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The DA is appalled by how official Parliament communication is being abused in an attempt to mitigate the negative publicity generated by the latest court ruling against the ANC-led government’s failure to uphold the Rule of Law and arrest Al Bashir in 2015.

Following the unanimous ruling by the International Criminal Court (ICC) that South Africa had failed in its duty to arrest Omar Al Bashir in June 2015, the chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on International Relations took it upon himself to create the impression that Parliament supports the country’s withdrawal from the Rome Statute. It does not.

He states that “[i]f this ruling is insistent that South Africa ought to have arrested the president of Sudan, then that is justification enough for the South African government to leave the ICC as a matter of urgency.”

The Chairperson cannot purport to speak on behalf of his committee. It is a multi-party forum and such pronouncements can only be made once resolutions have actually been taken by the committee. The ICC court ruling has not been brought to Parliament and as such these statements are wholly false.

The government suffered an embarrassing defeat in March 2017 when the North Gauteng High Court found that Cabinet’s decision to withdraw from the Rome Statute was unconstitutional, irrational and procedurally flawed. The Court also found that government unlawfully bypassed Parliament who had ratified the treaty and passed it into law.

It is clear that the ANC has strayed completely from the human rights based foreign policy of Mandela. It is a party committed to the aiding and abetting of criminals, not one of justice and law.

This outrageous abuse of the Parliamentary Communication Services (PCS) is only the latest instance of how the politicisation and capture of the service is rendering it a mouthpiece of the ANC-led government and how Parliament is being undermined and misrepresented.

It is another illustration of why the appointment of Moloto Mothapo to head the PCS was a shameless attempt to capture Parliamentary communications and distort the work done by the Legislature.

With the ANC in terminal decline and battered by unending scandals, every attempt is being made to stem the tide of negative publicity. The ANC is now attempting to use Parliament to deflect and divert attention away from its rapid degeneration.

Issued by DA