Thought Leader

By Ahmed Riaz Mohamed Judge Billy Mothle concluded on 12 October 2017 in the Pretoria High Court that Ahmed Timol—who died after ‘falling’ from the 10th floor of John Vorster Square Police Station—was indeed murdered in 1971 by security branch personnel who first systematically tortured and then pushed him from the building to his death….

At certain times in history, sometimes protracted events have occurred that demonstrated the power of dissent – that (as far as we know) uniquely human capacity to express strong disagreement with some or other aspect of the political, social or cultural status quo, whether this is done peacefully or, in some cases, violently, in a…

In a kind of irony only found in the movies, Deputy Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development John Jeffery was invited to speak on the “Rule of Law” before a Cape Town audience on the same day that Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir fled South Africa in contravention of a court order. The room was filled…

By Angela Mudukuti Is justice for egregious international crimes best served at the national domestic level or at the International Criminal Court (ICC)? The March 9 2015 domestic conviction and sentencing of Ivory Coast’s former first lady, Simone Gbagbo, has raised this and other important questions. Wanted by the ICC for her role in the…

I recently attended a public lecture by acclaimed author, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, titled The Language of Justice in Africa. The lecture was on how the English language has assumed its powerful status in Anglophone Africa and how the justice systems in these countries, premised on English codes, may actually be miscarrying justice by virtue of…

I As I write it, I realise that I have chosen the title of this post deliberately, trite as it may be. In memory. Is that not where we are? And what we are in mourning? Memories. And, moreover, of justice. Those who know, tell us that mourning is the business of memory. In mourning…

Paul Hawken, writer of Blessed Unrest — How the largest movement in the world came into being and why no one saw it coming (Penguin 2007), is an indefatigable speaker and champion for environmental justice, who gave more than a thousand talks on the environment in the course of 15 years, before writing the book….

By Niki Moore At 4am on Thursday morning I woke up to find a shadowy stranger standing next to my bed, bending over my bedside table. The figure was silhouetted against the streetlight coming in from my window — an unfamiliar male shape with a rucksack in his back — and I sat up in…

I am tired of rape in South Africa. I am tired of thinking about it, reading about it, hearing about it. I am tired of the fact that last year more than 60 000 women (enough to fill the Greenpoint Stadium) reported a rape to the police, and hundreds of thousands more women were raped but…

While the US elections dominated the news for the last week, two US states – Washington and Colorado – took the opportunity to legalise the recreational use of marijuana. For proponents of legalisation and for those who believe that the “war on drugs” has failed, this was seen as a major victory. But having thought…