Bid to block land review report fails

A report recommending the constitution be amended to explicitly provide for land expropriation without compensation will be tabled in the National Assembly for adoption next week, after AfriForum lost its bid yesterday in the High Court in Cape Town to interdict the legislature from doing so.

“The relief sought by the applicants is dismissed,” Judge Vincent Saldanha ruled in part A of the application, where AfriForum sought to have the report withdrawn pending the outcome of part B, in which it will challenge the report’s constitutionality.

Constitutional Review Committee members, the report’s drafters, said they were now more determined to have the report adopted.

AfriForum claimed its written submissions to the committee were excluded, but parliament insisted many of the submissions were duplicates and that the committee considered all input. Parliament also maintained the extensive public consultation process was not meant to be a referendum, but that MPs opted to take a qualitative approach to the input from the public. Yesterday,

AfriForum CEO Kallie Kriel said it was not the end of their opposition to the constitutional amendment as it just meant the case would not be heard on an urgent basis. “AfriForum undertakes to use every possible mechanism to, in the interests of everyone in the country, fight to the bitter end against the undermining of property rights.” – ANA

‘ Prasa is working hard to bring back reliability to the long-distance service.

Sibusiso Sithole Prasa CEO