Parliament ready to fight further attempts by AfriForum to block land expropriation report

Parliament says it will be ready to challenge AfriForum‘s second part of its court application if it continues to pursue the matter. The institution has welcomed Friday’s court order which dismissed the urgency of the application to prevent Parliament from debating the Constitutional Review Committee (CRC) report.

The committee report recommends that section 25 should be amended to allow expropriation of land without compensation. AfriForum brought two court applications. Part A was to seek an urgent order to halt the debate and Part B will deal with the judicial review of the committee proceedings which led to the adoption of the committee report on the 15th of December.

In the review application they will extensively argue why 180 thousand submissions were excluded and why Parliament appointed an outside service provider to handle the written submissions.

“It is up to them if they still want to pursue part B. For us we are happy that the work of Parliament is continuing uninterrupted. The people of South Africa’s rights are protected and Parliament is continuing with its business as usual. So whether they want to pursue part B or not is their own business. But Parliament will always be ready to defend its constitutional right to conduct its business without undue interference and to reject the attempts of those who have got deep pockets and want to use those deep pockets and their lofty positions of privilege to undermine and to abuse the judicial system as well as the systems of Parliament,” says Parliament’s Spokesperson, Moloto Mothapo.