Legal Articles and Guides

The government says it will oppose an urgent application by Fair Trade Independent Tobacco Association (Fita) to have the decision not to allow the sale of cigarettes during level four of the lockdown lifted.

Trade & Industry Minister Ebrahim Patel is under pressure to explain to Parliament the rationale behind restricting e-commerce at a time when many countries are embracing online platforms as part of measures to restrict movement of people to curb the spread of the coronavirus, says a Business Day report.

Justice Minister Ronald Lamola was grilled by MPs yesterday on the government's much-criticised decision to introduce a nine-hour lockdown curfew (8pm to 5am) and a three-hour jogging window (6am and 9am), according to a TimesLIVE report.

The Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) has dismissed an application by a group of Muslim leaders and entities to declare certain parts of the lockdown regulations unconstitutional because it prohibits prayers, specifically the Muslim daily prayers, in places of worship.

Single mothers who have gone for months without receiving child maintenance payouts from the courts and are struggling to put food on the table have accused the Department of Justice of violating their children’s rights, notes a Sunday Tribune report.

President Cyril Ramaphosa is under pressure on several fronts, not least over the legality of his Covid-19 National Command Council (NCC) and its alleged overreach in deciding what is and what isn’t allowed under the lockdown.

We are not living in a State of Emergency. Rights have not been suspended. That means the duty of government Ministers to justify the limitation of rights in accordance with the limitation clause have also not been suspended. Such justifications must not be bizarre and spurious, but must be fact-based, rational and truthful. When no justification is offered, or where the justification appears to be irrational, it erodes trust in government and threatens the efficacy of the lockdown. It also renders the regulations open to constitutional challenge and invalidation.

The Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) has reserved judgment in AfriForum's legal challenge to the race criteria used to determine which businesses score state-sponsored Covid-19 relief bailouts, reports TimesLIVE.

An East London businessman has come under fire for a racist post in which his son is painted in ‘blackface’. But a Daily Dispatch Weekend Edition report says Russel Kruger – who admitted he is the author – said the post was an ‘innocent joke’.

The ‘comical’ manner in which the government handled the ‘ban’ on the selling of ‘hot cooked food’ during the Covid-19 lockdown, highlights a larger (and more important) problem with the manner in which the lockdown regulations have been drafted and implemented.

A group of more than 160 legal practitioners has written to the Department of Justice, motivating for the adoption of new technology that would allow for virtual courtrooms during the lockdown – and beyond, says a report in The Citizen.

Lobby group AfriForum has asked the Minister of Co-Operative Governance & Traditional Affairs (Cogta), Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, to overturn a directive forcing people who test positive for Covid-19 to be held in government quarantine camps.

Government is facing the threat of another court case over lockdown laws, says a TimesLIVE report. The Fair-Trade Independent Tobacco Association said on Friday it was pursuing a legal remedy to have the ban on the sale of cigarettes lifted.

With work stopped for millions by the lockdown, the quickest and simplest way to provide wage support to employees in the formal economy would be for SARS to use the tax system to pay employers a portion of workers’ wages automatically.

Residents of Empolweni informal settlement whose homes were demolished by the City of Cape Town won a victory in the Western Cape High Court against the city on Friday, notes a GroundUp report.