A legal bid to force Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa and three others to hand over documents in the Khayelitsha Commission of Inquiry court matter has been postponed.
|||Cape Town - A legal bid to force Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa and three others to hand over documents in the Khayelitsha Commission of Inquiry court matter was postponed by the Western Cape High Court on Monday.
The application was brought by Western Cape premier Helen Zille and provincial community safety MEC Dan Plato last week, but it was postponed.
Legal teams met with Judge Nape Dolamo in chambers and decided to postpone the matter again until next Tuesday.
Zille established the inquiry last August to investigate alleged police inefficiency in the area. Mthethwa opposed the inquiry in the Western Cape High Court. His application for interim relief was dismissed in January.
In the judgment, it was concluded that Zille had fully complied with the principles of co-operative governance.
The main application, by the police, to have Zille's decision to set up the inquiry reviewed is pending before the High Court.
In November, Zille and the community safety council served notice on the applicants (the police) to provide them with documents they had referred to in their founding papers.
They said these papers were either not annexed to the affidavits delivered in support of the application, or that only extracts of these documents were supplied.
The documents related to affidavits given by Mthethwa, national police commissioner Riah Phiyega, Western Cape police commissioner Arno Lamoer, and civilian secretariat for the police service Jenni Irish-Qhobosheane.
Should these parties fail to comply with such an order, they wanted authorisation to make further applications for the dismissal of the main application with costs.
Mthethwa recently lodged a direct appeal to the Constitutional Court against the denial of interim relief. The matter is likely to be heard on August 6. - Sapa