High Court judges are supposed to have a duty to follow the precedent set by the Constitutional Court and they have to do so in an honest and diligent manner. As readers of this Blog know, I believe South African High Court judges do not always adhere to this injunction. This is either because judges are ignorant [...]
Posts under ‘Constitutional Court’
A lot of hot air about section 205
Minister of Police Nathi Mthetwa and members of the police force (including the Police Commissioner) are – not surprisingly – talking a lot of rubbish and making idle threats against journalists who happen to belong to an independent (as opposed to a pro-government) news organisation.
Sadly for them, but luckily for the rest of us, these [...]
A short lesson on Presidential pardons
Ok class, listen up. A short lesson on Presidential pardons seems to be called for. The lesson is required because seldom has so much nonsense been spoken by so many different people with different political convictions, than recently on the granting of Presidential pardons.
First the President claimed wrongly that Schabir Shaik had not applied for [...]
Urgently wanted: judicial training
Many South African judges are notoriously prickly about the need to undergo further judicial education. Despite the fact that Parliament passed the South African Judicial Education Institute Act in 2008, the Institute has not yet trained any judges or aspirant judges and it is unclear when it will start its work in earnest. Yet most [...]
Further thoughts on polygamy
An alert reader of this Blog emailed to ask whether clauses 3(2) and 10(1) of The Recognition of Customary Marriages Act (Act no 120 of 1998) may not be unconstitutional because these provisions only allow men who marry in terms of customary law to marry more than one spouse.
It seems to me contradictory in nature, [...]
Moseneke story still no scandal
The Mail & Guardian continues its “expose” of the alleged dubious business dealings of Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke in their paper this week. It claims that “the Moseneke family” has Congolese Oil Rights which were facilitated by “an alleged fraudster extraordinaire”, stating that:
Nozi Mwamba, the facilitator who helped pave the way for the Moseneke [...]
Moseneke, the M&G and judicial ethics
The Mail & Guardian published an article and editorial on Friday in which it exposed the fact that Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke owned 18% of a company (via a family trust) that rents buildings to various government departments and is hoping to do big business in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As someone who [...]
“Afrikaners is (not) plesierig”?
Hoërskool Ermelo has on average about 22 learners in a classroom. At the nearby Lindile School, 62 learners are on average crammed into one classroom. Until now the school’s medium of instruction was Afrikaans and the school was so determined to keep things this way that it challenged the lawfulness of a decision by the [...]
Water is life (but life is cheap)
“Water is life… Without it, we will die,” writes justice Kate O’Regan in the Constitutional Court judgment of Mazibuko and Others v City of Johannesburg and Others, handed down late last week. But if water is life, do the lives of poor people in Soweto count for less than, say, the lives of rich people [...]
Constitutional Court tries to fix its own balls-up
It’s not only State Prosecutor Gerrie Nel that makes “mistakes” (otherwise known as a balls-up). Today the Constitutional Court handed down judgment in the case of Gcaba v Minister of Safety and Security, in effect overturning or “clarifying” previous judgments handed down in Fredericks (in 2002) and Chirwa (in 2007) without actually saying so explicitly.
This [...]
