APA-Pretoria (South Africa) President Cyril Ramaphosa has announced that Justice Minister Ronald Lamola would lead South Africa’s legal team in its genocide case at the International Court of Justice against Israel when the proceedings open in The Hague on Thursday.
Lamola would made an opening statement at the court and, thereafter, “our legal team will argue our case,” Ramaphosa said of the two-day hearing.
The country has taken the Israeli government to the ICJ for possible investigation of a case of genocide following the killing of what Hamas said was over 20,000 Palestinians by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in the enclave since 7 October.
On this day last year, Hamas militants entered southern Israel where they killed 1,200 people.
In retaliation, the IDF has gone all out to respond with relentless force that has been described as scorched earth policy to bomb Gaza into rubble and kill indiscriminately over the 20,000 Palestinians – half of them women and children – in the enclave, the Gaza health ministry said.
Ramaphosa said that his country had “a strong legal case” to present to the ICJ after assembling a legal team from South Africa and the United Kingdom.
Speaking in Mpumalanga during a visit to the Kingdom Houses of Amandebele on Tuesday, Ramaphosa said Lamola would present the country’s case to the ICJ.
“And our case is simple and straightforward: it is about taking steps. And we have taken the steps to approach the ICJ to make an intervention to try and stop the genocide happening in Palestine, in the Gaza, especially,” Ramaphosa said.
He added that South Africa had also deployed international lawyers to the case based in the UK, including John Dugard who is “a legal eagle par excellence and well-versed and well-experienced with matters that have to do with the International Court of Justice.”
NM/jn/APA