HSF seeks enforcement order in ZEP litigation

26 October 2023

Today, the Pretoria High Court will hear an application from the Helen Suzman Foundation (HSF) to enforce that court’s June 2023 order that the Zimbabwean Exemption Permit (ZEP) remain valid, while the Minister of Home Affairs conducts a fair and rational inquiry into the impact of its termination.

HSF makes this application out of necessity. When the Minister first signalled his intention to appeal the court’s June 2023 judgment, HSF asked him to leave the ZEP in place until he exhausted the appeal process.

The Minister refused. When the court held, on 16 October 2023, that the Minister’s appeal had no prospects of success, HSF asked that he now abide by the court’s June 2023 judgment. The Minister refused again, instead indicating that he planned to continue his appeal by approaching the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA).

It is in the face of such unyielding resistance to perhaps the law’s most basic demand – that affected parties are owed fair and rational process when their rights are adversely affected – that HSF seeks the court’s intervention once more to relieve the excruciating uncertainty that the Minister’s actions present to ZEP holders.

Without this application, there is the risk of the court’s June 2023 judgment being suspended when the Minister lodges his appeal at the SCA. That would mean that the ZEP expires roughly two months from now, on 31 December 2023.

Without a court order providing certainty to ZEP holders, their future – and that of their children – will depend upon the possibility of the Minister granting them further piecemeal extensions. Government decision-making of this sort – for ZEP holders and South Africans alike – has no place in a country of laws.

Issued by HSF, 26 October 2023