Open letter to Minister Ronald Lamola: Citizenship is not a reward for political obedience

16 October 2026

Dear Minister Lamola

I am writing to you following the discussion in Parliament last week about institutions and citizens of South Africa that engage internationally on the state of affairs in South Africa.

During that discussion, the chairperson of Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on International Relations and Cooperation, Mr Supra Mahumapelo, specifically named Lex Libertas and several other institutions. He suggested that our engagements in Washington could amount to treason and called for legislation that could have consequences for citizenship. Other ANC representatives raised the prospect of prosecution. You subsequently supported the broader call for a clampdown and said that the Executive would consider how it could act against those who, in your words, ‘roam with misinformation across the globe about their own country’.

These are very serious claims. They should be treated seriously. Because, to be blunt, they constitute nothing other than threats against citizens who do not agree with the political narrative of the ANC and its alliance partners.

However, it should be stressed that these threats do not intimidate us.

I cannot speak for the other institutions that were mentioned, and so I will only respond on behalf of Lex Libertas.

If the intention is to discourage us from speaking about South Africa internationally, the effect will be precisely the opposite. We regard these threats as further confirmation of why international engagement is necessary, and they will henceforth form part of what we explain to international stakeholders about the political climate in South Africa.

There are, however, several fundamental matters that need to be addressed. Let me start by saying that a serious effort to distinguish truth from falsehood should be welcomed. Nobody that we are aware of – perhaps with the exception of certain corrupt and incompetent politicians – has a legitimate interest in spreading false information. Lex Libertas certainly does not. Publishing false information would damage our credibility.

Surely, any person and institution might be wrong about certain things in good faith, which is why engagement and debate is so important. For that reason, if we publish something that is demonstrably factually incorrect, we should be confronted with the evidence and expected to correct it.

But that is not what is happening in South Africa at the moment.

Those who now accuse us of spreading misinformation have not even attempted to demonstrate what the misinformation is. They have not identified the supposedly false statements, presented evidence against them and invited us to answer. Instead, the language of ‘misinformation’ is increasingly accompanied by discussion of prosecution, treason, restrictions and even citizenship. We are disappointed to say that you are among the people who do this.

Any reasonable person would agree that false accusations of spreading misinformation, accompanied by threats of a legal clampdown by the government, are a serious and unjustifiable violation of the most basic freedoms that citizens have.

In a free society, truth is not established by political authority. Government does not make a claim false by declaring it to be misinformation, any more than an organisation such as Lex Libertas makes a claim true merely by asserting it.

So I put a straightforward challenge to you: identify what Lex Libertas has said that you believe to be false. Give us the statement. Give us the evidence. We will answer you publicly. If we are wrong, we will correct the record. If we are right, government should correct its own. That is how people who are genuinely interested in truth conduct themselves.

With that said, there is another principle at play here that extends far beyond our own institution: Citizenship can never be packaged as a reward for political obedience. Similarly, in a free society, citizenship can never be stripped as punishment for political disagreement.

A citizen does not possess citizenship at the pleasure of whichever government happens to hold office. It is not a licence that political leaders may threaten to withdraw when a citizen embarrasses the state, challenges an official narrative or seeks support abroad.

Indeed, the Constitution could hardly be clearer. Section 20 makes it clear that no citizen may be deprived of citizenship.

This is particularly striking given that, only last year, the Constitutional Court declared unconstitutional a statutory provision that automatically terminated citizenship in certain circumstances. The Court stressed the profound importance of citizenship and held that even an automatic loss imposed by legislation amounted, in substance, to deprivation.

But our objection does not ultimately rest on the Constitution alone. You are a lawyer, Minister. Your party, perhaps more than most political parties, should understand that something does not become just merely because it has been written into law. This is, in fact, what your party has been arguing throughout the decades, up until the point where it took power.

There have been – and there still are – many laws in this country that were perfectly legal and profoundly unjust. We should not regard legality and justice as synonyms. Similarly, the rule of law is not merely the rule of whatever statute a political majority is able to enact.

There is an important distinction between the rule of law and rule by law.

The former restrains political power according to principles of justice, due process and basic freedom. The latter merely uses legislation as an instrument through which those who hold power enforce their will on those who disagree.

If the answer to uncomfortable criticism is simply to ‘tighten up the system’ until the criticism can be punished, then the law ceases to serve as a restraint on power and a safeguard for basic freedoms, and begins to serve as a weapon through which freedom is suppressed.

