Legal Articles and Guides

A group of seven individual claimants will take on King Goodwill Zwelithini and his Ingonyama Trust in the KZN High Court (Pietermaritzburg) on 22 November to secure the rights to their homesteads. The lawsuit involves the trust’s quest to get residents to sign leases, with rents that increase by 10% a year.

The City of Tshwane has been dragged into a bid initiated by residents to evict hundreds of foreign nationals camping outside the UN High Commission for Refugees in Brooklyn.

Jacques de Vos, who has not been able to practise as a doctor for two years because of a charge brought against him in 2017 over his anti-abortion stance, will know today whether his application to the Health Professions Council (HPCSA) to have the matter dismissed is successful.

Former Springbok lock Hannes Strydom – a member of the team that won the World Cup in 1995 – has been ordered to remove security cameras from his house in Pretoria – because they infringe on his wife’s privacy, says a City Press report.

A group calling themselves the ‘Aboriginal Nation’ got off on the wrong foot with Western Cape High Court Judge Vincent Saldanha when they told him they did not recognise either the Constitution or the court.

'The brouhaha about the alleged ‘‘blasphemous artworks’’ reveals how difficult many South Africans find it to deal with difference and diversity. Instead of asking hard questions about their own position of economic, social and (in the case of religion) political dominance, and privilege and about the harm caused by their demand for special rights, some groups revert to the inappropriate language of rights to assert their dominance – ‘‘rights’’ for us, but no ‘‘rights’’ for those we disagree with.’

Several hundred Soweto residents, led by the Lungelo Lethu Human Rights Foundation (LLHRF), are planning to take Eskom to the Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg) to stop the utility carrying out what they say are arbitrary and discriminatory electricity disconnections.

A dispute over whether the children of foreigners born in SA prior to January 2013 and who know no other home than the country should become naturalised citizens when they turn 18 is headed to the Constitutional Court.

An urgent application brought by Ethiopian asylum seeker Alem Bazabe Ereselo, who wanted to force a Johannesburg hospital to give her medical care, has been dismissed.

Security companies should implement zero visibility technology and policies so only senior personnel can gain access to captured personal particulars. This suggestion follows alarms being raised by the Justice Project SA (JPSA) over the sharing of personal information at private estates or gated communities, notes a Weekend Argus report.

The Zondo Commission of Inquiry into State Capture abused its powers when it raided and seized – without a court order – control of safe deposit boxes belonging to a Johannesburg businessman on suspicion that he received a R50m bribe from Gupta linked companies.

Former prosecutions boss Nomgcobo Jiba has lost the first round of her court battle to be reinstated to her position pending the parliamentary process that will either confirm or overturn her removal, says a Business Day report.

The history teacher and water polo coach at the centre of the sex scandal rocking Bishops Diocesan College was the victim of a sexual misconduct incident at the elite school in 2017, according to a Weekend Argus report.

The legal battle over the Philippi Horticultural Area (PHA) starts today in the Western Cape High Court. A Cape Argus report notes the PHA Food and Farming Campaign will be arguing for the preservation of a key piece of agricultural land in the city’s jurisdiction that is under threat from proposed developments.

While upholding a High Court decision that Stellenbosch University was correct in implementing its 2016 policy that gave preference to English over Afrikaans, the Constitutional Court also acknowledged that the reality was that indigenous languages, including Afrikaans, were being diminished.