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Legal battle anticipated between Afriforum, Parliament on Monday

National Assembly
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A legal showdown is expected between lobby group AfriForum and Parliament in the Western Cape High Court on Monday.

The parties will be fighting it out on the legality of the report by the Joint Constitutional Review Committee.

The report was adopted two weeks ago and recommends that section 25 of the Constitution must be amended to give effect to land expropriation without compensation.

Land expropriation is an emotive issue and now the matter is headed to court on an urgent basis. AfriForum wants the joint Constitutional Review Committee report to be set aside.

The report is set to be tabled in the National Assembly on Tuesday. AfriForum argues that the report is flawed as written submission were analysed by a service provider.

It says the report is not compliant with participatory democracy in terms of section 59 of the Constitution.

The organisation says it will suffer irreparable harm if an order is granted in their favour.

On the other hand, Parliament says the application is not urgent and a court cannot interfere before the report is adopted in the National Assembly.

While AfriForum will be pushing to have the application heard on an urgent basis, Parliament will ask the court to strike the matter off the roll pending the consideration of the report by the National Assembly.

It says the matter ought to be heard by the Constitutional Court.

Parliament also says AfriForum will have plenty of opportunities to engage the land expropriation proposal when the Constitutional amendment is drafted.

Parliament says it will oppose the AfriForum application.

Parliament spokesperson Moloto Mothapo says:”This process will stand out in history as one of the most consulted and one of the best examples of participatory democracy that has been led by Parliament. So we will be going to court to oppose this application.”

After a decision by Parliament, a bill may be introduced. At that stage, Parliament would again invite further and full public comments.

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