rubio’s participation in the G20 Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Joburg, “on the basis of the false and misleading rhetoric that the Act will be used to confiscate land”.

Langa said Ramaphosa then escalated the political tension in his State of the Nation Address on Thursday by claiming that the US would not bully South Africa.

But AfriForum’s CEO Kallie Kriel described the claims against the organisation as “ludicrous”.

He said his organisation was being made a scapegoat as it was not the one that signed the controversial Expropriation Bill, and the Bela Act but the president himself.

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