The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) were lambasted by DA leader Helen Zille for finding that the City of Cape Town had violated the dignity of residents of Makhaza by not enclosing the toilets it had provided to them and for not adequately consulting with the community about the issue. Zille said in an [...]
Posts under ‘Social and Economic Rights’
Not the South of France
Several years ago I attended a conference where a French academic delivered a paper on the etiquette of soliciting anonymous sex in public toilets in the South of France. I listened in amazement as the academic gave a rather erudite and learned presentation (relying on the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault), in which he [...]
But what about the alleged corruption?
The outcome of the disciplinary process against ANC Youth League President Julius Malema has elicited much comment – not all of it very well informed. Opposition parties have (predictably) decried the “slap on the wrists” for Malema, while some commentators have argued that the outcome augurs well for President Jacob Zuma as the sentence imposed [...]
What makes a good judge?
It is less than ideal – but perhaps not surprising, given the way lawyers like to gossip - that news of the non-appointment of Adv Jeremy Gauntlett to the Cape High Court bench leaked out before an official announcement was made about the matter. Gauntlett is often described as one of South Africans most brilliant legal [...]
“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 [...]
Transformative Constitutionalism revisited
My colleague from Stellenbosch University, Prof Sandra Liebenberg has written an excellent piece on the notion of transformative constitutionalism. I could not have said it better:
The notion of ‘transformative constitutionalism’ has found a deep resonance in the jurisprudence of the courts, academic literature and civil society campaigns for social justice. As our constitutional institutions are [...]
Irene Grootboom died, homeless, forgotten, no C-class Mercedes in sight
Irene Grootboom died last week, but we hardly noticed as we were all too busy obsessing about yet another court appearance of Mr. Jacob Zuma. She died homeless and penniless, not yet fifty years old, in the same week that robbers broke into the garage of ANC Youth League President Julius Malema’s upmarket home in [...]
Attacking the judiciary (II)
Prof Sandra Liebenberg has a good article in Business Day today in which she also criticises the attack by Johannesburg mayor Amos Masondo on the judgment of Judge Moroa Tsoka in the Phiri water case. Money quote:
There may of course be legitimate debate about whether the judge got it right, and this is an important [...]
Another mayor, another attack on the judiciary
Johannesburg mayor Amos Masondo is reported to have criticised High Court Judge, Moroa Tsoka, who ruled that the installation of prepaid water meters in Phiri, Soweto — without the choice of all available supply options — was unconstitutional and unlawful. Business Day reports that Masondo said that:
[T]he municipality was not against the judiciary, but judges [...]
