CAPE TOWN – A newly established civil rights organisation has announced plans to file a High Court application against the African National Congress (ANC), accusing the ruling party of negligence and constitutional violations that they allege amount to crimes against humanity.
Rescue South Africa Civil Rights Alliance (RSACRA) was established in 2025 as a civil society initiative tasked primarily with holding politicians accountable via the criminal justice system for corruption, fraud, and malfeasance.
The NGO, called together by attorney Mathilda Westley, consists of activists, communication practitioners and legal professionals who are conducting research and gathering evidence of corruption, fraud, racketeering, and money-laundering by public officials with the aim of prosecuting them in courts of law.
“We have identified four areas of concern in which the ANC-led government denies the constitutional rights of citizens. They are children’s rights, race-based laws, freedom and security, and socio-economic rights,” says director Errol Naidoo.
A team of legal professionals, led by senior counsel, will gather verifiable evidence on state-facilitated corruption that directly harms citizens by denying them their constitutional rights, which may amount to crimes against humanity.
A country in crisis
According to RSACRA, corruption and mismanagement at all government levels has denied millions of vulnerable children their constitutional rights.
The organisation states that despite constitutional guarantees for children’s basic needs, media reports show children dying of hunger in South Africa. It claims school nutrition schemes are riddled with corruption, leaving children destitute.
Naidoo cites UCT’s Children’s Institute reporting over eight million South African children suffer acute malnutrition causing stunted growth.
“While children starve, ANC officials loot billions from state coffers and live luxuriously while 28 million citizens survive on welfare. South Africa’s debt reached R6 trillion – 76% of GDP due to ANC corruption and mismanagement, leaving the country broke,” says Naidoo.
The organisation further argues that true justice cannot coexist with racial classification and calls for ending all forms of race-based law. They note that courts have warned in cases such as Qwelane v SAHRC and SAHRC v Malema that laws and speech dividing society along racial lines undermine democracy itself.
“South Africa cannot remain a constitutional democracy while practising race-based governance,” says Naidoo.
An epidemic of violence
According to the organisation, the same state neglect is mirrored in ongoing violence in the country.
“On the Cape Flats, children are murdered almost weekly, caught in gang war crossfire that government has failed to control, while across South Africa’s rural heartlands, a crisis of violence and fear has been allowed to deepen unchecked,” says Naidoo, citing 2 519 farm attacks in which people survived since 1990. These statistics, according to the organisation, exclude murders, which would make the true toll even more devastating.
Naidoo says the ANC destroyed the economy with its policies and does not govern for the interests of the people of South Africa.
“Millions of South Africans are poorer than in 1994, with unemployment above 33% and youth unemployment exceeding 60%, whilst those in power enrich themselves through corruption and tender-fraud. This misconduct has denied millions of their constitutional rights, while the ANC’s reckless policies and diplomatic failures alienated key trading partners like the United States, leading to removal from the African Growth and Opportunity Act and losing billions in foreign investments, further crippling the economy.”
The organisation contends that instead of ensuring access to healthcare, food, water, and social security as required by the Constitution, the ANC has failed to provide basic conditions for dignified life, stealing the future of a generation denied quality education, employment, and hope.
Evidence gathering underway
Teams of legal professionals across the country, led by senior counsel, have been collecting evidence for the planned prosecution. Some attorneys have reportedly been gathering data on South Africa’s water crisis for years already.
RSACRA is guided by a small team of directors that include Prof. Andries Raath, emeritus professor in public law, advocate of the High Court of South Africa, and currently a research fellow in the departments of public law, philosophy and history at the University of the Free State. However, it has a larger board of legal advisors including several advocates of the High Court.
The NGO is currently raising the finances to fund its justice initiatives through professional and business networks. According to Naidoo, the organisation will take the case to the International Court of Justice after all legal avenues have been exhausted in South Africa.
