Mbeki and Mabandla seek to intervene in R167 million apartheid damages case
Image: DIRCO
Former president Thabo Mbeki and ex-justice minister Brigitte Mabandla will on Monday ask to intervene in the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria application for R167 million in constitutional damages by families of victims of apartheid-era atrocities.
Mbeki and Mabandla have indicated that they want to intervene in the R167m constitutional damages case brought by survivors and victims of apartheid human rights violations to protect their reputations.
Survivors and victims of apartheid-era atrocities and the Foundation for Human Rights (FHR) have asked the high court for R167m constitutional damages, which includes about R115.3m over five years, to enable families and organisations supporting them to advance truth, justice, and closure by assisting in pursuing investigations and research, inquests, private prosecutions, and related litigation.
Another R8m over five years will enable families and organisations supporting them to play a monitoring role in respect of the work of the policing and justice authorities charged with investigating and prosecuting the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) cases referred to the National Prosecuting Authority.
Video Player is loading.
Play Video
Play
Unmute
Current Time
0:00
/
Duration
-:-
Loaded :
0%
Stream Type LIVE
Seek to live, currently behind live
LIVE
Remaining Time
-
0:00
This is a modal window.
Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window.
Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan
Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan
Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan
Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque
Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps
Reset
restore all settings to the default values Done
Close Modal Dialog
End of dialog window.
Advertisement
Next
Stay
Close ✕
Ad Loading
An additional R44m over 10 years is sought to enable families and organisations supporting families to pursue commemoration, memorialisation and public education activities around the TRC cases including the holding of public events, publishing of books, and making of documentaries.
In their application, survivors and family members of victims also want the court to declare the failure and/or refusal by the president to establish a commission of inquiry into the suppression of the investigation and prosecution of the TRC cases inconsistent with his constitutional responsibilities under the Constitution and a violation of their rights to equality, dignity and the right to life and bodily integrity of the victims in terms of the Constitution.
Responding to Mbeki and Mabandla's application to intervene, Lukhanyo Calata, the son of the late Fort Calata who, along with Matthew Goniwe, Sicelo Mhlauli, and Sparrow Mkonto, became known posthumously as the Cradock Four, said the former president and erstwhile minister have no direct and substantial interest in the main application, given that no relief is sought against them in their personal capacities.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has since established a commission to be chaired by retired Constitutional Court Justice Sisi Khampepe to inquire into, make findings, report on and make recommendations on unlawful interference and collusion since 2003.
The government maintains that there is no concrete allegation of interference in the families' case. Mbeki and Mabandla also state that the families make unfounded, false and damaging allegations of interference and collusion against them in their case.
They also indicate that the facts of interference and collusion will be better addressed in the commission.
According to Mbeki and Mabandla, they are seeking to intervene because the relief sought by the families and the consequent claim for constitutional damages are founded on serious allegations of unconstitutional, unlawful and criminal conduct by them (Mbeki and Mabandla) during the respective tenures, 1999-2008 and.2004-2008, respectively.
"We have a direct and substantial interest in the outcome of the proceedings," maintained Mbeki and Mabandla.
They continued: "In the absence of our version, the only evidence before this honourable court is in the Calata applicants' founding affidavit.
There is therefore a real risk that should we not be granted leave to intervene, the court will be presented with a one-sided narrative and the Calata applicants may be accepted as uncontested."
Mbeki and Mabandla told the court they do not seek to intervene merely to set the record straight or out of concern that the court's findings may affect their reputations.
"Rather, we seek leave to intervene because the relief sought by the Calata applicants is expressly predicated on allegations of unlawful conduct purportedly committed by us (and other state officials) during our tenure; allegations which we intend to dispute," they explained.
The families oppose the application and argue that it is not possible to intervene simply to rebut adverse allegations and that the relief they seek is not directed against Mbeki or Mabandla but against the state.
