Snag in refugee ConCourt bid

Johannesburg - The next stage of the Constitutional Court application to confirm the way the Gauteng government handles the closure of refugee camps hit a snag on Tuesday when lawyers for the refugees asked for a postponement to consider new affidavits.

Complaining about the postponement application, and late filing of papers, deputy chief justice Dikgang Moseneke said the court "front loaded" its cases so that it could prepare judgments in other cases.

The mere indication on its website that it was not having a hearing did not mean the court could change its diary to suit lawyers and their clients.

Moseneke added that the court had worked till late on Monday to be ready for Tuesday's hearing but now the applicants were not ready to proceed.

The court was supposed to be given an update on the reintegration plans for people still living in camps for those displaced by xenophobic violence in May.

In an eleventh hour application in August, lawyers for the refugees managed to secure an agreement that camps would remain open until at least the end of September and the Gauteng government is in the process of consolidating camps.

The Gauteng government had argued that it had no further responsibility in terms of housing for the people living there, but the residents said they had nowhere to go and that they were afraid to go back to their original communities because they might be attacked again.

The refugees' lawyer Andrew Breytenbach said the original focus was on the Glenanda shelter in Johannesburg when they approached the Pretoria High Court for shelters for displaced people not to be closed.

But now the refugees want all other shelters in Gauteng to be recognised in a court order.

The government has filed papers opposing this and he would need time to prepare a reply which could be ready on Thursday.

Responding to Moseneke's comment that the new submissions on the other camps could be seen as "substantial embellishments", Breytenbach said he merely wanted to be more specific about what the court should order as conditions at the shelters deteriorated.

The Gauteng government lawyer Quintus Pelser opposed this saying the situation before the court was a "mess" and it had "grown and grown and grown" since it was before the Pretoria High Court.

"The applicant is treating this court as a court of first instance," he said, adding "when they launched the case in Pretoria they didn't think through all the consequences".

"Now it is a substantially different application."

The judges adjourned for tea and may pronounce on the postponement application afterwards.

- SAPA