Court refuses Lekota leave to appeal over arms deal documents

This was the effect of a judgment in the Pretoria High Court by Judge Brian Southwood, who turned down Lekota\'s application for leave to appeal against a judgment given in April last year. According to a report on the IoL site, Southwood at the time ordered that Lekota, within two months, had to hand over the required documents to Young. Young, whose company lost out on a contract to supply combat technology to the SA Navy\'s corvettes, applied for access to the documents under the Promotion of Access to Information Act. The grounds for leave to appeal included that Lekota had proved that the requested documents fell under sections of the act which protected information from being disclosed. Southwood, however, found that this argument did not hold water and that the confidentiality sections in the Act were not applicable in this case. He ordered Lekota (in his official capacity) to pay the legal costs of the hearing. Full report on the IoL site