Proposed changes to the Traditional Courts Bill to remove the possibility to “opt out” and use magistrate’s courts instead are probably unconstitutional, and definitely play into the hands of traditional leaders instead of their communities
Traditional Courts Bill
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
The river runs dry: Gender equality in South Africa
In 1789 France’s Ancien Regime, its monarchy and traditions, were swept away by the tide of the French Revolution — only for these laws and customs to reappear some years later. Struck by this, Alexis de Tocqueville remarked that it was as if a river had plunged underground and resurfaced a distance away, the river […]
Posted inNews/Politics
You have no right to own land if you’re black and rural
Powerful lobby groups regularly sound alarm bells when the torpid rate of land reform fleetingly raises the possibility of land expropriation and, with it, the spectre of the violation of white farmers’ property rights. In reality, it is black, rural, poor South Africans who are already being deprived of the right to own property, even […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Marikana, the sign of a schizophrenic state
As assault charges are laid against the police in the aftermath of the Marikana massacre, the outrageous reality is that torture is still not criminalised in South Africa. A draft law called the Prevention and Combating of Torture of Persons Bill is before parliament but far from adoption. The relevant parliamentary committee has postponed the […]
Posted inNews/Politics
A parliament that doesn’t respect itself
Dr Mathole Motshekga, ANC chief whip, at the end of June wrote in ANC Today that, “parliament survives on the confidence and respect the public have in it, without (which) its dignity and integrity is eroded”. The context was Cope leader Mosiuoa Lekota sticking to his guns that President Jacob Zuma had violated his oath […]
Posted inGeneral
Distractions, decoys and the South African dream
By Andrew Ihsaan Gasnolar I am troubled by the machinations that I am subjected to on a daily basis by the ruling elite. This is not uniquely South African but rather it is the game that those in power seek to play in order to confuse, delay and complicate our lives. I guess this cataclysmic […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Traditional Courts Bill: Colonialism warmed up
The retabled Traditional Courts Bill, if adopted in its current form, will relegate at least 17 million South Africans to a separate and unequal judicial regime merely because they happen to live in the rural areas – a situation in many cases imposed on them by the apartheid regime. While cabinet’s planned “review” of Constitutional […]