President Cyril Ramaphosa and DA leader John Steenhuisen during a Q&A session in Parliament in 2024. Picture: Gallo Images/Brenton Geach
The DA has reportedly called for a meeting between its leader, John Steenhuisen, and President Cyril Ramaphosa ahead of Wednesday’s Cabinet lekgotla, with one insider claiming that the meeting could become “a bloodbath” if this is not done.
The government of national unity (GNU) bedfellows have been at loggerheads over many issues during the seven months they have been in power together, but tensions escalated last week when President Cyril Ramaphosa signed the Expropriation Bill into law.
It allows for land expropriation with no compensation under certain circumstances, including if it’s in the public interest. The DA has raised concerns about its constitutionality and alleged contradictions, calling for it to be revoked until it has been fully discussed with GNU partners.
ALSO READ: Expropriation Act: ‘Contradictory processes’ will prevent implementation, says Macpherson
While Steenhuisen said on Saturday that the DA would not walk away from GNU over this latest dispute, insiders told the Sunday Times the party was seeking urgent meetings with Ramaphosa to settle differences before the lekgotla.
“The underlying problem is CR [Ramaphosa] doesn’t see the need to negotiate or even discuss anything. John [Steenhuisen] sent him a letter on NHI setting out our issues and suggesting various constructive alternatives, and asking to meet before the lekgotla on Wednesday, and the reply was, ‘We have sent your letter to the minister of health and the president is not available for a meeting.’
“If CR [Ramaphosa] doesn’t call John [Steenhuisen] before Wednesday, then it will be a bloodbath at the lekgotla, and who knows what will happen next.”
The DA’s federal council, the party’s highest decision-making body in between Federal Congress, will also meet ahead of the lekgotla to discuss its stance.
ALSO READ: Expropriation Act: DA will stay in GNU but want a ‘reset’
On Saturday, Steenhuisen said his party would not be treated like a doormat in the GNU and requested a reset in relations between the GNU’s biggest parties.
“The DA will not be reduced to mere spectators in a government where we bring a large part of the seats.
“If a reset is not possible, and we remain unable to be able to play our part in the growth and jobs agenda, if our ideas and solutions are merely waved away with the hand of the NDR [National Democratic Revolution (NDR), a long-standing ANC policy], then we too will have to reconsider our options and how to best serve South Africa in this situation,” Steenhuisen said.
This may include, he hinted, withdrawing support for the budget next month.
ALSO READ: Expropriation Act: Will it break or make the GNU?
Speaking to the media outside of the ANC’s National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting in Kempton Park, Gauteng, on Saturday, spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsiri said the party would not be swayed.
“There have been instances where the ANC gets threatened by the DA, within the context of the GNU. We don’t take those threats lightly. At the same time, we are very focused on ensuring that we deliver on the expectations of our people, one of which is land redistribution.”
She said the Expropriation Bill had undergone a five-year consultation period, including feedback from the DA and other critics.
“This piece of legislation follows a very sustained discussion, a very sustained public participation process driven by Parliament, where a cross-section of sectors contributed to what we now have as the Expropriation Act. So you cannot doubt how consultative the process was.
“The DA was part of that process every step of the way.
The DA said it was preparing a legal challenge to the implementation of the Expropriation Act.
“Obviously, nobody can stop anyone from going to court and exercising what they believe is their rights in law, but we are absolutely convinced that this was a ground-breaking signing of legislation by the president,” Bhengu-Motsiri said in response.
Among the alleged contradictions in the Act are “the sequencing of how expropriation is supposed to take place between sections 7, 8 and 19,” claimed Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure (DPWI) Dean Macpherson.
Section 19 outlines that if the value of a property is agreed upon between the State and an owner, a set process should follow. If, even after mediation, they are unable to agree, they have 180 days to get a court to determine the property’s value.
However, Macpherson argued, sections 7 and 8 of the Act state the value must be decided before a notice of expropriation is served.
“That is not a matter of interpretation, but it is a matter of fact. You cannot have two contradictory processes to determine expropriation contained in one bill. It can only be one or the other,” Macpherson said.
NOW READ: ‘They can take all property’: SA divided over new Expropriation Bill
Additional reporting by Jarryd Westerdale
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