Bitter blow to bosses
WHEN Zimbabwe’s supreme court interpreted the law to mean that companies could dismiss workers with just three months’ notice, without offering any packages or even following any specific retrenchment procedures, the decision lit a fuse. Job security throughout the...
Blatant workplace sexual harassment – but no policy to deal with it
A WOMAN security guard working in a Nairobi shopping mall has been awarded damages after the bosses told her colleagues that she had been caught on tape, “having sex at work, with a stranger”, though they later retracted, saying they made a mistake, she still lost her...
Judge removed for corruption loses reinstatement appeal
ONE of the most painful periods in Kenya’s judicial history has been re-opened, with an appeal by former judge Tom Mbaluto against his 2008 dismissal from the bench for corruption. The former judge was dismissed after a tribunal sat to hear allegations against him and...
Justice for Malawi’s children
IN a “remarkable breakthrough”, the Malawi high court has come to the rescue of children unlawfully held in adult prisons. Some of the children were imprisoned in a jail where, according to an official 2016 parliamentary report, no food was available to inmates and...
Kenya’s Capital Markets Authority klapped for “violating natural justice”
WHEN the statutory authority supposed to protect an entire country’s capital market including the stock exchange is found to have acted “in total violation of the principles of natural justice” it must mean, at the very least, that the judgment concerned is worth...
Land claims backfire as courts rule against communities
FOR everyone involved in or affected by land claims in South Africa, May 2018 must go down as one of the most disastrous months yet in the history of attempted restitution: in every one of the decisions by the land claims court during that month those communities who...
Mbulelo Mtati – a bad case of injustice
As I write this I feel deeply ashamed; ashamed of a legal system that delivers unspeakable injustice to a poor man trying to provide his family with a home. That man is Mbulelo Mtati. He is a cleaner at Rhodes University in Grahamstown. No-one could call him well-off....
SADC Tribunal, crucial protector of individual rights, “dumped” by Zuma
WHILE dispute rages over when and how SA’s President Jacob Zuma will leave presidential office, even his international record over support for human rights has been questioned via unprecedented scrutiny in the courts . Zuma’s agreement that the crucial SADC Tribunal –...
New African leaders “give hope” that human rights tribunal could be restored
A TOP SADC-Lawyers’ Association official says this week’s high court case on President Jacob Zuma’s role in removing legal rights from millions of people living in SADC countries, presents “a unique opportunity” for SA judges to defend constitutionalism and the rule...
So how DO real anchovies taste?
FOR years I have wondered whether “real” anchovies tasted significantly different from those in little tins and glass pots: would they be as different as fresh asparagus is from the tinned sort? When I spotted a new-look variety of the little fish in Woolworths the...