Johannebsurg - Neither the justice ministry nor the state attorney have responded to Jon Qwelane's constitutional challenge to provisions of equality legislation, his lawyer said on Thursday.
The notice of motion and founding papers for Qwelane's application challenging certain sections of the Equality Act were served on the justice ministry on October 4, Andrew Boerner said in a statement.
“Neither the offices of the minister nor the office of the state attorney have issued a response to the application.”
Justice department spokesman Mthunzi Mhaga was not available for comment.
Boerner said, in terms of the uniform rules of court, the minister had to state his intention to oppose within five days of the service of the application. The answering affidavit would be due 15 days after delivering the notice to oppose.
However, despite numerous calls to the ministry's offices, and the state attorney both in Pretoria and Johannesburg, they had not yet established who was dealing with the file and what their intention was.
“We have received answering affidavits from the Psychological Society of South Africa and the SAHRC (SA Human Rights Commission),” Boerner said.
“We have condoned the SAHRC's late filing of their answering affidavit.”
The challenge was filed in the High Court in Johannesburg on September 27.
Boerner said on October 2 that Qwelane, South Africa's ambassador to Uganda, would challenge sections 10 and 11 of the act.
Section 10 deals with hate speech and section 11 with harassment.
In April 2011, Qwelane was found guilty of hate speech, but was not present at the default judgment because of his job abroad.
On September 1, 2011, the Johannesburg Magistrate's Court withdrew the judgment. Qwelane's counsel argued at the time that the default judgment was not allowed, and that a direction hearing needed to be convened before such a judgment could be handed down.
At the hearing on August 28 this year, the court heard that Qwelane would bring a challenge.
While still working as a journalist in 2008, Qwelane wrote a column, published in the Sunday Sun, in which he expressed his opinion about homosexuals. It was headlined “Call me names, but gay is not okay”.
Sapa