Take sex abuse of girls seriously, Zim judge chides her judicial colleagues
A NEWLY-appointed Zimbabwe judge has laid it on the line for her judicial colleagues: she said it was high time they handed down tougher sentences, with penalties indicating that sex with girls under 18 is always illegal and has serious consequences. Judge Jester...
The covert consultant and the “invisible” theft
A FRIEND told me a story the other day I hardly believed. Working in his father’s industrial workshop he noticed a man in a car parked on the verge outside. From early morning he photographed everyone arriving at the factory across the road, all the trucks coming and...
Defamation and the stain of plagiarism: a lesson for academia
ONE minute Theuns Pelser was a respected member of staff at the University of the North-West, director of the graduate school of business and government leadership and a thesis supervisor in much demand. Next moment an email arrived in his in-box and changed his life...
Millions affected by top court’s new decision
IT’S not often you read judgments that you know could change literally millions of lives. Yet this month the courts delivered not one, but two, such decisions. As the driving force in one of the cases, Bridgman Sojane of the platinum-rich Pilanesburg area in North...
Gay rights in the church: what will SA’s highest court say?
An issue of ‘burning importance’ to the churches and faith-based communities of South Africa comes to the Constitutional Court later this month. Most people would say the outcome is a foregone conclusion. They may well be right. The case is brought by Ecclesia de...
Give back that domain name, orders court
“GIVE the domain name back!” That’s the order of the high court to an estate agent who was holding onto the address of an upmarket residential development in order to boost his sales. The case, brought by Fairhaven Country Estate Pty Ltd, was heard by Judge Robert...
City “unable” to pay R775 debt: sheriff to sell filing cabinets
WHEN the high court awarded street trader John Mpini Makwicana damages of R775 plus costs and interest against one of South Africa’s biggest municipalities it seemed like a done deal: he would immediately be recompensed for the losses the municipality had caused him....
New anti-tourism immigration regulations: officials in confused legal muddle-up
Regulations “a mess” – top child law experts Government attempts to justify onerous new visa regulations for tourists entering to South Africa as well as local parents with children leaving the country have been trashed by a specialist legal agency working on the...
Prison warden hero in “worst case since democracy”
* This is the first of a new series of columns called A Matter of Justice, written for LegalBriefs, a South African daily online legal interest newspaper WHEN a judge, writing in July 2015, says the treatment of an individual in a case he’s been hearing is one of the...
Charge the government, high court suggests to prosecutor bosses
When the South African government facilitated the departure of Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir last week it did so in flagrant defiance of a high court order that he not be allowed to leave the country. It’s no exaggeration to say this has all the makings of a...