South Africa’s deputy justice minister, Andries Nel, will attend a meeting of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) this week to discuss the amendment of the organisation’s legal instruments, the department said on Wednesday.
“The objective of the meeting in Walvis Bay (in Namibia) is to formulate strategies on how to undertake the process of reviewing and amending the legal instruments and further develop a work plan to be presented to SADC summit in August 2011,” said spokesperson Chester Mpane.
The meeting, to be held on July 21 and 22, will be attended by SADC ministers of justice and attorneys-general.
Mpane said it was decided at the SADC summit in 2010 that a study should be conducted on the “role, responsibilities and terms of reference of the SADC tribunal, including the nature of SADC law and its relationship with national law”.
“Its object is to provide an analysis of the SADC legal system and of the role of the SADC tribunal and the national courts of the SADC members states.”
In April this year SADC ministers of justice and attorneys-general met to finalise this report and presented it to an extraordinary summit held in Namibia in May.
The meeting to be held this week aims to develop a work plan using the results of the report. — Sapa