Legal Articles and Guides

A majority ruling of the Constitutional Court yesterday said the Merafong Local Municipality in Gauteng should have approached the courts to challenge a decision by then Minister of Water Affairs Buyelwa Sonjica forbidding it to levy a surcharge on water supplied to mines under its jurisdiction. Merafong municipality had approached the Constitutional Court to be allowed to levy a surcharge on water used by mines under its jurisdiction, says a TimesLIVE report.

The appeal against an interdict that prevented five 'Shackville' protesters from entering the University of Cape Town (UCT) property has been dismissed but the conditions of the interdict have been altered so that the five are now allowed on to campus, according to a GroundUp report. The five, Alex Hotz, Masixole Mlandu, Chumani Maxwele, Slovo Magida and Zola Shokane, who took the matter to the SCA, are now only interdicted and restrained from erecting any unauthorised structures on UCT’s premises, destroying, damaging or defacing any of UCT’s premises, and participating in, or inciting others to participate in, unlawful conduct or protest at UCT.

Sanral believes there are ‘constitutional issues of great public importance’ at stake, if it is not allowed to toll sections of the N1 and N2 in the Winelands, notes a Cape Argus report. The agency is digging in its heels to proceed with the project by filing for leave to appeal the matter in the Constitutional Court. This is despite losing another round in the four-and-a-half year battle against the City of Cape Town in the SCA last month that found Sanral’s decision-making process to be flawed.

The so-called "SABC 8" are asking the Constitutional Court to order Parliament to probe its own decisions around recent events at the public broadcaster, according to a News24 report. The eight journalists, fired and then rehired by the SABC in September following a lengthy Labour Court battle, want the National Assembly to institute an inquiry into the various issues plaguing the broadcaster, including their firings.

The SCA wants to hear oral arguments on why it should grant leave to appeal in the "spy tapes" case, says a BDlive report. President Jacob Zuma is asking the court to overturn a Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) judgment that found the decision in 2009 to drop corruption charges against him was irrational. Legalbrief notes the decision is seen as something of a reprieve for Zuma, whose legal team will now appear before its judges to argue why they should entertain the appeal.

Moneyweb says it is a step closer to accessing the shareholder registers of the three companies that today own and manage the erstwhile Sharemax Investment Properties, in which more than 33 000 people (mostly elderly) invested R4.5bn. It says the Constitutional Court denied the directors of the three companies leave to appeal against an SCA ruling and ordered them to pay Moneyweb’s costs.

The Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) has repealed the eviction proceedings against Citrusdal farmworker Abraham Snyers, after finding the eviction notices by his employers – Mgro Properties – were invalid. A Cape Times report says the SCA upheld Snyers’ leave to appeal, with costs, after a Land Claims Court (LCC) judgment which confirmed the validity of the eviction notices.

On 13 September 2016, the Constitutional Court handed down judgment in a matter concerning an application for confirmation of an order of invalidity made by the Western Cape Division of the High Court and an appeal against certain parts of that order that declared certain specified words in section 65J(2) of the Magistrates’ Courts Act (Act) inconsistent with the Constitution and invalid to the extent that they fail to provide for judicial oversight over the issuing of an emoluments attachment order against a judgment debtor.

A divorce summons issued in Sepedi is not an everyday occurrence in the courts, but a couple are demanding their court documents be issued in their mother tongue, notes a Cape Times report. Their lawyer, Tshepo Sebola, of Maluleke Seriti Makhume Matlala Inc, said since Sepedi is one of the 11 official languages it was his clients’ right to have summons issued in their language.

The effectiveness of the remedial action taken against the President Jacob Zuma by the Public Protector for the non-security enhancements to his home in Nkandla has been ‘unwarrantedly diluted by the narrow ambit of the orders made in error by the court. It is right and proper that the error be corrected in the interest of justice and to promote the exacting of accountability on the part of the President,’ says Accountability Now’s Paul Hoffman SC, in an analysis in Business Day.

On 24 March 2015 the Constitutional Court, the apex Court in South Africa’s judicial hierarchy, handed down judgement in the case of Paulsen and Another v Slip Knot Investments 777 Proprietary Limited [2015] ZACC 5. The effect of the Constitutional Court’s judgement is the rejection of the Supreme Court of Appeal’s previous development of the common law in duplum rule in the matter of Standard Bank of South Africa Ltd v Oneanate Investments (Pty) Ltd (in liquidation) (Oneanate).

The Khoi-San see themselves as the ‘first nation’ of SA, and in order to give their claim gravitas, the Indigenous First Nation Advocacy South Africa (Ifnasa) group has mounted a Constitutional Court claim to get the Khoi-San’s land back. ‘There has been a serious miscarriage of justice, so we need to correct that,’ said Reverend Anthony Williams, of Ifnasa, at the Constitutional Court, according to a report in The Citizen.

If one happens to be a student protester with some access to legal representation, one enjoys immense protection against potential authoritarian abuse by the state because of the Constitution, says Pierre de Vos. In an analysis on his Constitutionally Speaking blog, he points out that Section 17 of the Bill of Rights states that ‘everyone has the right, peacefully and unarmed, to assemble, to demonstrate, to picket and to present petitions’.

Cape Town's Bromwell Street families have filed an urgent application before the Western Cape High Court to compel the city to meaningfully engage and provide them with temporary alternative accommodation, says a Cape Times report. The families face eviction on Monday, and the application is likely to be heard on Friday.

The Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg) has painted a picture of a biased Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa), which acted against Constitutional Court guidelines when its Complaints and Compliance Committee ruled in an ‘irrational and unreasonable’ manner against a DA election advertisement scheduled to be aired on the SABC during the 2014 elections campaign.