Legal Articles and Guides

A mother, who was ordered to return her biological son to a diplomat who helped raise him, will appeal the judgment, her Advocate Eliot Buthane said. As reported in Legalbrief Today, Gauteng High Court Judge Pierre Rabie ruled that should the mother fail to immediately return the minor child, the diplomat shall be entitled to apply for her to be held in contempt of court.

The head of Shell's global business processing centre, Busisiwe Mashiyi, was allegedly hounded out of Hout Bay, the upmarket Cape Town suburb, only eight months after moving there in 2012 because of her racist landlord, who ‘chased her like prey’, according to an acting judge. A Sunday Times report says Mashiyi complained to the Equality Court, sitting in the Wynberg Magistrate's Court, that Keith Watkins discriminated against her from the day he realised she was black.

The Western Cape High Court has postponed an eviction application against a group of alleged illegal occupants of privately-owned land in Stellenbosch. News24 says the parties agreed to the postponement and to a timeline, which sets out when lawyers representing the land owners, the Stellenbosch municipality, the police, and the alleged illegal occupiers should hand in their papers ahead of the hearing of the eviction application.

Western Cape High Court Judge Siraj Desai has expressed dissatisfaction at the state’s failure to fulfil its obligation to introduce legislation to recognise Muslim marriages as valid, and to regulate the consequences of these unions, ordering the President and Cabinet, together with Parliament, to rectify the failure within 24 months.

The parents of a now 11-year-old girl had to turn to the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) in their bid to obtain her legal birth certificate. A Cape Times report notes it had emerged that a fraudulent birth certificate was issued shortly after her birth. The Cape Town parents of the girl, identified only as ‘I’, told the court that the Department of Home Affairs steadfastly refused to issue them with a birth certificate for ‘I’.

Black First Land First leader Andile Mngxitama assisted unauthorised people to occupy a mansion in Brooklyn in Johannesburg, notes a report on the IoL site. The house had been standing empty for about three years after the owner died. Lawyer Michael Potgieter, the executor of the estate of the late Willem and Dorothea Serfontein, turned to the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) to have the squatters evicted.

In a landmark ruling, a single parent has been given the go-ahead to attach retirement annuities in lieu of unpaid maintenance, notes Daily News. Venessa Lees, a mother of two young boys, has been hailed as the driving force behind the ruling by the Wynberg Maintenance Court, says a Cape Times report, noting the annuities can be attached ahead of maturity.

US President Donald Trump’s ill-informed tweet yesterday on SA’s land expropriation without compensation proposals was placed in perspective by the US State Department last night, notes Daily News. It said it believed expropriation without compensation ‘would risk sending SA down the wrong path’. This was after Trump tweeted earlier: ‘I have asked Secretary of State @SecPompeo to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large-scale killing of farmers. 'South African Government is now seizing land from white farmers'.’

Government yesterday condemned the racist comments by Adam Catzavelos, reports News24. In a video, Catzavelos records himself at a holiday spot in Greece saying: 'Not one kaffir in sight, fucking heaven on earth. You cannot beat this!' In a statement, acting Government Communication and Information System DG Phumla Williams, said, 'His racist comments cannot be justified and display one of the most despicable forms of racism. Government urges law enforcement agencies to take action against Mr Catzavelos.'

Two KZN men, who spent just short of seven years in custody before being acquitted of charges of rape and other crimes, have each been awarded R3.6m in damages. News24 says Siyabonga Latha and Mthandeni Hlongwa were 25 years old when they were arrested in 2006. 'They were approximately 32 years old by the time they were released (upon acquittal in May 2013). Six years and 11 months is indeed a long time to be deprived of one's liberty and personal freedom.

The University of Cape Town’s Refugee Rights Unit has called on the Department of Home Affairs to re-open its refugee reception offices for first-time asylum applications. The unit appeared before the National Assembly’s Home Affairs Committee yesterday when it made a submission on the proposed amendments to the Immigration Bill.

Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) and the University of Pretoria’s Centre for Child Law (CCL) are appealing against a ruling that helped pave the way to have all children’s births in SA registered. Several groups called on government to change the rules about birth registration after a ruling by the Eastern Cape High Court (Grahamstown) that some of the rules that impacted single fathers and couples‚ where either one or both were foreigners‚ were unconstitutional.

The office of the Minister of Police has again capitulated in what was a three-pronged legal attack by a Durban businessman, who was harassed and thrown into jail several times because of a ’civil dispute’ he had with racehorse owner Roy Moodley, says a News24 report.

Residents facing eviction from their homes in Woodstock were entitled to challenge the City of Cape Town's housing plan, the Western Cape High Court has ruled. The residents believe the city has gone against its own policy by excluding them and others from two sites near the CBD earmarked for transitional housing sites, says GroundUp.

The Constitutional Court has reserved judgment in a case involving the future of 12 poor Cape Town residents facing eviction from homes they have been living in for nearly two decades, says a Cape Times report. The residents had bought the houses through the Cape Town Community Housing Company (CTCHC) – a social housing development company wholly owned by the National Housing Finance Corporation, and formed to administer the delivery of houses in the city.