Constitutional Law (Books and Journals)
- Southern African Public Law From No. 25-1, January 2010 to No. 38-1, June 2023 Sabinet African Journals, 2021
- Constitutional Court Review From No. 7-1, October 2015 to No. 7-1, October 2015 Sabinet African Journals, 2021
- South African Human Rights Yearbook From No. 8-1, January 1997 to No. 8-1, January 1997 Sabinet African Journals, 2021
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A Cost-benefit Assessment of Refugee and Asylum-Seeking Women Reporting Sexual and Gender-based Violence in Uganda: Assessing Women’s Resilience as a Means to Protect their Ethno-religious Group
Drawing from fieldwork carried out in Uganda, this empirical study is an enquiry into women’s resilience in the face of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in the country. It asks why, and when, refugee and asylum-seeking women decide to report (or not report) SGBV. It also enquires into the issues that determine when they do so. The article shows that many participants did not report cases...
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The Civilian Secretariat for Police Service Act 2 of 2011: Implications for the Policing Powers of the Provincial Governments in South Africa
The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa provides for the establishment of a Civilian Secretariat for Police Service. To give effect to this constitutional imperative, parliament passed the Civilian Secretariat for Police Service Act 2 of 2011 in March 2011. This Act enjoins members of the Executive Councils (MECs) to establish provincial secretariats for their respective provinces. This...
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A Progressive Reading of Customary and Religious Norms Associated with Heteronormativity in South Africa
Customs that enforce heteronormativity, generally also safeguard the interests of society’s vulnerable, for instance orphans and widows, to name two examples. The recognition that non-heterosexual people is a minority group with legitimate concerns is important, as they could contribute to family support while maintaining their identity and mental well-being. Non-heterosexual individuals’...
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Afro-feminism and the Coloniality of Gender in Constitutional and Legislative Drafting: South Africa as a Case Study
Before essential feminist contributions to legal drafting were made, legislative drafters adopted the use of the masculine rule, which established that all genders were implicitly included in the usage of the pseudo-generic third person masculine singulars such as ‘he’ and ‘him.’ In the 1960s, feminism acted as a nucleus for an approach to legal drafting that was inclusive of and thus avoided the
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Interview with Professor Dire Tladi, the South African Candidate for a Seat at the International Court of Justice
Mutondi Mulaudzi interviewed Professor Dire Tladi, SARChI Chair for Constitutional International Law and South Africa’s candidate for election to the International Court of Justice (ICJ). If elected, Professor Tladi would be the first South African elected to the Court. The interview was conducted online on 28 July 2023. In this interview, Mutondi Mulaudzi and Dire Tladi discuss the latter’s...
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Hard Cases Make Bad Law: Reflections on the South African Constitutional Court’s Jurisprudence on the Development of African Customary Law in South Africa
Judicial interpretation and adjudication are complex and controversial processes that the judiciary has been grappling with for centuries. This persists in modern constitutional judicial processes, particularly when adjudicating ‘hard cases.’ African customary law cases are indeed hard or difficult cases. This is especially so when it comes to the development of African customary law. This...
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These are not the Decisions you are Looking For—The Courts’ Duty to Follow Binding Precedent
The doctrine of judicial precedent directs courts to use past hierarchically binding decisions as settled points for determining current disputes. The inherent nature and application of the doctrine, as an intrinsic part of the common law, continued after the advent of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa in 1996. The Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court of Appeal acknowledged...
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Degrowth and International Law: Assessing the Compatibility of Degrowth and the Principle of Sustainable Development
This article explores whether the international law principle of sustainable development is compatible with the degrowth development framework. Sustainable development is a guiding and binding principle of international law which calls for development that meets the needs of the current generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. This article is...
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Land Matters and Rural Development: 2021
While the report period was dominated by the review process of the property clause, aimed at enabling the expropriation of land for land reform purposes at nil compensation, various other important developments occurred in 2021, dealing with land. Included herewith was the publication of various bills, dealing inter alia, with the Land Court and housing-related matters; the publication of the...
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Transformation Agenda During COVID-19: Do the Means Justify the Ends?
