Refusal by government to provide it was “unlawful and invalid” says judge By Elna Schütz The Department of Correctional Services (DCS) and the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services must release a report on alleged torture of inmates by prison personnel at Mangaung Correctional Centre in Bloemfontein. The Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS) has successfully applied to be given access to an...

Date for implementation still to be set By Barbara Maregele The long awaited regulations for sexual offences courts were signed and will be gazetted this week. On Thursday, Advocate Praise Kambula from the department confirmed that the regulations had been signed but said they were yet to set a date for implementation. Rape Crisis, through its Rape Survivors’ Justice Campaign (RSJC), has for several years been...

This is up from 87 at the end of 2018 By Liezl Human The South African judiciary published a national report on reserved judgments across all South African courts, dated 30 September. The report shows that at the beginning of the fourth term of 2019 there were 103 reserved judgments outstanding for longer than six months and, overall, 683 reserved judgments outstanding. A previous report by the...

AMCU challenged sections of the Labour Relations Act By Wilmien Wicomb When a union negotiates a retrenchment agreement with an employer, should this be binding on employees who are not members of the union? The Constitutional Court ruled on this last week. The court found that in some circumstances the answer is yes. An employer can finalise a retrenchment agreement with a majority union...

Makhanda High Court declares new school admission policy unconstitutional By Geoffrey Allsop Eastern Cape children who were prevented from attending school because they do not have identity documents won an important victory in the Makhanda High Court in December. Read the judgment In 2016, the Eastern Cape Basic Education Department introduced a new admission policy which said public schools would only receive funding for...

The Supreme Court of Appeal awarded the family of the five-year-old almost R1.5 million for the “appalling and undignified death” Komape suffered by drowning in a pit latrine at school. By Tania Broughton The family of five-year-old Michael Komape has been awarded R1.4 million in damages for “psychiatric injuries” they suffered as a result of his “appalling and undignified death” when...

In a monumental ruling at the Makhanda high court, judges found it was unconstitutional to bar learners without birth certificates from receiving basic schooling. By Tania Broughton Thirty-seven children have changed the law for themselves and an estimated one million others in South Africa who have been deprived of an education because they are undocumented. In a ruling penned by Judge President...

Parliament given 24 months to correct Criminal Procedure Act By Tania Broughton Child offenders, child victims and child witnesses may not be named - even in adulthood, the Constitutional Court ruled on Wednesday. To sum up their majority ruling, the judges quoted Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie who during a TED talk in 2009 said: “Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to...

Alem Bazabe Ereselo was deemed ineligible for a kidney transplant because of her refugee status By Muchengeti Hwacha On 11 October the Johannesburg High Court handed down a judgment upholding a decision by Helen Joseph Hospital to discontinue life-saving dialysis treatment for an asylum seeker. Lawyers for the asylum seeker are preparing an appeal. Alem Bazabe Ereselo arrived in South Africa in 2010, fleeing political...

Volkswagen South Africa has turned to the courts to prevent former employees and the EFF from picketing at the Eastern Cape plant, demanding compensation for their dismissal 20 years ago. By Anna Majavu Hundreds of Eastern Cape auto workers are still fighting for compensation almost 20 years after Volkswagen South Africa fired them for holding an unprotected strike. The dismissed workers turned...