Legal Articles and Guides

The Constitutional Court has dismissed an application for direct access by a group of concerned citizens who wanted to have the lockdown regulations declared invalid, and the National Coronavirus Command Council (NCCC) declared inconsistent with the Constitution and Disaster Management Act, says a News24 report.

SA law currently does not allow women living with a man to claim ‘spousal’ recognition from their deceased partners’ estates.

A Durban school can no longer suspend pupils from virtual classes for defaulting on school fees. A consent order granted by the Durban High Court ordered the Durban North Primary School to refrain from contravening the Schools Act by excluding pupils from online lessons because their fees were in arrears.

The school governing body (SGB) of Bloemfontein’s Grey College has been dealt a blow by the SCA, the latest instalment in its protracted power struggle with principal Deon Scheepers.

The Legal Resource Centre (LRC) has given the City of Cape Town until today (6 July) to halt all evictions in the metro or it will approach the courts for relief. The LRC has been instructed by the Human Rights Commission, the Housing Assembly and Bulelani Qolani – the man who was removed from his shack naked – to challenge the city's eviction policy, as well as its alleged human rights violations, notes a News24 report.

The constitutional injunction that South Africans have the right to education in the language of their choice ‘where that education is reasonably practicable’, is what made the difference between this week’s SCA ruling that the removal of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction at Unisa was unlawful and unconstitutional and previous rulings allowing the universities of Stellenbosch and the Free State to switch to tuition in English.

With the remainder of the Protection of Personal Information Act coming into effect on 1 July, South Africans are finally getting some ‘much-needed’ protection when it comes to the selling and unauthorised use of their personal information.

Domestic worker unions and allies have rallied against their exclusion from social protection and compensation for occupationally-acquired Covid-19 claims.

A full bench of the Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg) has declared a section of the SA Police Services Act used to allow police raids against residents of so-called ‘hijacked’ buildings constitutionally invalid.

A judgment handed down by Judge Bashier Vally in the Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg) late on Friday ensured an insurance policy taken out by Francois Marais (64), who died at home in Bloemfontein early on Saturday morning, would be paid out.

British American Tobacco SA (Batsa) has presented what a News24 report describes as hard-hitting arguments in a bid to prove government’s tobacco ban is irrational and based on faulty evidence.

With what is described as a wave of evictions under way due to the extended Covid-19 lockdown, Reyno de Beer, founder of the Liberty Fighters Network (LFN), which last month defeated government in the Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg) over its lockdown regulations, is quoted by Moneyweb as saying: ‘One of our primary concerns when we brought the case … was the potential for a humanitarian crisis of homelessness as a result of people being evicted due to the lockdown.

Last week’s Constitutional Court judgment in the Pridwin Preparatory School case took some 13 months to deliver. ‘When judgment day did finally arrive, what was handed down were two voluminous, and important judgments,’ says the anonymous legal expert, ‘Professor Balthazar’.

In a far-reaching ruling that will have significant implications for the government’s Covid-19 economic relief programmes, the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) has ruled that ‘race, gender, youth and disability’ must be taken into account in the awarding of state relief to businesses stricken by the pandemic.

The Constitutional Court has ruled that private (or independent) schools may no longer rely on contracts with parents as the basis for kicking children out of school without a fair hearing, notes a GroundUp report.