Legal Articles and Guides

A R1.5bn plan by the City of Cape Town to develop Maiden's Cove, a scenic headland and beach in Camps Bay, is facing a court challenge from city residents. The development of the cove area, devised in 2015, includes plans for 52 residential homes, a boutique hotel, retail and restaurant spaces, and a parking garage for 700 vehicles.

The case involving 19 men and women charged with corruption and racketeering in an alleged abalone syndicate will be transferred to the Western Cape High Court, the Cape Town Regional Court heard this week. A News24 report notes that the 19 suspects, nine of whom are marine inspectors from the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, were arrested in March.

Residents of the Mmangweni rural village in the Eastern Cape, with the help of the Legal Resources Centre (LRC), have filed an application in the Eastern Cape High Court (Mthatha) seeking an order requiring the municipality to urgently deliver clean water to the community.

An advocate with years of experience in environmental matters has thrown her hat into the ring to ensure the successful prosecution of two men who filmed themselves stabbing and beating a seal pup, says a HeraldLIVE report. Advocate and former specialist environmental prosecutor Yvette Isaacs said she would be performing a watching brief role in the case to ensure the prosecution of the men.

Greenpeace Africa has launched a petition calling on President Cyril Ramaphosa to put water at the centre of all government decision-making, after it emerged that the Department Water and Sanitation had run up R6.4bn in irregular expenditure.

The Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg) has ordered the Emfuleni Municipality to ensure its sewerage plants are operational and raw sewerage is not pumped into the Vaal River, Beeld reports.

What is the right balance between economic development and environmental protection? A GroundUp report says in December 2017, the KZN High Court (Durban) heard a case brought by the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance, which challenged the decision of the KZN MEC for Economic Development, Tourism and Environmental Affairs to grant environmental authorisation for the construction of a logistics and distribution park in the South Durban Industrial Basin.

The row over the ‘rotten egg, big stink’ – said to come from a landfill site adjoining the Durban suburbs of Hillcrest and Shongweni – has intensified, with a fresh legal challenge seeking to compel the relevant Ministers and departments to take action against the site’s owners, waste management company EnviroServ.

Lawyers acting for thousands of miners suffering from silicosis and TB have called on the state to review legislation regulating compensation for those who contract occupational lung diseases on the mines, according to a report in The Star. Richard Spoor, from Richard Spoor Inc, told the Parliament's Mineral Resources Committee that there was an urgent need for the state to reconsider the compensation system.

Oil giant BP has failed to have a private environmental prosecution against it withdrawn and will have to wait until May next year to plead to criminal charges – or to argue that it cannot be prosecuted, says a Mail & Guardian Online report. BP this week told the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) that it had as much right to a fair and swift criminal prosecution as any other accused and – if prosecutors were not ready to proceed – then the charges against it should be withdrawn.

An environmental organisation is taking the government and Kropz to court in a bid to stop the phosphate mine using water from the ancient Elandsfontein aquifer on the West Coast, according to a GroundUp report. The West Coast Environmental Protection Agency (WCEPA) has filed an urgent interdict in the Western Cape High Court against Kropz Elandsfontein (Pty) Ltd and the Minister and Department of Water Affairs and Sanitation.

Consumer protection, which includes being given access to a safe and dependable supply of food, is a fundamental requirement of any society. In transforming the South African food landscape, there have been gradual improvements to protect consumers, most notable with the advent of the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008. However, we still see unfit food products, especially in respect of mislabelled food products, reaching the store shelves.

Three young men appeared in the Barkly West Magistrate’s Court this week for allegedly poaching an extremely rare black oryx, believed to be the only one of its kind in SA and valued at around R8m, on a game farm outside Kimberley last year.

The Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) yesterday gave the go-ahead for an online auction of rhino horns that has outraged conservationists, notes a report in The Citizen. SA authorities had moved to ban the three-day auction which they feared would undermine the global ban on rhino trade, refusing to issue a permit. But the High Court ruled in favour of the auction’s South African organiser John Hume, who runs the world’s biggest rhino farm.

Enviroserv could be fined millions of rand – and some of its senior officials sentenced to jail terms – should the criminal case against it, in connection with its Shongweni landfill site, succeed. The Mercury reports the case came before Magistrate Stanley Hlophe in the Durban Regional Court yesterday, when State Advocate Yuri Gangai announced that four more accused were being added.