Cape Town — Justice and Correctional Services Minister Ronald Lamola has expressed South Africa’s desire to obtain answers after the request for extradition of the Gupta brothers was unsuccessful. Lamola also expressed a determination to bring the self-proclaimed prophet, Shepherd Bushiri, back to the country.
EWN reported that the Minister announced on Friday that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had denied South Africa’s request to extradite the Gupta brothers — Rajesh and Atul Gupta.
Lamola said that South Africans were being deprived of justice, reported eNCA. He added that he was “bemused” by the judgement that cited technicalities after all of the effort put in by the Justice and Correctional Services Department.
“We will still bring the Guptas back to South Africa. It might take some time, but we are not going to stop all the processes that we have said are going to unfold to ensure that they are brought back to South Africa,” EWN quoted Lamola as saying.
Meanwhile, he added that the situation is the same with Bushiri. Lamola was adamant that Bushiri would return to South Africa despite extradition being a “protracted legal process”.
The Democratic Alliance labelled the Gupta extradition as a “national embarrassment”.
The party’s Shadow Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Glynnis Breytenbach said that it “shows that the Jacob Zuma tentacles are very alive and well in the current cabinet and government.”
“The DoJ was, by all accounts, only informed of this monumental failure on 6 April. This begs the question of what exactly the Criminal Justice Cluster has been doing for the past year. Each query has been met with platitudes and hollow assurances that everything was under control. Clearly, this is far from the truth,” Breytenbach added.
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Compiled by Junaid Benjamin
