Legal Articles and Guides

A case in which two men are seeking to take their wives’ surnames was heard in the Constitutional Court yesterday. According to the Daily Maverick, the couples at the centre of the application claim in court papers that the Births and Deaths Registration Act of 1992, which provides for a change in the surname only when there is a change in the marital status of a woman, is unconstitutional.

A gay Cape Town imam was shot dead in Gqeberha hours before he was to allegedly marry a lesbian couple. Muhsin Hendricks was apparently on his way to marry a gay interfaith couple after several local imams in the city had refused to marry them.

The Constitutional Court has reserved judgment in a case concerning housing activists against the City of Cape Town and others, regarding the Tafelberg site in Sea Point.

Residents of Woodstock’s Bromwell Street, who have waged an eight-year legal battle to stop them from being evicted from the houses they, and generations before them, have always called home, celebrated after the Constitutional Court barred their eviction until the City of Cape Town has developed a new housing programme, incorporating transitional housing.

Business Unity SA (Busa) has reiterated its call for the UIF to be placed under administration immediately because it is failing to pay benefits to workers, many of whom wait for months or even years to be paid.

The DA won its first battle in the Cabinet last Friday when President Cyril Ramaphosa ordered that the implementation of National Health Insurance (NHI) be postponed for further negotiations.

The worst kept secret in politics was finally made official on Friday when, barely a week after resigning as EFF MP and telling its leadership she needed time with her family, former Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane joined former President Jacob Zuma's MKP.

Impeached former Public Protector (PP) Busisiwe Mkhwebane is leaving the EFF, the party she represented in Parliament for the past year.

Although the MKP is refusing to back down in its bid to block the JSC from interviewing prospective judges – until the legal battles over impeached Judge President John Hlophe's suitability to serve on the body are finalised – its chances of succeeding are slim, according to legal experts.

AfriForum has requested the DA and FF Plus to reconsider their participation in the GNU should the clause in the Basic Education Laws Amendment (Bela) Act that it says threatens the continued existence of Afrikaans in schools, be implemented unchanged.

ActionSA will lay criminal charges against Justice Minister Thembi Simelane following revelations that the agreement for the loan she received from a VBS fixer was allegedly backdated, reports News24.

Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber ultimately wants to dispense with the need for visits to Home Affairs offices and have all routine services conducted online.

Justice & Constitutional Development Minister Thembi Simelane has assured Parliament that she has no authority to interfere in any VBS-related prosecutions, according to EWN.

Two men have been given the green light to use the surnames of their wives after Free State High Court (Bloemfontein) Judge Joseph Mhlambi overturned the provisions of an outdated law which prohibited this.

In what a Pretoria News report says is yet another legal victory for those whose ID documents were illegally blocked by Home Affairs, the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria), has once again ordered the department to unblock the IDs of 142 clients of Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR).