Earlier in the week, committee chair Fikile Majola was quoted<\/a> in Business Day<\/em> as saying the meeting would be held in camera.<\/p>\n AmaBhungane instructed its attorneys, Webber Wentzel, to demand the committee open the briefing to the media and public, failing which we would bring an urgent High Court application.<\/p>\n AmaBhungane was to be joined by a coalition of civil society organisations including the Right2Know Campaign<\/a>, the Open Democracy Advice Centre<\/a>, Council for the Avancement of the South African Constitution <\/a>and the Dullah Omar Institute<\/a>.<\/p>\n When Majola did not reply, amaBhungane\u2019s attorneys sent him a second letter on Friday saying that we would proceed with the application.<\/p>\n Read<\/strong> amaBhungane’s second lawyers letter<\/a><\/p>\n Majola then wrote back<\/a>, denying he had made the decision. \u201cI need to inform you that I can never make such a decision. I clearly informed members that the house chairperson \u2026 advised that it is the committee that must make such a decision.<\/p>\n As a matter of fact, the committee never considered or deliberated on whether or not the nuclear meeting on Tuesday, 29 November 2016 should be a closed session.<\/p>\n He said the briefing \u201cwill thus be open to the public\u201d.<\/p>\n AmaBhungane regards this as a victory for transparency and accountability.<\/p>\n The nuclear power stations, if they are built, may cost R1-trillion and be South Africa\u2019s biggest procurement yet. The process has been shrouded in secrecy despite government promises of a fair and transparent process.<\/p>\n AmaBhungane has reported extensively on the hugely controversial project, which critics fear could bankrupt the country.<\/p>\n AmaBhungane has also used the Promotion of Access to Information Act to try to gain access to records relating to the procurement, including affordability studies.<\/p>\n These applications were dismissed by the department and minister of energy.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Parliament\u2019s energy portfolio committee briefing on the procurement of nuclear power stations will be open.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20380,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-advocacy"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5098"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31685,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5098\/revisions\/31685"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/amabhungane.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/250x106.jpg\")
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