Chief Justice’s regulations declared unconstituitonal
REGULATIONS the chief justice has used to compel retired judges into disclosing their financial interests have been found unconstitutional. This follows a case heard in the high court earlier this week, brought by retired former deputy president of the Supreme Court...
E-Toll costs Sanral didn’t want the public to know – here they are
CONTROVERSIAL proposed toll roads into Cape Town will cost motorists nearly three times what they now pay to use Gauteng’s discredited e-toll system. These figures were released today by the City of Cape Town, following a judgment by the Supreme Court of Appeal,...
Urgent need to stop SA ‘traditional child marriages’
THE case of a 14 year old girl abducted, ‘married’ to a man twice her age, locked up and raped, all in the name of traditional practice, has caused shock reaction. The real horror is that this is no one-off crime. Calling it no less than ‘sexual slavery under the...
Sanral ‘files forged docs’ in Wild Coast toll road court battle
AS if the South African National Roads Agency doesn’t have enough to worry about after last week’s tough hearing in the Supreme Court of Appeal, it is now also being accused of forging court documents to promote its proposed Wild Coast toll road. Sanral came under...
Girl, 14, ‘married’ & then raped: man jailed after customary law defence rejected
THREE high court judges ruled today that a man who ‘married’, abducted and raped a 14 year old girl in the name of customary practices, should be convicted of rape and human trafficking and sent to jail. The judges, from the high court in Cape Town, were sitting as an...
Appeal against Sanral secrecy order
RIGHT from the start it was clear the five judges of the Supreme Court of Appeal were unhappy with the judgment before them. Hardly five minutes into arguments on Wednesday this week they commented: “One doesn’t like to be critical of sitting judges, but during the...
Woman, 80, “claimed she was raped all night” by neighbour: appeal court says it’s “one rape”
PROSECUTOR Jerry Noge smiles from the pages of Khasho, journal of South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority. It’s September 2012 and he has reason to be pleased: he has just won a convincing victory in a terrible rape case. He tells how Mongezi Motshesane, 38,...
Probed for corruption? – challenge the law’s validity
LESOTHO’S dogged determination to root out corruption has impressed many people over the years. It was shown most spectacularly a decade ago with a series of successful bribery charges against high-profile international construction companies working on the gigantic...
Free State taxidermist sued over Himalayan bear
THE bear is depressed. He spends his day lying on the ground of his cage. He is nine years old and could easily live to over 50. His mother a distant memory, he has never seen another bear. This is Oscar. Rather like the whale, his body is covered with thick layers of...
Judge overturns customary law on unmarried fathers’ rights
HOW should a judge respond when discriminatory aspects of customary law conflict with the constitution? Earlier this month Judge Oagile Dingake of the high court in Gaberone, Botswana, declared his country’s adoption laws unconstitutional for just this reason, in a...