Programme News
29 August 2014
(News)
Three prominent critics of South Africa’s multibillion-rand arms deal have withdrawn their names from the Seriti commission witness list, saying the inquiry is "no longer salvageable" and is being used to discredit crucial witnesses to endorse the state’s version of events.
Former African National Congress (ANC) MP Andrew Feinstein, with arms deal critics Hennie van Vuuren...
29 August 2014
(News)
The Seriti Commission of Inquiry is considering the decision by three arms deal critics to withdraw from all proceedings, it said on Thursday.
“It appears to the Commission that these witnesses do not have evidence to put before it and want the commission to help them search for possible proof for the allegations of wrongdoing in the arms procurement process,” spokesman William Baloyi...
28 August 2014
(News)
Three arms deal critics and phase two witnesses, Andrew Feinstein, Hennie Van Vuuren and Paul Holden, have pulled out of the arms deal commission, citing “fatal concerns” with the way the commission has been run.
The three, represented at the commission by Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR), announced their decision on Thursday.
In making the announcement, the three also said they have...
28 August 2014
(Press release)
The Arms Deal was a uniquely damaging moment in our young democratic history. It was concluded after decades of uncontrolled spending on foreign and internal wars by the apartheid regime. From the signing of the contracts in 1999 up to R70 billion of public money continues to be spent on weapons of questionable utility. The country was not and is not facing any meaningful military threat....
28 August 2014
(Press release)
Andrew Feinstein, Paul Holden and Hennie van Vuuren, witnesses whom Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) has been representing before the Seriti Commission of Inquiry into the 1999 Arms Deal, on Thursday announced they would no longer participate in the Commission and instructed LHR to withdraw from proceedings on their behalf. A letter detailing their decision was delivered to the Commission....
22 August 2014
(Press release)
Lawyers for Human Rights has welcomed the two-year sentencing of the Tshwane metro police officer found guilty of the 2010 kidnapping and assault of six Zimbabwean nationals.
The sentence includes 16 hours of mandatory community service per month and places Steven Ndou under house arrest with strict conditions, finding him unfit to handle a firearm.
“We’re happy to finally have a...
22 August 2014
(News)
After Llewellyn Smith was brutally assaulted, stripped naked, electro-shocked and tortured in the Leeuwkop Max C prison showers last week, his wife Malanie brought an urgent application in the South Gauteng High Court requesting that her husband was granted permission to see a private medical practitioner, that he was x-rayed and permitted to lay charges with the SAPS.
About 20 other inmates also...
14 August 2014
(Press release)
On Friday, 8 August 2014, attorneys at Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) and the Centre for Environmental Rights (CER) addressed joint letters to the Ministers of Water & Sanitation, Health, and Cooperative Governance & Traditional Affairs, asking the Ministers of each of those Departments to intervene urgently to ensure the provision of clean drinking water to a number of towns in the...
12 August 2014
(Press release)
Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) has cautiously welcomed today’s (Tuesday) announcement by the Department of Home Affairs that a new dispensation permit for Zimbabwean nationals will be issued as of 1 January 2015. Applications will be received from 1 October – 31 December 2014 and permits will be valid for a maximum of three years. This will replace the permits issued during the 2010...
11 August 2014
(News)
Judy Manjoro (49) is a teacher, but when she fled Zimbabwe in 2005 during political violence and came to South Africa, she was forced to become a domestic worker because there was no other work available.
In the afternoons when she returned to her home in Yeoville, Johannesburg, she would gather the children of other refugees off the streets and give them lessons.
In 2011 she formalised this...