Issued by the FW de Klerk Foundation on 15/02/2024

The FW de Klerk Foundation submitted a comprehensive written submission to Parliament on the Upstream Petroleum Resources Development Bill. The submission expressed the Foundation’s profound concerns about the Bill’s constitutional implications. This Bill seeks to amend laws governing petroleum exploration and extraction in South Africa.

Ismail Joosub, Legal Officer of Constitutional Programmes at the Foundation, stated that, “At the heart of the Foundation’s concerns lie the Bill’s incompatibility with the constitutional values of accountability, openness and the rule of law, as well as the right not to be unfairly discriminated against based on race.”

Highlighting the Bill’s failure to meet the constitutional requirements for the State to fairly discriminate based on race, Joosub said, “The Bill’s measures, aimed at advancing historically disadvantaged groups, lack concrete mechanisms to ensure substantive equality. Furthermore, the race-based measures in the Bill impose significant harm on those excluded from its benefits, undermining the constitutional goal of a non-racial society.”