Judges on warpath against drug scourge
Two new decisions from the High Court in Namibia show judges on the warpath against drugs and drug dealing. The distinctly tougher line follows a watershed judgment late last year (2018). As I wrote at the time, through that strongly-worded landmark decision the...
Suspects 1, Sisyphus 0
Winning the battle against corruption will be near impossible unless the staffing crisis in the prosecuting authority is urgently addressed. Read judgment A new decision on a corruption trial that almost collapsed illustrates the enormity of the task waiting for the...
Christmas is coming, so we’re putting you in jail – Zim court
In the midst of bad stories about the quality of justice being experienced in Zimbabwe’s courts comes a high court judgment that sees the accused as an individual – and that sets aside his trial sentence in the lower court as a shocking expression of the magistrate’s...
Justice & “morality” lose in this case. Even the judge thinks so
Unfairly dismissed workers have been denied their back pay, despite the highest court in SA ratifying the order that it should be paid. And all because they subsequently followed the wrong legal process in taking their former employer to task Read judgment EVEN the...
“Disgraceful abuse of legal authority” – attorney re-writes court’s judgment before delivery
In what two high court judges have described as misconduct “unprecedented in the annals of SA judicial history”, a magistrate has been found to have allowed an attorney to re-write his judgment before delivery. Even worse, the attorney concerned had appeared for one...
Valentine’s Day winner: new Tanzanian court rules improve experience of justice by vulnerable groups
Tanzania’s Chief Justice, Ibrahim Hamis Juma, has promulgated new rules that could greatly change how people from vulnerable groups experience courts and the justice system. That is why this is Jifa's winning Valentine's Day 2019 good news story: we like the care it...
Malawi’s CJ, JSC acted illegally over new appointments – high court
When a number of court clerks obtained an order temporarily stopping the country’s Judicial Service Commission and the Chief Justice from recruiting and appointing a certain category of magistrate until their employment dispute was fully considered by the high court,...
Keep your affidavits short – or you’re out!
Mabirizi v Attorney General In this judgment of Uganda’s highest court, seven justices of the Supreme Court taught counsel a crucial lesson: Keep your affidavits short! The justices had to deal with a challenge to an earlier constitutional court decision and were...
God speaks – through Zimbabwe’s high court
Mashangwa v Makandiwa In this case, Judge Owen Tagu of the high court in Harare was faced with a situation where two members of the United Family International Church wanted to sue the couple running the church, Emmanuel and Ruth Makandiwas (prophet and prophetess...
Court “stands tall”, rules that state violates evictees’ rights
The failure of Uganda's Government to pass laws protecting people evicted from private and public land has come under the sharp eye of the high court. Following an application brought by a local human rights lawyer, the court has declared that failure to pass laws...