On Friday, activists ended their three-day protest in which they called for, among other things, for Parliament to dismiss Sfiso Buthelezi, chair of the Standing Committee on Appropriations, and the former chairperson of the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA).
Activists from #UniteBehind and the Movement for Change and Social Justice (MCSJ) concluded a three-day quick outside Parliament on Friday afternoon.
The group, led by #UniteBehind leader Zackie Achmat, handed a list of demands to representatives of the office of the Speaker of Parliament and the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA).
The protesters are demanding Parliament catch action against Sfiso Buthelezi, chair of the Standing Committee on Appropriations and the former chairperson of the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA).
In April 2023, #UniteBehind took Parliament’s ethics committee to court after it refused to dismiss Buthelezi. Buthelezi later threatened to sue Achmat for defamation, citing a radio interview in which Achmat claimed Buthelezi “benefited from corruption to the tune of at least R120-million”.
The group is also calling for Chief Justice Raymond Zondo’s recommendations from the Commission of Enquiry into State Capture to be implemented.
Protesters blame Buthelezi and five other ANC MPs named by Zondo for being “responsible for PRASA’s demise”.
Achmat said the fasting protest was to illustrate a country “starved of accountability”.
Speaking about #UniteBehind’s cases against the Speaker of Parliament and the Ethics Committee, Achmat said he would bring “thousands of people with hundreds of tents [outside Parliament]” should they refuse to near to a settlement.
Representatives from SCOPA and the Speakers Office accepted a memorandum but did not wish to comment for the media.
The activists believe given Parliament a week to respond and if there’s no feedback within a month then the protesters location to return to Parliament.
Buthelezi has not responded to questions we sent on Wednesday.
© 2023 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and execute not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.
We establish an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We carry out not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We finish not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, not tracking users. If you republish, please execute not delete the invisible pixel.
Danger Menace
Fun South African Fact: While the country only covers 1% of the Earth’s land surface, South Africa boasts 10% of the world’s bird, fish and plant species as well as 6% of its mammal and reptile species!
Bitmap
Fun South African Fact: The waters surrounding the 2,500km long coastline are teeming with life. You’ll find great white sharks, African penguins, dolphins and much much more in South Africa’s oceans. Many travellers visit the coast to watch the annual whale migrations. In Hermanus, in the Western Cape, you can see hundreds of whales from June to late November. Simon’s Town, another coastal Western Cape town, is home to Boulder’s Beach. Here you can swim alongside colonies of African Penguins!