The impact of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) on the public health system of South Africa and the economy is evident. In an attempt to tackle economic hardship, the government created various economic relief packages. One of the industries hardest hit by the pandemic was the tourism sector. The Minister of Tourism then created a fund to assist within the tourism sector but added a separate requirement
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A Critical Analysis of Zimbabwe’s Non-implementation of Constitutional Injunctions on Devolution
Zimbabwe’s 2013 Constitution provides for a multi-level system of government whereby the government is constituted at national, provincial and local levels. Despite the new Constitution being relatively comprehensive about the devolution of powers to the subnational levels of government, the country is still trapped within the post-independence highly centralised unitary state design. Although...
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Accountability, Estoppel and Bypassing of the Municipal Finance Management Act: A Note on Trilogy
Accountability and transparency reinforce the constitutional principles of governance, which constitute equality before the law, separation of powers, legality and the rule of law, which are central to the conception of modern constitutional order. The trilogy of Merifon (Pty) Ltd v Greater Letaba Municipality Limpopo Division, Case No 01/2014 (18 July 2019), Merifon (Pty) Ltd v Greater Letaba...
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Analysis of the Current Legal Framework Protecting the Health of Communities Near Gold Mine Tailings in South Africa
South Africa has a robust legal framework to ensure that mine tailings do not become a health hazard. This notwithstanding, this article will show how a lack of effectiveness with regard to implementation and compliance has led to a situation where the health and safety of people living in communities near gold mine tailings are constantly threatened. This health hazard is exacerbated by human...
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Testing the Right to Vote in Free, Fair, and Regular Local Government Elections in South Africa: Challenges from the COVID-19 Pandemic
This article uses the doctrinal legal research method to examine the challenges that faced South Africa in preparing for the 2021 local government elections. The health risks posed by the COVID-19 pandemic led the national executive to promulgate emergency health regulations and impose lockdowns to combat the spread of the coronavirus. Inadvertently, these measures threatened the freeness and...
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Testing the Right to Vote in Free, Fair, and Regular Local Government Elections in South Africa: Challenges from the COVID-19 Pandemic
This article uses the doctrinal legal research method to examine the challenges that faced South Africa in preparing for the 2021 local government elections. The health risks posed by the COVID-19 pandemic led the national executive to promulgate emergency health regulations and impose lockdowns to combat the spread of the coronavirus. Inadvertently, these measures threatened the freeness and...
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Dignity for the Queer African: How the Right to Dignity in International Human Rights Law Imposes Obligations on All States to Protect Sexual Minorities
The right to dignity of sexual minorities has continued to be violated across Africa, necessitating the need to deploy national, regional, and global human rights to secure its promotion and protection. Human dignity is a central value of the international human rights normative system and over the last few decades, the international human rights system has generally accepted the notion that all...
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Déjà Vu: A Fictional take on the Repeated History of Pandemics and IP Law
It all seemed like déjà vu as he had heard the same words, spoken exactly as he heard them now. The strange feeling persisted as the small crowd, masked and spread out surged forward to wave placards at the building; the empty building. The futility of the moment, flowed through his body, like a poison, constricting his breath as it dawned on him that he had been here before. Twenty years ago, he
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Multilateralism and Management of Public Health Emergencies: A Case Study of the Africa Joint Continental Strategy for COVID-19 Outbreak
As the world continues to grapple with a pandemic that struck in January 2020, the responses of governments and international organisations to control and combat it varied albeit with different levels of success. Some responses gave rise to nationalist as well as anti-multilateral and -international sentiments and actions, including the politicisation of the pandemic and a retreat from...
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COVID-19, Women's Rights, and the Rule of Law in Africa: Muddying the Waters
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the global space. African countries and societies have been greatly impacted, economies have been brought to the brink, with already established legal mechanisms designed to ensure the functioning of societies, being tested to the limit. In response, the concepts of 'national lockdown,' 'social distancing,' 'travel restrictions' have become too familiar as...
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The COVID-19 Pandemic and Education during a State of Emergency: Re-assessing the Right to Education of Children with Disabilities in Nigeria
The COVID-19 outbreak necessitated UNESCO's declaration of a state of emergency regarding education. The physical and social distancing approach to curb the spread of the virus made way for the adoption of distance learning, which was meant to be inclusive. This article examines conceptual and historical perspectives to determine whether distance education was adequate towards acting in the best...
