UN APARTHEID CONVENTION: AL JAMA-AH CALLS FOR INPUT ON LEGISLATIVE PROPOSALS

UN APARTHEID CONVENTION: AL JAMA-AH CALLS FOR INPUT ON LEGISLATIVE PROPOSALS

• 15 November 2025
• Parliament
• SA Legal Academy

Al Jama-ah MP Imraan Ismail-Moosa has called for comments by 15 December 2025 on proposals for a Bill that, once tabled in Parliament, would seek to ‘domesticate’ the UN’s 1973 international convention on the suppression and punishment of the crime of apartheid (Apartheid Convention). This is noting that South Africa acceded to the convention in May 2024.

Summarised in a procedurally required pre-tabling explanatory memorandum, the Bill would:

• enable the prosecution in South Africa of individuals accused of committing the crime of apartheid, and
• ‘confer extra-territorial jurisdiction’ on South Africa’s courts in respect of crimes of apartheid committed by:
  • South Africans
  • people who are ordinarily resident in South Africa
  • someone present in South Africa after committing the crime of apartheid, and
  • any person who has ‘committed the crime of apartheid against a South African citizen or a person who is ordinarily resident in South Africa’.

With that in mind, it is envisaged that – among other things – the Bill would also:

• prescribe various pre-prosecution procedural and logistical requirements to be met by the Minister responsible for administering justice, the Chief Justice and the National Director of Public Prosecutions
• provide for the appointment of a committee ‘to advise the Minister responsible for international relations on issues relating to the implementation of the Apartheid Convention, and
• require the Minister concerned to ‘report periodically to the UN Commission on Human Rights’.

Please click the links below for more information:

• explanatory summary
• Apartheid Convention

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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