POLITICS
Urgent contempt of court application launched against Mbalula – Leon Schreiber
Leon Schreiber |
07 March 2024
DA MP says minister not complying with ConCourt order to hand over records related to cadre deployment committee
DA launches urgent contempt of court application against Fikile Mbalula
7 March 2024
Please find attached a soundbite by Dr Leon Schreiber MP.
Notice of Motion
Founding affidavit with annexures
The DA has formally launched urgent contempt of court proceedings against ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula over his failure to comply with an order confirmed by the Constitutional Court to hand over complete records related to the ANC’s national cadre deployment committee dating back to 1 January 2013, when Cyril Ramaphosa became cadre chairman.
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The DA’s application, which was filed on Monday in the Johannesburg High Court where the original order against the ANC emanated from, seeks to declare that the governing party of South Africa is in contempt, and in breach of, an order upheld by the highest court in the Republic.
As the DA articulates in our urgent application, the ANC’s failure to comply with the court order amounts to an assault on the judiciary and the rule of law. By refusing to be bound by an order upheld by the Constitutional Court, the ANC risks triggering a full-blown constitutional crisis. The only way to avert this urgent risk to our constitutional order on the eve of a general election, is for the DA’s application to succeed and for the ANC’s Secretary-General and officials involved in the destruction of information to be held personally accountable.
The DA’s application follows after the ANC brazenly failed to comply with an order handed down in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA). It did so by undertaking unpermitted redactions of relevant information, by withholding all records related to the period between 2013 and 2018 when Ramaphosa was in charge of cadre deployment, by excluding specific minutes from the record, by providing illegible information, and by destroying information held on laptops while the court process was underway.
In addition to seeking appropriate relief for the ANC’s contempt and to compel the ANC to hand over complete records, the DA’s application also seeks to compel the party to hand over to an independent IT expert the laptop and hard drive from which cadre deployment records were removed.