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Dignity for the Queer African: How the Right to Dignity in International Human Rights Law Imposes Obligations on All States to Protect Sexual Minorities
The right to dignity of sexual minorities has continued to be violated across Africa, necessitating the need to deploy national, regional, and global human rights to secure its promotion and protection. Human dignity is a central value of the international human rights normative system and over the last few decades, the international human rights system has generally accepted the notion that all...
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Dismissal of an Employee for Failing to Follow COVID-19 Regulations: Eskort Limited v Mogotsi [2021] JR1644-20 (LC)
This case note discusses and analyses the COVID-19 impact that resulted in an employee's dismissal for failing to follow COVID-19 regulations. The Eskort Limited v Mogotsi [2021] Jr1644-20 (LC) case is critically discussed because it establishes a precedent on how employees should take precautionary measures and the COVID-19 regulations in combating the virus at the workplace. This is the first...
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Exploring the Adequacy of South African Water Law in Managing Non-revenue Water: A Focus on South African Cities
South African cities face significant levels of water wastage and inefficient use, which hamper the supply of water services to communities. A primary reason for this is high levels of non-revenue water, also known as water losses. Nonrevenue water includes all water lost through physical leakages, commercial losses and unbilled authorised use before it reaches the consumer. Non-revenue water is...
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Déjà Vu: A Fictional take on the Repeated History of Pandemics and IP Law
It all seemed like déjà vu as he had heard the same words, spoken exactly as he heard them now. The strange feeling persisted as the small crowd, masked and spread out surged forward to wave placards at the building; the empty building. The futility of the moment, flowed through his body, like a poison, constricting his breath as it dawned on him that he had been here before. Twenty years ago, he
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Dismissal of an Employee for Failing to Follow COVID-19 Regulations: Eskort Limited v Mogotsi [2021] JR1644-20 (LC)
This case note discusses and analyses the COVID-19 impact that resulted in an employee's dismissal for failing to follow COVID-19 regulations. The Eskort Limited v Mogotsi [2021] Jr1644-20 (LC) case is critically discussed because it establishes a precedent on how employees should take precautionary measures and the COVID-19 regulations in combating the virus at the workplace. This is the first...
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Exploring the Adequacy of South African Water Law in Managing Non-revenue Water: A Focus on South African Cities
South African cities face significant levels of water wastage and inefficient use, which hamper the supply of water services to communities. A primary reason for this is high levels of non-revenue water, also known as water losses. Nonrevenue water includes all water lost through physical leakages, commercial losses and unbilled authorised use before it reaches the consumer. Non-revenue water is...
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Prophecy and the Pandemic: The Vindication of Decolonial Legal Critical Scholarship
The ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic offers the legal academy a special opportunity to reflect on various conceptual, ideational, and ideological questions that cleavage the academy and society. In this exposition, I embrace an exegetical-cum-legalist enunciation to analyse the material conditions that define the lives of the historically and presently colonised peoples of South Africa. In the...
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Statelessness and COVID-19 in South Africa
The COVID-19 pandemic has emphasised the plight of the stateless in South Africa. Statelessness is a pandemic on its own and has been regarded as 'a forgotten human rights crisis.' The consequence of statelessness is the inability to access internationally and democratically recognised human rights standards and protections due to a stateless person not having a nationality. The declaration of...
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Editorial: Another Day, Another COVID-19 Special Issue: A Vital 'Bandwagon'
The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in a new world of academic research. The various crises brought about by the pandemic resulted in the need for robust scholarly engagement across various disciplines. Over the past three years, we have seen several calls and publications of COVID-19 special issues from academia, where scholars have written extensively on the effects of the pandemic. This has resulted
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COVID-19, Women's Rights, and the Rule of Law in Africa: Muddying the Waters
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the global space. African countries and societies have been greatly impacted, economies have been brought to the brink, with already established legal mechanisms designed to ensure the functioning of societies, being tested to the limit. In response, the concepts of 'national lockdown,' 'social distancing,' 'travel restrictions' have become too familiar as...