Social Justice Coalition says appeal will hurt vulnerable communities By Lucas Nowicki The South African Police Service (SAPS) has applied for leave to appeal the Equality Court judgement that declared police resource allocation in the Western Cape discriminatory on the basis of race and poverty. The case was brought by the Social Justice Coalition (SJC), Equal Education, the Women’s Legal Centre Trust and the...

Asylum delayed is not (necessarily) asylum denied By Ohene Yaw Ampofo-Anti If a foreign national arrives in South Africa unlawfully and takes as long as 15 months to apply for asylum, are they barred from doing so? Is the person liable for deportation or should they be given an opportunity to at least apply for asylum? The Constitutional Court recently considered these...

Municipality has missed deadline to find accommodation for Hillbrow residents, but Johannesburg official says backlog is the fault of past administrations By Zoë Postman “It’s difficult because we are living in fear … most of us have children and at any moment we could be evicted and left on the street,” says Thulisile Ngubane, 40, a resident of Hillbrow, Johannesburg. Ngubane lives with...

Maximum interest rate on second loans reduced By Ciaran Ryan Borrowers with more than one debt outstanding were given some protection last week when the Supreme Court of Appeal ruled that the interest rate on short-term loans after the first loan cannot exceed 3% a month. Micro Finance South Africa (MFSA) had challenged regulations promulgated under the National Credit Act reducing the interest...

Finding against COSATU’s Bongani Masuku overturned By Wilmien Wicomb The Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) this week delivered a judgment that provided much needed clarity about the meaning of “hate speech” as prohibited in the Equality Act. Understanding what constitutes hate speech is crucial to properly protecting and promoting the right to freedom of expression. Besides being a fundamental human right in section 16...

More than 50 tenants of a derelict building in Hillbrow have taken their landlord to the Constitutional Court. When can a landlord evict law-abiding tenants in order to effect refurbishments? And when can a landlord evict tenants for this reason on an urgent basis? These two questions are currently before the Constitutional Court in an application for leave to appeal...

New Wild Coast route shortens road by 75km but passes through ancestral land By Zoë Postman The South African National Roads Agency (SANRAL), the Department of Environmental Affairs and Sinegugu Zukulu, a resident of the Umgungundlovu community in the Eastern Cape, were back in court on Monday over the construction of the N2 Highway through the Wild Coast. The new road extends about 560km between...

Kanana families want to be housed on site By Phathiswa Shushwana Some residents of Kanana informal settlement in Gugulethu are refusing to move to a new R1.1 billion development in Forest Village. The residents say they were told in a community meeting by ward councillor Bongani Ngcombolo in October that they must move to houses in Forest Village in Eersteriver to make way...

Constitutional Court ruling overturns Home Affairs directive By Ohene Yaw Ampofo-Anti If you are an asylum seeker and your application to be a refugee is refused, you are still allowed to apply for a visa. The Constitutional Court ruled this in a unanimous judgment handed down in October. Background The case was brought by three asylum seekers whose applications for refugee status had been refused. They...

Gwede Mantashe is concerned about mining being halted, but the judgment is an incentive for the industry to change the way it operates By Wilmien Wicomb South Africans have spent much of 2018 debating whether the Constitution must be amended to explicitly provide for expropriation of land without compensation. Lost in this debate is the reality that thousands of South Africans have...