If Mbeki or Mabandla, the families say, feel they have been defamed they have recourse through normal legal remedies and that the application can be decided without the need to make findings in respect of individual role-players, the task of the commission set up by Ramaphosa, according to the FHR.
loyiso.sidimba@inl.co.za
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Maverick
14 hours ago
- Daily Maverick
When xenophobia rears its ugly head it is time to ask the right questions
Have you noticed how, without fail, the ugly head of xenophobia always seems to re-emerge in the run-up to local elections? It's no accident. It's a strategy, and one we've seen play out time and again. When political failures pile up and service delivery grinds to a halt, scapegoating foreign nationals becomes a convenient distraction. Instead of holding local government accountable for broken promises, potholes, power cuts and clinics without doctors, we're told the problem is 'illegal foreigners'. It's a dangerous misdirection and it's costing lives. Instead of directing our rightful anger towards dysfunctional municipalities and inept leadership, we're encouraged sometimes by officials themselves to lash out at those even more vulnerable than us. It's easier to point fingers at desperate migrants in clinic queues than to question how our cities became places of neglect. Nowhere is this more evident than in the deeply troubling scenes unfolding outside public healthcare facilities across South Africa. Foreign nationals or those merely suspected of being foreign are being chased away, blocked from entering clinics and denied their constitutional rights. These acts aren't just inhumane; they are illegal. Let's be clear, section 27 of the South African Constitution guarantees everyone – yes, everyone – the right to access healthcare services. This includes migrants, asylum seekers and undocumented persons. It is not a matter of opinion. It is the law. And here's the part too many people overlook: having all people healthy within our borders is a public good. Allowing anyone, regardless of nationality, to suffer from untreated TB, measles or HIV does not just threaten their health, it endangers ours. Public health doesn't discriminate, and neither should we. What makes this even more dangerous is the recent targeting of human rights organisations like the Socio-Economic Rights Institute (Seri), Helen Suzman Foundation and the South African Human Rights Commission by xenophobic movements like Operation Dudula. These organisations grounded in constitutionalism and justice have dared to remind us that we are a country governed by laws, not mob sentiment. In the face of these attacks, Abahlali baseMjondolo showed us what real solidarity looks like. Their decision to form a human chain outside Seri's offices, physically defending the space and its staff, was an act of profound courage. It reminded us that human rights are not abstract principles, they must be defended in action, in public and with conviction. This is not just about foreign nationals. This is about the soul of our democracy. If we allow attacks on human rights defenders and on organisations like Seri to go unanswered, we set the stage for broader repression. Today it's them. Tomorrow it's all of us. We must stand up, speak out and defend what is right. Human rights are not a suggestion. They are the foundation of our Constitution. They are the promise of 1994. And they are under threat. Operation Dudula together with March and March are attacking our democratic values, our hard-won freedoms and the rule of law. If groups like Seri, Helen Suzman Foundation and the South African Human Rights Commission are silenced, who will speak up when your rights are next in line? We must not allow anger to be weaponised against the wrong people. It is time to ask better questions. Why are our clinics underresourced in the first place? Why are there not enough trained healthcare workers? Why is the housing backlog growing year after year? And why are we not holding local councillors and officials to account for this? Foreign nationals didn't fail to maintain your community's water infrastructure. They didn't loot public funds meant for housing and healthcare. They didn't shut down your clinic or redirect its budget. That was your government. South Africa is at a crossroads and we can continue being played, turning on each other in frustration. We must start organising, demanding better services, transparent leadership and a government that serves everyone who lives here.
