scholarly journals A legal analysis in context: The Regulation of Gatherings Act – a hindrance to the right to protest?

2017 ◽  
pp. 21-32
Author(s):  
Jameelah Omar
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
Legal Analysis ◽  
Constitutional Democracy ◽  
High Court ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sharp Point ◽  
Constitutional Right ◽  
The Right

  South Africa has seen a groundswell of protests in the past few years. The number of arrests during protest action has likewise increased. In June 2017 the Social Justice Coalition (SJC) challenged the constitutionality of the Regulation of Gatherings Act 205 of 1993 in the Western Cape High Court. This was an appeal from the magistrates’ court in which 21 members of the SJC were convicted of contravening the Regulation of Gatherings Act for failing to provide notice. This is the first court challenge to the constitutionality of the Regulation of Gatherings Act. Although the challenge was brought on restricted grounds, it highlights the Regulation of Gatherings Act as a sharp point of controversy. This article will consider the regulatory provisions and the extent to which they restrict the constitutional right to protest, particularly in light of the important role played by protest in South Africa’s constitutional democracy.

scholarly journals Rhodes University v Student Representative Council of Rhodes University: The constitutionality of interdicting non-violent disruptive protest

2017 ◽  
pp. 93-102
Author(s):  
Safura Abdool Karim ◽  
Catherine Kruyer
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Eastern Cape ◽  
Student Protests ◽  
High Court ◽  
Chilling Effect ◽  
Constitutional Right ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Right

Section 17 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 enshrines the right to assemble, peacefully and unarmed, and the Regulation of Gatherings Act 205 of 1993 enables the exercise of this right peacefully and with due regard to the rights of others. The recent student protests across South Africa have occasioned litigation seeking to interdict protest action, which the universities claim is unlawful. Overly broad interdicts, which interdict lawful protest action, violate the constitutional right to assembly and have a chilling effect on protests. In a decision of the High Court of South Africa, Eastern Cape Division, Grahamstown, a final interdict was granted interdicting two individuals from, among other things, disrupting lectures and tutorials at Rhodes University and from inciting such disruption. In this note, the constitutionality of interdicting non-violent disruptive protest is discussed and analysed, using Rhodes University v Student Representative Council of Rhodes University and Others (1937/2016) [2016] ZAECGHC 141.

scholarly journals The limitation of the discovery rules of Court against the right of access to information in South Africa

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1029-1051
Author(s):  
Rashri Baboolal-Frank ◽  
Fola Adeleke
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Access To Information ◽  
Legal Analysis ◽  
Civil Proceedings ◽  
Access Information ◽  
Constitutional Right ◽  
South African Constitution ◽  
The Right ◽  
Right Of Access

Abstract In South Africa, the Promotion of Access to Information Act 2 of 2000 (PAIA) gives effect to the right of access information in Section 32 of the South African Constitution (the Constitution). Section 7 of PAIA provides that PAIA does not apply to records required for criminal or civil proceedings after commencement of proceedings where access to that record is already provided for in any other law. Where records are obtained in contravention of Section 7, they are not admissible as evidence in criminal or civil proceedings. The aim of this paper is to determine whether the discovery rules of Court limit the constitutional right of everyone to access information. Consequently, the methodology employed in this paper involves a legal analysis namely: a limitations analysis utilising Section 36, the limitations clause of the Constitution. This paper further engages in case law analysis interpreting the exercise of the right of access to information before PAIA was passed and after PAIA was passed to highlight the anomaly of the application of Section 7. This paper argues that Section 7 unconstitutionally limits the ambit of the right of access to information and a direct constitutional challenge on this provision is necessary.

scholarly journals LEGISLATIVE MODEL FOR THE SECURITY OF INTERROGATION BAN AS A WITNESS IN CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-116
Author(s):  
N.G. Muratova
Keyword(s):  
Legal Regulation ◽  
Legal Analysis ◽  
Criminal Proceedings ◽  
Criminal Cases ◽  
Witness Testimony ◽  
The Past ◽  
Constitutional Right ◽  
Legislative Model ◽  
The Right ◽  
Democratic Norms

