The Institute of Race Relations (IRR), a Johannesburg-based think tank, has called on the South African government to scrap race-based laws and repeal provisions allowing expropriation without compensation, arguing that South Africans need these reforms regardless of Washington’s demands.

The call follows new United States (US) visa restrictions targeting people linked to race-based discrimination and expropriation without compensation in South Africa. The IRR said Washington had set out its concerns in February 2025, yet Pretoria had left the laws in question untouched over the following 19 months.

The IRR said it did not share Washington’s focus on Afrikaners or any other minority.

“Race laws and threats to property directly harm South Africans in every government-defined race group,” the IRR said.

The IRR argued that race-based laws harmed individuals directly while also holding back growth and investment.

“They make race a condition of opportunity, which offends human dignity,” it said.

The IRR also argued that the Expropriation Act threatened property owners across racial groups.

Its legal division, IRR Legal, is currently challenging the Act’s nil-compensation provisions in the Western Cape High Court.

The IRR linked its call for reform to South Africa’s weak economic performance. It noted an official unemployment rate of 33.6% in the second quarter of 2026, leaving 8.5 million people without work. Among young people in the labour force, 47.4% could not find a job.

It also pointed to the latest GDP figures (which showed a quarter-on-quarter contraction) and a very low fixed investment rate.

The IRR argued that firms created jobs when they invested, while uncertainty over property rights, employment equity requirements, and preferential procurement discouraged investment and raised the cost of doing business.

Polling commissioned by the IRR suggested substantial opposition to both the Expropriation Act and the continued use of racial categories to allocate opportunities.

An IRR survey conducted in March and April 2025 found that 68.1% of respondents opposed the Expropriation Act, including 62.0% of black respondents.

A separate survey conducted in March 2026 by the IRR found that 69.7% said the government should stop using apartheid-era racial categories to decide who qualified for business and job opportunities.

The IRR urged the government to repeal the Expropriation Act’s nil-compensation provisions and adopt its No More Race Laws Bill. It also proposed replacing black economic empowerment with a policy it had designed, "economic empowerment for the disadvantaged”, which would direct assistance to poor South Africans according to need rather than race.

The IRR said a warning from the US ambassador that further measures would follow added to the pressure on Pretoria. However, it argued that the government already had compelling domestic reasons to act, particularly the need to create opportunities for the 8.5 million unemployed South Africans.