Ghana’s Supreme Court orders chief’s name reinstated
With Ghana’s constitution limiting the role of the courts in certain matters related to traditional leadership, judges are not always sure of when they may intervene to right wrongs. In the case of Nana Abor Yamoah II, and a dispute about his name being removed from...
Is admission of guilt payment a permanent criminal record?
YEARS after a roadside instant grass seller paid a R500 admission of guilt fine, he was refused a police clearance certificate because of his continuing criminal record. This lost Lloyd Madhinha his chance to become an Uber driver. But he then took action, asking the...
Zimbabwe after Mugabe
The bloodless transition to a post-Mugabe era brought hope that the country could emerge as a democracy governed by the rule of law. The elections at the end of July 2018 suggest otherwise. Since the elections on 30 July, when Zimbabwe’s ruling party, Zimbabwe African...
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....