There is another difficulty that I wish to raise with you personally: the question of dialogue.

We are repeatedly told that disagreement should be resolved through engagement. We agree.

Lex Libertas has consistently sought engagement with government representatives on the matters about which we speak publicly. Yet meaningful dialogue is often extraordinarily difficult to achieve. When institutions such as ourselves request dialogue, our requests are consistently dismissed, including by your own office. We have evidence to back this up.

Sometimes, institutions such as Lex Libertas find opportunities for engagement, only to discover what might best be described as ceremonial listening: engagement that allows the government to say that it has listened without demonstrating any serious willingness to grapple with what was said.

Then, when those same concerns with regard to which we were not able to have dialogue with the South African government are raised publicly or internationally, we are told that we should have spoken to government instead.

So, the situation is that we live in two mutually exclusive universes. One, in which we consistently seek dialogue, but find that the South African government is not interested in dialogue; and one in which we are consistently accused by the South African government that we should engage in dialogue instead of expressing our criticisms elsewhere.

That position is impossible to sustain.

Government cannot close the door to meaningful engagement and then complain when those standing outside engage elsewhere.

Also, dialogue cannot merely mean that civil society speaks and the government politely listens before proceeding exactly as intended. Genuine dialogue requires both sides to confront evidence, test assumptions and entertain the possibility that they may be wrong.

We remain willing to do that. The evidence suggests that you are not. Yet, you can prove us wrong very easily. Until you do, you should not blame us for losing faith in dialogue as a solution.

Another point that we need to address is the dangerous conceptual error in the suggestion that international criticism of the government is somehow an act against South Africa.

The political establishment is not South Africa; the government is not South Africa; the Government of National Unity is not South Africa; and the ANC is not South Africa.

Minister Lamola, you should know that governments are temporary. Political parties rise and fall. The communities, institutions and generations affected by their decisions endure beyond them.

It is entirely possible to criticise a government precisely because one is concerned about the future of the country and the people who live in it. In fact, criticising the government and holding them accountable is precisely what people who love their country do.

Our international engagements have therefore never been – and will never be – premised on hostility towards South Africa. We have drawn attention to political incitement, farm attacks, race-based legislation, threats to property rights, institutional decline and the need for structural reform. We have also repeatedly advanced constructive solutions, including greater decentralisation and self-governance.

People are free to disagree with our conclusions. They are free to challenge our evidence. They are free to criticise us as vigorously as they wish. And we would happily engage with those who do.

What cannot be accepted is the proposition that political disagreement becomes treason when it crosses an international border. There is an additional irony that should concern you in your capacity as Minister of International Relations: If the government is worried about South Africa’s reputation abroad, threatening its domestic critics is an extraordinarily counterproductive response.

Every suggestion that critics might be prosecuted, restricted or deprived of citizenship becomes a new fact that those critics – including ourselves – will take abroad.

The attempt to suppress the criticism thereby amplifies and becomes part of the criticism.

For that reason, I want to be entirely clear about Lex Libertas’s response: We will not retreat from our international work. We will expand it.

We will continue attempting to engage the South African government. In the absence of meaningful dialogue, we will continue engaging foreign governments, policymakers, media institutions, civil-society organisations and other stakeholders willing to consider evidence about developments in South Africa and to support constructive solutions.

And when we do so, we will now also explain that senior political figures in South Africa have openly discussed treason, prosecution and citizenship-related consequences in response to such engagement. When we must choose between our basic freedoms and the approval of the party you represent, the choice is not a difficult one.

I say this not because we seek confrontation, but because it is already happening. There is a much less confrontational path available.

I therefore invite you to meet with us.

Identify the claims made by Lex Libertas that you regard as misinformation. Let us place the evidence on the table. Let us discuss the matters on which we disagree. If necessary, let us have that discussion publicly.

But let it be genuine dialogue, not ceremonial listening.

And let the contest be one of evidence and argument rather than political power and coercion.

If the government can demonstrate that we are wrong, it should do so. If we can demonstrate that the government is wrong, the government should have the courage to admit it.

That is a contest we welcome, and it is one that would undoubtedly be in the interest of South Africa.

However, threats will not silence us.

Yours sincerely

Dr Ernst Roets

Executive Director

Lex Libertas