IOL News
15 hours ago
- IOL News
'The Short End of the Stick': A Bikoian Rejection of Freedom Charter Nostalgia
The Congress of the People was organised by the National Action Council, a multi-racial organisation that later became known as the Congress Alliance. It was held in Kliptown on June 26, 1955, to lay out the vision of the South African people. Swaminathan Gounden was one of the Natal delegates who attended the Congress under the leadership of Archie Gumede. Image: Swaminathan Gounden Collection There is a dangerous return to nostalgia in post-apartheid South Africa. The Freedom Charter, long treated as a sacred relic of liberation, is again being celebrated by figures like Ronnie Kasrils, who now serve as gatekeepers of Struggle memory. This reverence is not a harmless sentiment. It masks the failures of elite transition and conceals the betrayals of the democratic settlement. The Freedom Charter did not chart a path to Black liberation. It opened the door for a managed transfer of power that preserved the material base of colonial capital while installing a comprador elite to manage the contradictions. Steve Biko warned against precisely this ideological trap. No matter what modifications are made to the status quo, the Black man will always have the short end of the stick. What must be called for is not reform, but a true reallocation of land and wealth. In Biko's framing, political freedom without material redistribution is meaningless. There is no justice where the land remains stolen and the economy remains in settler hands. Voting rights cannot substitute for sovereignty. The Freedom Charter's ambiguity on the land question was deliberate. Its proclamation that 'the land shall be shared among those who work it' collapses the historical reality of conquest into a neutral discourse of labour and cooperation. Nowhere does it acknowledge the settler. Nowhere does it confront the theft. It fails to call for the return of land to the African majority. Instead of articulating a programme for decolonial redress, it adopts a conciliatory tone that prioritises harmony over justice. In effect, what is framed as a liberation mandate operates as a grammar of pacification, designed to absorb resistance rather than advance revolution. That ambiguity carried through to the 1996 Constitution. Patrick Bond, in Elite Transition, makes the point that the constitutional settlement was a product of a class compromise. It was designed to pacify international investors, preserve white capital and neutralise the revolutionary impulse. The negotiated settlement did not emerge from the will of the masses but from a triangulation between the African National Congress leadership, global capital and white economic power. The result was a Constitution that promises equality but enshrines ownership. As Bond argues, the Constitution operates as 'a myth-making meme,' built to deradicalise struggle by offering symbolic rights in place of structural change. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ Ad loading This is why land reform remains stalled. Section 25, the so-called property clause, protects private ownership even when that ownership is the direct result of theft and conquest. It couches restitution in the language of reasonableness and affordability, deferring justice to bureaucratic paralysis. This legal framework reflects the ideological DNA of the Freedom Charter, a text that never sought to overthrow the economic system but to moralise it. Biko understood the danger of this kind of liberal substitution. Freedom without land and without independent means of livelihood is meaningless. For Biko, Black liberation was not about removing apartheid's legal codes. It was about removing the very conditions that made white power possible. 'It is not enough to remove the white man from power. We must remove the conditions that made his power possible.' That project remains unfulfilled. Black consciousness leader Steve Biko's philosophy and ideology has stood the test of time. Image: Independent Media Archives The contemporary consequences are blatant. The mining belt still delivers billions in profit to multinational corporations while leaking acid into rivers and lungs. Rural communities are poisoned and abandoned. Urban centres swell with unemployed Black youth, structurally excluded from ownership in a society that defines success through capital accumulation. The banks, insurance houses, farms and media corporations remain in the hands of a racial oligarchy. Even the new sectors such as renewable energy, climate funding and global NGOism have been captured by former struggle stalwarts and their descendants who now form a class of managerial elites enriching themselves through donor money, Foundations and PR projects while the majority go hungry. None of this can be explained without naming the ideological function of the Freedom Charter. It is not a neutral historical artefact. It is the founding myth of a liberal transition that demanded compromise from the dispossessed and reconciliation with the profiteers of genocide. It is the script from which the Constitution was adapted and it continues to function as the moral cover for structural betrayal. For the younger generation, landless, jobless and criminalised, being told to look to Kliptown is a form of political insult. The Charter never spoke to their reality. It is a document that offered peace to power and slogans to the oppressed. It evaded the core contradiction of settler colonialism. There is no coexistence until land is returned, power is redistributed and the entire economic foundation of white supremacy is dismantled. This is why Black Consciousness remains relevant. Steve Biko never asked the settler to share. He never asked for a seat at the table. He rejected liberalism, both white and black. He believed that Black people must define their own future, control their own institutions and return to the land that was stolen. Blacks must no longer be content to be on the receiving end but must be the architects of their own destiny. This simply cannot be reconciled with the logic of the Charter. The Charter imagines