The Democratic Alliance (DA) welcomes the ruling by the Constitutional Court to uphold an interdict preventing Julius Malema and the EFF from encouraging people to invade and occupy private land. This is a major victory for the rule of law and private property rights, and a repudiation of the EFF’s politics of anarchy.

Not only did the Concourt decline the EFF’s application to directly appeal to it on a 2017 High Court interdict prohibiting Malema and his party from inciting people to trespass on private property and to occupy it illegally, the Court dismissed the application after it “concluded that the application should be dismissed as it bears no reasonable prospects of success."

In short, the EFF had approached the Concourt with dirty hands – you cannot ask the highest court in South Africa to rule in favor of actions that are in clear violation of the Bill of Rights and the foundations of our constitutional democracy.

EFF leaders should hang their heads in shame for using unlawful populist antics to hijack people’s legitimate concerns on lack of housing to ferment anarchy as a means of scoring cheap political points. The courts have made it clear that the EFF’s illegal actions have no place in our society and that respect for property rights is grounded in the rule of law.

Henceforth, should any EFF public representative or member actively promote the illegal invasion of land, they will be willfully in contempt of court and can be criminally charged for their action. Malema and members of his party must immediately stop inciting illegal land invasions and realise that they are now under legal notice to respect the property rights of law abiding South African citizens.

Just as South Africans rejected the EFF’s failed national shutdown, our court system has rejected their penchant for anarchy and chaos. DA governments have been at the forefront fighting for the release of state owned land for human settlement purposes by the ANC government and we will not back down until progress is made in reducing the housing backlog.

 

Issued by Thandeka Mbabama MP - DA Shadow Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development