By Jozias Mahube-Reinecke
This article examines whether the 2025 lobbying trip by AfriForum, Solidariteit and Lex Libertas to the United States can be understood within the framework of crimes against the state. It traces the economic and political consequences that followed from that engagement and considers whether those consequences meet the threshold of coercion recognised in South African treason law. The analysis then turns to the limits of the existing legal framework, showing how the constitutional protection of private property, rooted in conquest, restricts the law’s capacity to recognise economic pressure as a threat to sovereignty. Drawing on the Azanian Philosophical Tradition, the article advances the position that the question of treason sits within a deeper unresolved condition and requires the development of Azanian law to secure land, sovereignty and restoration.
In 2025, AfriForum, Solidariteit and Lex Libertas travelled to the United States of America and engaged a foreign power in the internal legal and political affairs of South Africa. They presented a narrative in which the Republic governs through laws that discriminate against white citizens. They identified land expropriation without compensation, Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment and the BELA Act as central examples. This engagement shifted the terrain from domestic advocacy into an arena where external power interacts directly with internal policy questions.
AfriForum and its allied organisations frame their position through claims of targeted violence against white farmers, which they present in international advocacy as a form of “white genocide,” a claim that functions here as a basis for mobilisation rather than as a question for determination within this legal analysis.
The consequences that followed assumed a material form. Tariffs were introduced. Aid was withdrawn. South Africa’s position within AGOA entered a phase of instability. Executive measures in the United States opened a pathway for Afrikaners and other minority groups to seek refugee status. Legislative processes began to reassess bilateral relations between the two states. These developments altered the economic and political conditions within which South Africa operates.
The legal question arises from this sequence. When actors within a state engage a foreign power and that engagement produces economic pressure on the state, the law must determine how such conduct is understood. The inquiry turns to the common law of treason.
High treason remains a common law crime in South Africa. Its structure rests on three elements. There must be an act. The person must owe allegiance to the Republic. The act must carry hostile intent. These elements have developed through case law dealing with high treason and related crimes against the state, and they provide the framework for the present analysis.
The first element concerns the existence of an act. South African law recognises that acts directed at the state include communication, coordination and strategic engagement where these actions aim to influence the functioning of the state. The trip to the United States satisfies this requirement. It involved direct engagement with a foreign power for the purpose of influencing South Africa’s internal legal and political direction. The absence of physical force does not reduce the legal character of the act.
The second element concerns allegiance. Allegiance attaches to those who live within the Republic and operate within its legal and political order. South African courts dealing with crimes against the state recognise that participation within the structures of the state grounds this element. In S v Mogoerane and Others (1990), a case arising from acts directed against the state during a period of armed resistance, the court addressed conduct carried out by individuals embedded within South African society. The case demonstrates that actions against the state can arise from actors who remain within its legal and social framework. AfriForum, Solidariteit and Lex Libertas operate within this framework. They organise within South African law, litigate in its courts and rely on constitutional protections. Their position within the Republic establishes the element of allegiance.
The third element concerns hostile intent. South African law recognises that hostility in high treason includes coercion directed at the state. In R v Erasmus 1923 AD, a leading authority on high treason, the court held that conduct aimed at coercing the government into action or restraint falls within the scope of treason. The case establishes that pressure exerted on the state, where it affects its independence or functioning, may satisfy the requirement of hostility. The conduct of AfriForum, Solidariteit and Lex Libertas engages this principle. Their actions sought to induce a foreign state to exert pressure on South Africa’s internal decision-making.
Further guidance emerges from cases dealing with related crimes against the state. In S v Twala 1979 (3) SA 864 (T), a case concerning sedition, the court accepted that non-violent conduct can constitute a crime against the state where it aims to influence or destabilise state authority. This recognition affirms that organised pressure may operate as a form of hostility. The constitutional era reinforces this position. In the Boeremag treason trial, which concerned a direct attempt to overthrow the democratic state, the court confirmed that conduct directed at constitutional structures, including the executive and legislature, falls within the scope of treason when it seeks to impair their functioning. The protection of the state extends to the integrity of its institutions.
The conduct of AfriForum, Solidariteit and Lex Libertas must be situated within this legal framework. Their engagement with the United States aimed to influence South Africa’s internal policy direction. The consequences took the form of economic pressure. Tariffs, withdrawal of aid and threats to trade relations operate as mechanisms that shape the conditions within which the state governs. These measures influence legislative processes by raising the cost of reform and constrain executive action by limiting available policy choices. They introduce an external dimension into the internal functioning of the state.
