Legal Articles and Guides

The EFF has decided to take Speaker Baleka Mbete to court to force Parliament to discipline President Jacob Zuma for failing to uphold the Constitution, says a News24 report. EFF leader Julius Malema said they were seeking direct access to the Constitutional Court. The EFF has been urging Parliament to take action against Zuma following a March 2016 Constitutional Court decision.

All the unlawful occupiers of a block of flats in Berea, Johanneburg, want is for the city to provide them with alternative accommodation – and, having failed in the High Court and SCA, took the matter to the Constitutional Court yesterday. The owner of the building‚ Calvin Maseko‚ has been unable to move in to renovate the building, notes a TimesLIVE report.

The DA has filed an application in the Western Cape High Court seeking a declaration that the deployment of the army in the parliamentary precinct for non-ceremonial purposes was unconstitutional and unlawful, says a TimesLIVE report. This is after President Jacob Zuma’s State of the Nation Address descended into chaos on Thursday night amid claims that armed soldiers were deployed to bully opposition MPs and journalists.

The Constitutional Court on Friday dismissed an application by Sanral for leave to appeal against the judgment by the SCA in the Winelands toll route matter, says a News24 report. The Constitutional Court’s ruling means Sanral has to restart a public participation process if it wants to continue its plans to toll sections of the N1 and N2 in the Western Cape.

The eThekwini municipality’s battle to remove tenants at the Newmarket Stables, to make way for a multimillion rand football academy, may be hit by another hurdle as the equestrian club says if it is evicted, their employees would also be without homes. The Mercury reports this is according to court papers filed in the KZN High Court (Durban) recently by the Newmarket Stables Equestrian Club in the eviction application brought by the municipality to evict the club from its city centre premises.

The upshot of last night’s violence in Parliament is that the DA plans to be in court today to challenge the deployment of the SA National Defence Force and police during the State of the Nation Address, says an SABC News report. It says DA Leader Musi Maimane explained the DA plans to launch a review application regarding the use of the police and the army... 'the decision to do that is fundamentally irrational; it has no basis in law.

The Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) has heard how identifying children who are victims‚ witnesses and perpetrators of crime was shaming‚ traumatic and detrimental to their rehabilitation, notes a TimesLIVE report. The focal point is section 154(3) of the Criminal Procedure Act which prohibits the publication of anything leading to the identification of witnesses and offenders under 18. At issue is whether the interpretation of this section by the media – that the identification protection of such children expired when they turned 18 – was consistent with the constitutional right to privacy.

Nkosana Makate has dismissed Vodacom’s assertion that it faces difficulties in determining the revenue that the Please Call Me idea has generated since its inception in 2001. According to a report in The Citizen, Makate, the inventor of Please Call Me, argued in court papers filed at the Constitutional Court this week that Vodacom has substantial financial records required to determine how much it owes him for the idea.

The Constitutional Court judgment on Nkandla was meant as a lecture on what kind of President the country hoped for, former Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke said during his book launch on Saturday at the Apartheid Museum, notes a New24 report. ‘It was a wonderful moment to lecture each other about the kind of society that we wanted to create and the kind of commander-in-chief that we hoped for.’

Intent on ending the furore over the Traditional Courts Bill, the Justice Ministry hopes its third try at getting Parliament to approve the law will succeed, some nine years later than planned, says a Daily Maverick report. Heavily revised in more than a year of consultation with a reference group of traditional leaders and civil society, the latest version has dropped controversial previous provisions that would have unconstitutionally reinforced a separate legal system for traditional communities and allowed penalties such as forced labour, banned in section 13 of the Constitution.

Ladismith farmworker Karel Snyders (54) and his family have moved back into their home on the Voorbaat farm after the Constitutional Court overturned a 2015 eviction order obtained by owner Louisa de Jager, says a Cape Argus report. Karel Swart of the Commercial Stevedoring Agricultural and Allied Workers Union (CSAAWU) said the court had sent a clear message that ‘farmworkers are human’ and that they are ‘not just an extension of farm machinery and property’ to be ‘dumped at will’.

Politically-connected businessman Fana Hlongwane, whose bank accounts were closed after he underwent review as a politically-exposed person in 2013, is suing Absa for R7m, claiming the closure of his accounts was unlawful and that the bank had violated his constitutional rights, says a Business Day report.

In a comprehensive ruling on an eviction dispute, seen as a major victory for workers and families residing in farming communities, the Constitutional Court came up with four separate judgments on the matter, notes Daily News. The ruling brought legal certainty to the issue –farm dwellers seeking to challenge an eviction order should approach the SCA rather than the Land Claims Court when seeking legal recourse. The matter did the rounds of the Magistrate’s Court, the Land Claims Court and the SCA, which struck the matter off its roll, before getting to the top court.

The terminally will not be able to approach the courts and ask for the right to die after the SCA upheld the government's appeal against a High Court judgment in which euthanasia advocate Robin Stransham-Ford won the right to doctor-assisted suicide last year‚ but died two hours before the ruling was given.

The SCA has found a racial quota policy implemented for the appointment of liquidators to be unlawful and invalid. It ruled on Friday that an appeal against a finding of its unconstitutionality be ‘dismissed with costs,’ upholding the High Court’s finding of the policy as ‘unconstitutional and irrational’ as well as ‘unlawful and invalid’, notes a News24 report.