AfriForum lodges complaints against Ramaphosa, Sisulu at UN for discrediting the organisation's attempts to protect civil rights
21 January 2020
AfriForum today laid formal complaints against President Cyril Ramaphosa and Lindiwe Sisulu (in her capacity as the former Minister of International Relations and Cooperation) with the United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders for attempting to discredit AfriForum as a human rights defender and, in doing so, impairing the work that the organisation is doing to promote human and civil rights in South Africa.
This follows Ramaphosa’s statement on farm murders and landgrabs in September 2018 during a visit to the USA. The charge is aimed at Ramaphosa’s reaction to US President Donald Trump’s tweet in August 2018 that Trump had instructed his secretary of state to investigate landgrabs and farm murders in South Africa. In reaction to the tweet, Ramaphosa said in an interview on Bloomberg (an international news channel) that Trump had been misinformed about the situation in South Africa. He said: “There are no killings of farmers, or white farmers in South Africa. There is no land grab in South Africa.”
Ramaphosa’s statements came after AfriForum’s visit to the USA in May 2018 to create awareness of the South African government’s policy of expropriation without compensation (and the associated land grabs), as well as for farm murders. Shortly after AfriForum’s trip, the then South African Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Lindiwe Sisulu, responded to AfriForum’s liaison tour to the USA by accusing the US President and AfriForum of spreading “blatant lies” and “misinformation” about South Africa.
AfriForum requests in its complaint that the Special Rapporteur: