On Dec. 20, 2024, Cyril Ramaphosa, president of South Africa, signed Expropriation Act No. 13 of 2024, which sets out when landowners might or might not be paid if the government seizes their property “for a public purpose or in the public interest.” Not yet in effect, the law specifies that a landowner won’t be compensated if the land is vacant and used only for speculation or if an owner has abandoned the land, but only after the parties fail to agree on a settlement.

The African National Congress–led government defends the act as a way to address the extraordinary racial imbalance in land ownership that resulted from South Africa’s colonial and apartheid history. According to a 2017 government report, white people, who make up 7.3 percent of the population, own 72 percent of farms and agricultural land; Black people represent 81.4 percent of the population but own only 4 percent of the land.

The new law builds on the 1996 Constitution’s effort to return land to Black people. “The public interest includes the nation’s commitment to land reform,” it states, “and to reforms to bring about equitable access to all South Africa’s natural resources.” But the Constitution fails to explicitly regulate uncompensated land seizures.

White landowners, Afrikaner organizations, and conservative political parties have furiously opposed the new law, alleging that it discriminates against white people. President Donald Trump has echoed their arguments. In early February he signed an executive order accusing South Africa of using the new law “to seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation” and using “hateful rhetoric” against them, a major boon to those who fear so-called white genocide. The executive order also suspended all U.S. aid and assistance to South Africa while establishing a special program to grant refugee status in the U.S. to white South African farmers, and some 67,000 had already expressed interest as of March 20.

Despite extensive media coverage of the new law, the views of the rural working class, especially its Black majority, have received little attention. In February and April 2025, Hammer & Hope discussed this issue with Zandile Nsibande, director of Abahlali baseMjondolo, a movement of shack dwellers who struggle for access to land, which Hammer & Hope profiled in a photo essay in 2023. It is one of the largest working-class grassroots organizations in South Africa but faces ferocious opposition to its work, particularly from the leadership of the ANC, which the movement believes is responsible for killing AbM members.

Hammer & Hope In a Feb. 10 public statement about the new law, AbM wrote: “We do not agree with the ANC’s policies on land reform and we have no confidence that new legislation will bring about real urban and rural land reform, let alone land reform in the interests of the poor and centred around the political agency of the poor. We have always made it clear that if the government is serious about land reform, they must start by first giving ownership of the land that has already been occupied by the poor in urban and rural areas, by supporting ongoing land reform from below. As we write this statement, the ANC continues to collaborate with militarised private security companies to defend the interests of the rich, and to try and use the courts to evict us from land occupations. The new legislation is nothing but another piece of paper that will not be implemented. When land reform does happen, it is far more likely to benefit the politicians and other politically connected elites than the poor. The ANC is not and never has been on the side of the poor. White people are not oppressed by the ANC. We have been genuinely oppressed by the ANC.”

Why have you all taken this position toward the new land seizure law?

Zandile We want a communal title deed, sharing ownership of the land where we stay in an informal settlement. I’ll give an example: I live in the community on Kennedy Road. If I have an individual title deed, I’ll be tempted to go to the bank and borrow money using the house on Kennedy Road as a guarantee. AbM proposed an amendment that all expropriation for land reform must lead to communal ownership. If someone is moving away, they will tell the community leader, “I’m going to live on a farm now; I don’t need this place anymore.” Then community leaders will look for someone who does need that place. We are not selling land. We are giving it to the people who are in need.

HH What was the government’s response after the shack dweller movement presented that proposal for communal ownership at one of the public hearings in 2021 about the new expropriation bill?

Zandile We didn’t get any response until we found out that the president had signed the new law without including communal ownership of land. They didn’t come back to us to say, “OK, we heard about your proposal. These are the outcomes of your proposal.” We don’t think that this law will help us because we don’t know whose land will be expropriated. How is that land going to be appropriated? We don’t care about this act because it’s not in our favor. It might favor Ramaphosa, because he’s a businessman. Maybe he’s making another plan to expand his businesses.

HH What legal strategy does the movement use?

Zandile We are occupying unused land. We are following Section 26 of our Constitution in South Africa, which says no one is allowed to evict you from your home arbitrarily. That’s why we’re winning cases in courts, including over the eviction of residents from Bromwell Street in Woodstock. When they unlawfully try to evict us, we use the Constitution to win and previous court decisions to demand alternative accommodations.

HH Donald Trump’s executive order came in response to South Africa passing the Expropriation Act, accusing Israel of genocide over the Gaza conflict, and deepening ties with Iran. What is AbM’s stance on Trump’s executive order and the withdrawal of funds?

