Legal Articles and Guides

The clash over Nkosana Makate’s payout from cellphone giant Vodacom has taken yet another nasty turn, says a Mail & Guardian Online report. This time, a senior advocate has landed up being the subject of a High Court application. Makate’s funders are questioning his experience as an arbitrator to preside over such a big money case. Michael Mabena SC was appointed by the chairperson of the Pretoria Bar Council to oversee a dispute between Makate and funders of his case against Vodacom.

If this week’s Labour Court decision had done nothing but reinstate dismissed senior staffers of the SABC, we would have celebrated. But it did a whole lot more than that, writes legal commentator Carmel Rickard in her A Matter of Justice column on the Legalbrief Today site. By threatening those responsible for dismissing the journalists with having to pay the legal costs on a punitive scale and out of their own pockets, the decision will help sober up officials who recklessly spend public money on unwinnable, anti-constitutional litigation.

After weeks of acrimony, protest actions, court cases and even a clash between the SABC hierarchy and the ANC, the curtain came down on the first act of the SABC censorship saga this week with the broadcaster’s management – at one point brash and defiant – apparently in disarray and facing costs orders, notes Daily News. The seven journalists who bore the brunt of the SABC’s animosity – they were suspended, fired, then turned away despite a Labour Court ruling before finally being reinstated when the broadcaster thought better about launching an appeal – are back at work. But the final act – a bid by the journalists to get Constitutional Court clarity on the role of the public broadcaster – has still to be played out.

In a judgment that damned Parliament for its failure to facilitate public participation in its legislative process, the Constitutional Court yesterday (Thursday) declared invalid in its entirety the Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Act, notes Daily News. ‘The NCOP public participation process was unreasonable and thus constitutionally invalid‚’ Judge Mbuyiseli Madlanga found in a unanimous judgment. According to a TimesLIVE report, the court pointed out that provinces gave out notices just days before hearings‚ which were held only in certain municipalities and excluded many of those affected. 

President Jacob Zuma must pay the R7.8m he owes for the Nkandla upgrades by September to comply with a Constitutional Court order, says a BDlive report. He has 45 days in which to pay the money, following the Constitutional Court’s approval this week of the amount as stipulated by the National Treasury. The National Treasury calculated that Zuma should pay 87.9% of the cost of five items deemed non-security by Public Protector Thuli Madonsela in her 2014 report, Secure in Comfort, on security upgrades amounting to R246m at Zuma’s homestead at Nkandla. This amounted to R7.8m. The Treasury last month submitted to the court the ‘reasonable percentage’ it had determined.

ANC chair in the Western Cape, Marius Fransman, has abandoned his court bid to get his job back after he was informed that disciplinary processes will be instituted against him, his lawyer Ashley Meyer confirmed yesterday (Thursday). ‘We’ve now served a formal notice of withdrawal of our court application,’ Meyer is quoted as saying in a report on the IoL site. Fransman turned to the Western Cape High Court on Wednesday, and was granted an order compelling his party to provide him with the report of an internal integrity commission which investigated sexual harassment allegations against him. Fransman, who has been accused of sexually harassing 21-year-old Louisa Wynand while they were travelling to Rustenburg in January, was suspended pending a disciplinary inquiry.

A recent Constitutional Court ruling will add another dimension to the draft reviewed Mining Charter, for which the Department of Mineral Resources is set to release an updated draft, suggests a Moneyweb report. The ruling, in favour of Solidarity and against the Department of Correctional Services (DCS), delegitimised the department’s employment equity plan, which imposed national demographics on regional departments. Peter Leon, partner at Herbert Smith Freehills’ Africa Practice, is quoted as saying the court effectively reaffirmed its finding in a prior case, that it is unconstitutional to use rigid quotas, as opposed to flexible targets, to achieve transformation. 

The Mthatha High Court has dismissed the appeal of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela who had laid claim to the Qunu home of former President Nelson Mandela. The court also ordered Madikizela-Mandela to pay the cost of the application, according to a report on The Citizen site. She filed an appeal in April after losing an earlier bid to lay claim to Madiba’s Qunu home in the Eastern Cape. Madikizela-Mandela’s lawyer Mvuzo Notyesi reportedly said they would now petition the SCA.

The Constitutional Court has received high praise in three media articles examining its landmark judgment in relation to employment equity and labour relations delivered last week, notes Daily News. The Serjeant at the Bar columnist, in an analysis in the Mail & Guardian, says the court again proved to be a fine custodian of our fundamental constitutional promises when it suggested that to tell coloured people in the Western and Northern Cape that they can only fill 8% of the workforce – even though they constitute more than 40% of the population – is a travesty of the Constitution’s commitment to transformation.

The seven Coloured Department of Correctional Services employees who won a victory in the Constitutional Court against the discriminatory employment plan of the department‚ have hailed the judgment as a victory for minority groups, says a TimesLIVE report. They said it was a shame they had to turn to the top court to restore their dignity as a people. The court held that the decisions of the department not to promote the seven applicants to the posts they sought‚ constituted unfair discrimination and unfair labour practices. The court also said those who had been denied promotion and whose posts were available must be promoted and remunerated the balance of what they would have been paid when they were denied promotion. It said if the posts had been filled‚ they should be paid th e remuneration and benefits of the posts for which they had applied.