The foreseeability of these consequences carries legal weight. Engagement with a global power such as the United States carries known economic implications. The actors involved proceeded with awareness that such implications could arise. South African law recognises intention where outcomes are foreseen and accepted within a course of conduct. The relationship between action and consequence therefore becomes relevant in assessing hostile intent.
The structure of treason law begins to align with these facts. The conduct constitutes an act directed at the state. The actors owe allegiance through their participation within the Republic. The conduct engages coercion directed at influencing state functioning. A limitation emerges in the treatment of violence within the law.
The common law associates violence with physical force. Treason developed in a context where rebellion, armed conflict and direct confrontation formed the basis of legal concern. Economic coercion operates within a different register. It produces material harm and constrains sovereignty through financial and political pressure. This difference exposes a limitation within the law. The framework recognises coercion yet has not fully incorporated the forms through which coercion operates in a globalised economy.
The Azanian Philosophical Tradition provides a basis for addressing this limitation and situating the legal question within the historical structure of South Africa. Mogobe Ramose locates sovereignty within conquest, stating that “I conquer therefore I am the sovereign.” This formulation establishes the relationship between land, power and law. Ndumiso Dladla identifies conquest as the central condition shaping South Africa’s political and material reality. Joel Modiri affirms that freedom and justice remain unresolved within the present order. These positions describe a society in which conquest persists as an organising principle.
Within this structure, political authority changed in 1994 while land and economic control remained within the framework produced by dispossession. The Constitution protects private property within this framework, and that protection stabilises the outcomes of conquest. Land therefore remains the central question. It provides the basis of sovereignty and the foundation of economic life. Land reform functions as a process directed toward the restoration of title to territory and the reconstitution of sovereignty at a material level.
Conduct that obstructs this process engages the concept of hostility within this framework. The actions of AfriForum, Solidariteit and Lex Libertas sought to prevent land reform through the mobilisation of external economic pressure. This conduct sustains existing property relations and preserves the structure produced through conquest. It limits the capacity of the state to pursue restoration and reshapes the conditions within which sovereignty is exercised.
Economic coercion functions as a mechanism that constrains sovereignty in practice. It alters the environment in which decisions are made and narrows the scope of possible action available to the state. These effects correspond with the concept of coercion already recognised in South African law. Ramose affirms that dispossession does not lose its claim through time. Land remains owed, and the obligation to restore it persists. Actions that prevent restoration operate within the continuation of dispossession.
The legal position that emerges contains a clear tension. Within the existing common law framework, the conduct satisfies the elements of overt act and allegiance and engages coercive intent directed at the state. The limitation lies in the treatment of violence, which has not yet extended to encompass economic coercion as a form of impairment of sovereignty. Within the Azanian framework, the same conduct assumes a treasonous character in substance, as it mobilises external power to preserve conquest-derived interests and obstruct the restoration of sovereignty.
The law remains underdeveloped in its capacity to address this form of conduct. The recognition of economic coercion as a form of violence capable of impairing sovereignty follows from the existing doctrine on coercion and requires development to reflect the material conditions within which sovereignty operates. The events of 2025 form part of an ongoing contest over land, sovereignty and the continuation of conquest within South Africa, and they reveal the limits of the present legal framework.
The question remains. Why does the judicial system continue to make space for conquest three decades into democracy? The Constitution protects private property that remains concentrated in the hands of those who acquired land through conquest. That protection secures the continuation of dispossession and enables external power to enter the terrain of the Republic and shape internal outcomes through economic pressure. A legal order that preserves conquest cannot protect sovereignty or secure the restoration of land.
The development of Azanian law therefore becomes necessary. Such a framework would place land at the centre of legal protection, recognise economic coercion as a direct impairment of sovereignty, and secure the Republic against forces that act to maintain conquest.
Jozias Mahube-Reinecke (27) is a political activist and law graduate from the University of Pretoria. He holds a BPolSci in International Relations (2020), an Honours degree in Anthropology (2021), and an LLB (2025).
He served as Deputy Secretary of the EFF Student Command (2019–2021) and as Treasurer General of the University of Pretoria’s Student Representative Council in 2021. In 2022, he was Head of Political Education for the African Union Student Chapter.
He also served as EFF Ward 42 branch chairperson in Tshwane and stood as the party’s councillor candidate in the 2022 by-election.