Zandile AbM is worried because most of the people who are living with H.I.V. and AIDS are poor. The expropriation law doesn’t really work for us because we have not been told exactly what the expropriation criteria will be. We fear we might also be targeted with expropriation. We support the South African government’s initiative to take Israel to the International Court of Justice because we want Palestinians to be free.

Poor people will die like flies because of H.I.V. if they don’t get antiretroviral drugs. The people who are H.I.V.-positive are the people who are living in the shacks — the poor of the poorest people who don’t have enough to eat and take food from the rubbish bin. Rich people can buy supplements; they can eat fresh food. For us, the poor of the poorest, it’s very hard. We need support from the Treatment Action Campaign, who are always at the forefront of fighting for antiretrovirals, the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa, and the South African Medical Research Council. What Trump is doing is not good. You know, when two giants are fighting, the grass suffers. That’s the problem. We are the grass, and we are being affected by both Trump and Ramaphosa. While Trump and Ramaphosa are fighting, we suffer.

HH How does the South African left view the new Expropriation Act?

Zandile Leftists don’t support it. South African Black farmers, including the Black Farmers Association of South Africa, oppose it because it was imposed on poor people, and we don’t know the details of it. Workers’ unions like the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa also oppose it. The final version of the law was passed in Parliament without notifying anyone in the left-wing social movement; only right-wing politicians knew about the act.

The majority of the parties in the Government of National Unity support it. The GNU is made up of the ANC, the Democratic Alliance — which opposes the bill — the Inkatha Freedom Party, and many other political parties. The opposition parties ActionSA, uMkhonto weSizwe, and the Economic Freedom Fighters are not part of the GNU and do not support the new law.

HH AbM has emphasized the need to unite against the alliance between Trump and two South African white supremacist organizations, AfriForum and Solidarity. How did those organizations respond to the Expropriation Act, and what’s their relationship to Trump?

Zandile AfriForum and Solidarity do not support the new law because they say Black people are going to take their land. They even told Trump that he must give them a place in America. They want to go to the U.S. as refugees. By going to America, they help Trump depict South Africa as a place that is returning to the apartheid era, but this time with the whites as victims.

HH What’s the actual power of these white supremacist groups?

Zandile They are powerful. Most of them are landowners. They farm food to be sold at shops; they bring food to the table. AfriForum now has around 314,000 members who fight for the interests of Afrikaners. It is formally an NGO, founded in 2006 by the Solidarity trade union. Its members don’t want to live under South Africa’s post-apartheid regime, so they joined forces with other racist organizations fighting for the secession of Cape Town. I see this as an attempt to bring back the apartheid regime. AfriForum’s representatives were the ones who lied to Trump, claiming that their land rights were under threat due to the new expropriation law.

HH The Expropriation Act was passed by Parliament and signed by the president. Do you think that it will be implemented and land will be expropriated?

Zandile You know, Parliament is always imposing things. But since AfriForum and Solidarity oppose the law and the DA is taking the ANC to court over it, I’m not sure if this will be successful.

HH Are you planning any sort of protests or other reactions to this new law?

Zandile Not at the moment. Since we wrote the statement, we are still calling on people to come and support our mission. We want to convince people first. As soon as we mobilize enough people, then we can organize something like a protest. We continue to work in partnership with national and international progressive organizations to strengthen our struggle for land. In South Africa we’re part of the Durban Coalition, which includes Ubunye bamaHostela (hostel dwellers), the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance, Climate Justice Coalition, groundWork, farm dwellers, and rate payers’ and residents’ associations, among others. Internationally, we’re especially in line with the Landless Workers’ Movement of Brazil (MST).

HH Elon Musk is a South African national with family ties to the apartheid regime. How does AbM see the role he has been playing in U.S. politics recently?

Zandile Elon Musk is a South African, but he doesn’t care about South Africa. He is using his wealth to have power over the poor, so we view him the same way we view the white supremacists who hate poor people. Because he is a businessman, the owner of a very popular social media company, we thought he would say something that makes sense, but we see that he’s on Trump’s side. They don’t even think that poor people are going to die. They only think about getting more money. We can say now that they are trying to bring back a bad thing, apartheid.

HH How does AbM perceive Musk and Trump’s political strategy?

Zandile We think maybe they can align with the people in AfriForum, because they have made it clear that they don’t trust the ANC government. But what I see is that Musk is aligned only with Trump. If Trump says “Jump!” he asks, “How high?” What we are worried about is our human rights. We are against discrimination. But Trump is xenophobic and also discriminates against LGBTQI+ people.