a common future built on a shared investment in the nation. Biko called for sovereignty. The Charter offered inclusion into colonial modernity. Biko called for its destruction. The Charter deferred revolution in favour of negotiation. Biko rejected negotiation with thieves. There is no middle ground between these two positions. The Freedom Charter was not sacred in 1955 and it is not sacred now. Its myth has been used to sedate political thought, justify class betrayal and deliver the masses into the hands of consultants, capital and false prophets. Ronnie Kasrils reinvoking it as a sacred text is emblematic of the liberalism that Biko warned about. That formations such as the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) celebrate the Freedom Charter in the current conjuncture signals the extent to which emancipatory politics in South Africa have been diluted and depoliticised. What was once a militant voice of class struggle has become entangled in the sentimental recitation of a document that failed to name the enemy. The echo chamber of Charterist nostalgia - amplified by a hybrid class of empty political commentators who mimic Kasrils and perform struggle rhetoric devoid of class analysis or historical accountability, reflects the ideological decay of a post-apartheid order collapsing under its own contradictions. In this postmodern liberal wasteland, recycled slogans masquerade as politics, and no pathway toward genuine liberation is offered. We rose against the system in 1976 and we must do it again. By any means necessary we must rise, expose, dismantle and overthrow the system that has kept us in a permanent prison in our own land. There will be no redemption without land. There will be no healing without the destruction of settler systems. There will be no justice where the economic base remains unchanged. And there will be no dignity for the African majority until the struggle is re-centred on material return. We were not dispossessed through metaphor. We will not be liberated through myth. The Charter must fall. The Constitution must be rewritten. The land must be returned. Until that happens, the real betrayal will not be those who critique the Freedom Charter, but those who continue to protect it. * Sipho Singiswa is a political analyst, filmmaker and Native rights activist. A 1976 student leader and former Robben Island prisoner, he has rejected the post-apartheid elite project and continues to organise around land and economic justice and the liberation of the African majority. ** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.
IOL News
16 hours ago
- IOL News
Gauteng High Court dismisses Labour Party's bid to halt National Dialogue
The Labour Party representatives packed the Pretoria High Court earlier with its urgent application opposing next month's proposed National Dialogue. Image: Zelda Venter The Labour Party of South Africa failed in its urgent legal bid for an interim interdict to halt the National Dialogue set to commence on August 15. The party turned to the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, to urgently halt the President's decision to convene a National Dialogue and two related conventions. At the heart of its objections were the costs associated with this. It argued that the National Dialogue is not a genuine democratic exercise, but a costly and dangerous duplication of the national legislature. It argued that the National Dialogue Preparatory Committee estimates that the initiative will cost over R700 million, according to an announcement dated June 12. Government, however, in its argument to court, denied this amount. According to the State respondents, a final budget will only be developed following engagements with the National Treasury and other potential partners. The Labour Party's approach to the court was motivated by constitutional concerns. It questioned what power the President has to establish a National Dialogue. It argued that if its ultimate aim is to ensure public participation, create policy and make binding decisions, this is a duplication of the functions of Parliament. It also questioned whether it would be lawful to attach a R 700 million price tag for a part of this endeavour. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ They ask the court to halt the National Dialogue, pending an opportunity to later review the President's decision. Acting Judge I de Vos said the Constitution mandates the President to promote national unity and the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court has repeatedly asserted this process is ongoing and that this duty falls to the President. 'The court is not, based on the text of the Constitution and the jurisprudence from the Constitutional Court, persuaded that the President is acting outside his powers,' she said. The judge added that the court is not persuaded that the applicant has made out a prima facie case on this basis or that it bears strong prospects of success in the review on this ground. 'The court is not empowered to determine if a National Dialogue is the best method for promoting national unity. Or if the same people that have been invited to the table to do the preparatory work are the ones the court would have chosen. Or even if it would rather spend money on a National Dialogue or on health care or some other issue.' Judge de Vos added that the goal of the National Dialogue, which consists of public participation and engagement, is to promote national unity. 'There is a rational link between the National Dialogue, particularly one premised on public participation, and the promotion of national unity,' she said. In turning down the application, she concluded that the Labour Party has failed to meet the threshold to show irrationality in the method employed in announcing the National Dialogue. 'The court is not convinced that the Labour Party has proven a prima facie right in this regard and is doubtful as to its prospects of success at the hearing of the final relief,' she said. As to the money involved, the judge said the court is not empowered to ask whether this is the best use of money. That is the domain of the executive.
