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Nduduzo Tshuma Political Editor
THE Information, Media and Broadcasting Services Minister Professor Jonathan Moyo yesterday tore into the South African Litigation Centre (Salc), describing the organisation as a regime change outfit funded to advance Western interests in Africa.
The Salc launched a court action to have Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir arrested while attending the recent 25th African Union Summit in Johannesburg over alleged genocide and crimes against humanity.
The organisation sought to have President Al-Bashir arrested on the strength of two warrants of arrest from the International Criminal Court (ICC) over alleged atrocities in the Darfur region.
The South African High Court in Pretoria granted an interim order that sought to bar President Al-Bashir from leaving Johannesburg pending the hearing of the court application.
The court, in its final judgement, then ordered the arrest of President Al-Bashir.
Al-Bashir, however, returned to Sudan on the last day of the AU Summit much to the chagrin of the Salc and fellow Western-sponsored organisations.
His return to Sudan came as progressive African organisations dismissed the ICC as “a flawed European Court for Africa” funded and controlled by former colonisers to push their political agenda in the developing world.
“As the court saga over Bashir’s ICC debacle unfolds in SA, it’s time to unpack the hell out of Southern African Litigation Centre (Salc). Salc is a regime change outfit started and funded through George Soros in 2005 to advance Anglo-Saxon interests in Southern Africa,” said Prof Moyo in a series of tweets on the micro-blogging site, Twitter.
“Salc is based in Johannesburg and operates in South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Angola, Swaziland, Malawi, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Lesotho. Salc is dominated, controlled and run by a white cabal with Rhodie or apartheid links and assisted by blacks who excel as blank fronts.”
Prof Moyo said the organisation uses litigation as a subversive instrument to entrench and preserve white interests, weaken the state and seek regime change in the Sadc region.
He said Salc’s main target or enemy are liberation movements and their legacies in Southern Africa, particularly in Zimbabwe and South Africa.
“Salc’s litigation strategy typically and routinely involves bribing targeted and vulnerable judges and prosecutors and lawyers in general. The sinister way and treacherous manner in which NGOs like Salc use litigation to weaken the state in Sadc has no example in the US and EU,” said Prof Moyo.
After the Summit, AU chairperson President Robert Mugabe said the organisation is not the ICC headquarters and there was no way it would have allowed President Al-Bashir’s arrest.
President Mugabe questioned the reasoning of some South African judges after that country’s High Court gave an interim order seeking to bar President Al-Bashir from leaving Johannesburg ahead of a ruling on his detention.
The AU chairperson also took a swipe at foreign funded non-governmental organisations that were angling for Al-Bashir’s arrest in South Africa.
South Africa is a signatory to the Rome Statute establishing the ICC. NGOs in that country used that to seek the arrest of Al-Bashir.
Efforts by ICC to cause the arrest of a sitting President received wild condemnation from progressive African organisations, with Joseph Chilengi of the Economic, Social and Cultural Council of the African Union (AU-ECOSOCC) saying it was time for the court to “organise itself and bury itself.”
He said the jurisdiction of President Al-Bashir was situated in the AU as he was in South Africa at the invitation of the organisation and not that of South Africa which was a mere host.
Online Reporter