Legal Articles and Guides

The City of Johannesburg has identified 37 abandoned factories in the city that it plans to ‘expropriate’ to convert into low-cost, affordable housing, says a Business Day report.

Knobkerries, sticks and a sjambok are not traditional weapons to be brandished at a strike. Times Select says that is the lesson for five Pinetown workers whose dismissal five years ago – for carrying the weapons during a 2014 strike initiated by the National Union of Metalworkers of SA – was upheld by the Labour Court of Appeal in Durban.

A practice directive to regulate case management and the enrollment of trials at the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria and Johannesburg) has lawyers up in arms, claiming that rather than alleviating congested court rolls it will have a devastating effect on those who wish to bring their cases before the courts.

The Centre for Child Law has asked the Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg) to decriminalise the use of cannabis by children, says a Sunday Times report.

A landmark court order has eliminated administrative barriers for asylum-seeking and refugee families whose dependents may now apply to be documented either through family-joining or on their own terms, says a Cape Times report.

Mbalenhle Nkosi, an inmate at Johannesburg Medium C Correctional Facility, has taken the head of the prison, the National Commissioner and the Minister of Correctional Services to court over the prison denying him the use of his laptop.

The May family, living on the side of the road across from the Windmeul Kelder winery outside Paarl – from which they were evicted in April – were dealt another blow as their case at the Land Claims Court was dismissed.

Right-to-die activist Sean Davison made a plea and sentencing agreement yesterday which means he will not go on trial for three murders. The agreement, which entails three years of house arrest for the University of the Western Cape (UWC) academic, was approved by Western Cape Judge President John Hlophe, reports TimesLIVE.

Cash Paymaster Services (CPS), which used to administer social grants to more than 17m people, has lost its R1.3bn lawsuit against Sassa. Sassa said Judge Robert Nugent, the arbitrator in the dispute, ruled in favour of the agency in all the claims lodged by CPS, BusinessLIVE reports.

Zindzi Mandela, SA ambassador to Denmark and daughter of Nelson Mandela, set Twitter ablaze with a series of fiery tweets about ‘white cowards and shivering land thieves’. Within hours, #ZindziMandela was trending, with more than 13 000 tweets responding to hers with either outrage or praise on the contentious land issue, according to a report in The Sunday Independent.

A racehorse trainer who claimed he was being ousted from the industry on racial grounds has received a lifeline from the SCA, which ruled that the Equality Court take another look at his complaint.

While section 25 of the Constitution explicitly rejects market-based approaches to compensation for land reform, its formula is imprecise, using the term ‘just and equitable’ compensation. Yet, says Advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, section 25 is not self-executing.

A senior counsel representing the State Security Agency told the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) yesterday that journalists were not entitled to dictate how the Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-Related Information Act (Rica) should be implemented.

The EFF’s call for land invasions came under scrutiny at the Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) yesterday, where the party has been accused of inciting poor people to engage in illegal land grabs only for them to suffer alone when their homes are demolished, notes a report in The Mercury.

The SCA has denied an appeal by an evicted family from a farm near Melkbosstrand outside Cape Town, notes a Cape Times report. The Stoffberg family had occupied the farm for more than a century after acquiring the land in 1895.