The author examines the legal regulation of the legislative regulation of the prohibition of interrogation as a witness, which has been increasingly strengthening over the past five years. The list of persons who cannot be interrogated as a witness in criminal cases is steadily expanding. The genesis of the safety of witness testimony lies in the ancient democratic norms of domestic and foreign legislation. Can we say that this is related to the institution of witness immunity, or is it a slightly different idea of the legislator? The author, on the basis of a historical and legal analysis of legal acts, substantiates the opinion about the idea of safety of prohibition of interrogation as a witness as a fundamental mechanism for the implementation of the constitutional right to state protection and the right to a legislative list of cases of exemption from the obligation to testify. The study offers a cross-sectoral analysis of the circumstances that are the criteria for prohibiting interrogation as a witness in criminal cases. A legislative model of procedural security procedures for the prohibition of interrogation as a witness is proposed.

scholarly journals After Mazibuko: Exploring the responses of communities excluded from South Africa's water experiment

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan John Cooper
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Resource Allocation ◽  
Social Engagement ◽  
Water Allocation ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Water Access ◽  
Cultural Phenomenon ◽  
Legal Provisions ◽  
Constitutional Right ◽  
The Right

AbstractDespite a constitutional right to water, challenges remain for access to sufficient water in South Africa. This article considers the degree to which current legal provisions perpetuate approaches that are antithetical to genuinely eco-socio-sustainable water access. Water in South Africa has largely been re-cast as a commodity, exposed to market rules, proving problematic for many and giving rise to various responses, including litigation. In the seminal case of Mazibuko, the Constitutional Court failed to provide robust protection to the right to water, providing impetus for the formation of “commons” strategies for water allocation. Indeed, “commoning” is beginning to represent not only an emerging conceptual strand in urban resource allocation, but also a dynamic, contemporary, eco-sensitive, socio-cultural phenomenon, driving innovative, interactive and inclusive forms of planning and social engagement. Against the backdrop of unequal water access, commoning offers glimpses of an empowering and enfranchising subaltern paradigm.

Formation and development of the licensing and licensing system in the Russian State: historical and legal analysis

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (03) ◽  
pp. 223-233
Author(s):  
Anatoly Kononov ◽  
Lyudmila Standzon ◽  
Elena Emelyanova
Keyword(s):  
Public Administration ◽  
Public Life ◽  
State Institution ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
Legal Analysis ◽  
Historical Experience ◽  
Important Place ◽  
The Past ◽  
Russian State ◽  
The Social

The administrative reform that has been permanently carried out in Russia over the past decade, as well as the ongoing efforts to eliminate administrative barriers in business, lead to increased interest in the historical experience of solving issues of optimizing public administration in various spheres of public life and the economy of the country. An important place among them is occupied by the issue of improving licensing and permitting activities. The article examines the historical experience of the formation and development of the licensing and licensing system in Russia, and suggests the author’s periodization of this area of history. The author analyzes the social and economic conditions in which the formation and development of this state institution took place, examines the content of normative legal acts adopted at different stages of national history.

The Perils of Vanguardism

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 947-968 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua C Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Causal Explanation ◽  
Unemployment Benefit ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
Asylum Policy ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Right ◽  
Unexpected Outcome

AbstractOver the past 25 years, Sweden has gone from having one of the most generous unemployment benefit systems among the rich democracies to one of the least. This article advances a multi-causal explanation for this unexpected outcome. It shows how the benefit system became a target of successive right-wing governments due to its role in fostering social democratic hegemony. Employer groups, radicalized by the turbulent 1970s more profoundly than elsewhere, sought to undermine the system, and their abandonment of corporatism in the early 1990s limited unions’ capacity to restrain right-wing governments in retrenchment initiatives. Two further developments help to explain the surprising political resilience of the cuts: the emergence of a private (supplementary) insurance regime and a realignment of working-class voters from the Social Democrats to parties of the right, especially the nativist Sweden Democrats, in the context of a liberal refugee/asylum policy.

scholarly journals Designing the social estate of odnodvortsy of the western provinces in 1831

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-140
Author(s):  
Constantin Vadimovich Troianowski
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Social Hierarchy ◽  
Social Category ◽  
The Past ◽  
Imperial Russia ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Right ◽  
The 19Th Century

This article investigates the process of designing of the new social estate in imperial Russia - odnodvortsy of the western provinces. This social category was designed specifically for those petty szlachta who did not possess documents to prove their noble ancestry and status. The author analyses deliberations on the subject that took place in the Committee for the Western Provinces. The author focuses on the argument between senior imperial officials and the Grodno governor Mikhail Muraviev on the issue of registering petty szlachta in fiscal rolls. Muraviev argued against setting up a special fiscal-administrative category for petty szlachta suggesting that its members should join the already existing unprivileged categories of peasants and burgers. Because this proposal ran against the established fiscal practices, the Committee opted for creating a distinct social estate for petty szlachta. The existing social estate paradigm in Russia pre-assigned the location of the new soslovie in the imperial social hierarchy. Western odnodvortsy were to be included into a broad legal status category of the free inhabitants. Despite similarity of the name, the new estate was not modeled on the odnodvortsy of the Russian provinces because they retained from the past certain privileges (e.g. the right to possess serfs) that did not correspond to the 19th century attributes of unprivileged social estates.

