One death in paradise: we should be so lucky!
IT looks like an attractive double-storey piece of real estate, but the Beau Vallon police station has an ugly reputation. It serves the most popular beach on Mahe, largest of the Seychelles islands which, judging from comments on the travel site ‘Trip Advisor’, most...
Case for the No 1 Lady Detective: weeping sack leads to arrest of 3 elderly farmers
THE story reads like something out of Precious Ramotswe’s casebook; something for the No 1 Lady Detective to discuss with her devoted secretary, Grace Makutsi, over mugs of strong rooibos tea. It’s January 2007 and a five year old boy has disappeared from the remote...
No roof wetting wanted by this home buyer!
ALL that anxiety we experience about buying property? – It’s well justified. As a case decided by the Supreme Court of Appeal this week demonstrates, there are indeed sellers willing to create fraudulent camouflage; who know, but disguise, a building’s serious faults....
Fantastic news for Smithfield: a platteland preview of Grahamstown’s fringe fest
It’s true, it’s official and it’s great news. Smithfield, our little dorp in the N6, half way between Gauteng and Grahamstown, is hosting a platteland preview of the National Arts Fest fringe. We’re inviting all fringe performers, musicians, visual artists etc who...
Prisoners’ constitutional rights don’t apply in holding cells – police lawyer
TOP police officials regularly put their feet where their mouths should be when appearing in person at the Marikana inquiry, but even when their legal representatives speak for them in court they don’t do much better. Just ask Steven Mothoa whose case against the...
Wannabe mining company klapped for ‘flagrant’ breach of court rules
THANKS to an invitation from the University of Pretoria I’ve been having fun teaching a law course to journalism honours students. Something we discussed is that legal documents are worth examining for possible stories beyond the issue in dispute. For example...
The judge, the Turkish grand dame, the peacock – and the cherry tree
This is the story of a judge, a Turkish grande dame, a rich young man, an ostentation of peacocks – and a cherry tree. And like George Washington in the famous story, I do not lie. At the centre of my tale, one of a dispute between two property owners united in their...
Let’s name and shame Smithfield’s environmental villains
GET your cameras out! At last there’s something ordinary residents of Smithfield – and any visitors to the town – can do about environmental villains as well as law enforcement officials who watch with their arms folded. The ‘Clean and Green Free State Campaign’ has...
Attention tourists visiting Smithfield and elsewhere in South Africa: do you want a Tourism Protector?
A ‘tourism protector’ is the brainchild of the government’s new draft Tourism Bill. It’s one of the features of the proposed new legislation that could end up establishing a new empire for someone, and costing the earth. But do we need it? Do YOU need it? Would it...
Law firm’s delays catastrophic for poor widow
A NEW judgment has left me feeling greatly embarrassed about the way the legal profession must seem to an ordinary woman whose husband died in an accident almost 10 years ago. The story is one of catastrophic proportions for the widow, Yoliswa Eunice Mlenzana. But...