Solidarity and AfriForum appeals directly to Constitutional Court against race as criterion for help
5 May 2020
Solidarity and AfriForum’s legal teams today issued court documents wherein they approach the Constitutional Court directly on an urgent basis to appeal against the High Court’s judgment that gave the Department of Tourism the green light to use race as criterion when determining which struggling tourism businesses must be helped during the Covid-19 crisis.
Dr Dirk Hermann, Chief Executive of Solidarity pointed out that awarding help based on race is bizarre. "It is scary that there could be Constitutional grounds in a crisis like this which allows the allocation of emergency funds to take place based on race,” Herman added.
According to Kallie Kriel, Chief Executive of AfriForum, they decided to approach the Constitutional Court directly, as the small tourism businesses owned by members of minority groups, just like all other small tourism businesses, are in urgent need of assistance. “If the case drags on, countless small white-owned businesses will go under and government will be complicit. Figuratively, it is economic murder of minorities,” said Kriel.
According to Hermann, it is extremely important to obtain legal certainty on the matter. “As this is an urgent crisis, we believe that the matter is urgent as well and therefore we asked for access to the Constitutional Court for this matter,” Hermann argued.