scholarly journals PROCLAMATIONS AS A SOURCE OF HETMANATE’S CITY LAW OF THE SECOND HALF OF XVII – XVIII CENTURIES

2019 ◽  
pp. 7-13
Author(s):  
O. Y. Vovk
Keyword(s):  
Public Relations ◽  
Urban Communities ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Municipal Government ◽  
City Government ◽  
Left Bank ◽  
Legal Analysis ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Right

The article contains a historical and legal analysis of proclamations as a cumulative source of Hetmanate’s city law of the second half of 17th – 18th centuries, and their characteristic by origin and purpose. It was established that Hetmanate (a state official name was – Zaporizhian Host) was under the rule of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during this period with all the lands and cities, and then as a part of the Russian monarchy. It is studied that in the field of municipal government, public relations in Ukrainian cities were governed by the norms of urban law, including the provisions of local proclamations (locations) of the autonomous government ofHetmanate, which should be divided into separate specific groups. The most significant of them were those that confirmed the granting of the right to self-government of the Magdeburg sample to Ukrainian cities. The proclamations of Ukrainian hetmans of a defensive, prohibited or protective nature, which were granted to the cities of Hetmanate since the reign of B. Khmelnytskyi and including K. Rozumovskyi, protected the rights of urban communities from abuse bythe local administration and representatives of other classes. The cities were given the right to leave a significant part of the income to the city government bodies and burghers by Hetman permitting proclamations. The electoral proclamations of hetmans to certain individuals controlled the order of elections in cities and prevented abuse duringtheir conduct. The regulation proclamations, issued to the cities by hetmans and colonels, clarified the social and economic power ofmagistrates or town halls and established the economic relations of the urban inhabitants. A separate group of local proclamations consisted of those relating to the proper economic activity of urban craft workshops anddefended the social rights of burghers-artisans. It is proved that the norms of proclamations of all groups provided legal regulationof social relations in the sphere of municipal government of Left-Bank Ukraine primarily till the first city reform in Ukrainian citiesconducted by Russian Empire and the introduction of the Charter to Cities of 1785.

New social bandits? A comparative analysis of gangsterism in the Western and Eastern Cape provinces of South Africa

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-196
Author(s):  
Theodore Petrus ◽  
Irvin Kinnes
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Effective Intervention ◽  
Gang Violence ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
Eastern Cape ◽  
The Social

Gang violence has been extensively highlighted as an issue of national concern in South Africa. Gangs also pose concerns about the social contexts of the communities in which they are found. The Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces have had the most prolific occurrences of gangsterism. Here gangs have demonstrated unique characteristics that set them apart from gangs in other areas. This article examines the context of gangsterism in the selected provinces by means of a comparative analysis. The purpose is to provide some strategies for effective intervention. The discussion also interrogates how or why intervention efforts may have failed and what could be improved in order to strengthen the chances of success of future interventions in affected communities.

Notes: ‘They’re not making land anymore’: A reading of the social function of property in Adonisi

2021 ◽  
Vol 138 (4) ◽  
pp. 697-715
Author(s):  
Thomas Coggin
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Historical Geography ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Social Function ◽  
Case Note ◽  
Provincial Government ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
High Court ◽  
The Social ◽  
Spatial Environment

In the Western Cape High Court decision of Adonisi, Gamble J framed the prevalence of well-located land scarcity in Cape Town with the phrase, ‘they’re not making land anymore’. In this case note, I present the court’s findings and reasoning in ruling against the Western Cape Provincial Government, and I argue we can read the judgment as an expression of the social function of property through two lenses: first, the manner in which the court situated the dispute within the spatial and historical geography of Cape Town; and, secondly, the way in which it prefaced the use value of property through its emphasis on meaning ful participation and on custodianship. Both lenses indicated the duty incumbent on the province as landowner and in service of its obligations under s 25(5) of the Constitution, which are important when resolving similar disputes given the scarred ownership landscape characterising the South African urban and spatial environment.

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