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The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) is considering taking legal action against the City of Cape Town, after “an attack on the SAHRC Commissioner Chris Nissen”.
The City lashed out after a Western Cape High Court ruling dismissed an interdict awarded to the City in 2020, preventing SAHRC human rights monitors from entering the City’s infamous homeless relocation camp in Strandfontein.
The camp housed about 2 000 homeless people, relocated from different parts of the city at the start of the national lockdown, in accordance with the Disaster Management Act, to curb the spread of Covid-19.
The SAHRC said in a statement:
The Western Cape High Court has dismissed this interdict, granted to the City in 2020, and ordered the City to pay costs for the hearing.
The SAHRC said the judgment handed down by Judge Siraj Desai on Wednesday reaffirmed the “constitutional mandate of the SAHRC to independently exercise its powers to protect, promote and – more specifically – monitor the attainment of human rights”.
‘Flagrant disregard of the judgment’
However, following the judgment, the City of Cape Town released a statement saying, “political opportunists were deployed by SAHRC provincial Commissioner Chris Nissen to play politics and tell outright lies about South Africa’s biggest effort to help people living on the street”.
“It was necessary to protect our staff from harassment, and our operations from disruption by so-called ‘monitors’ who behaved instead like political hooligans.
“We were relieved at being granted the interim relief, which kept ‘monitors’ from blocking entrances and harassing staff. The interim relief had the necessary effect and enabled the City to complete its work without interference. By the time that the Court allocated the hearing date for a final order, there was no need to decide the final relief as the matter had become moot, but the respondents insisted that the matter must proceed.”
The statement added that the City did not necessarily agree with Desai’s costs ruling and would consider its options.
The SAHRC said it viewed the City’s statements in a serious and disturbing light and was considering further legal action.
It said:
“The Commission finds it disturbing, that in the wake of a judgment affirming the Constitutional powers of the Commission and the rights of the most vulnerable, being the homeless, that the City of Cape Town would choose to issue such a statement,” it said.
