scholarly journals Lawyering protest - critique and creativity: Where to from here in the public interest legal sector?

2017 ◽  
pp. 7-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Chamberlain ◽  
Gina Snyman
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Space ◽  
The South ◽  
The Public ◽  
Emerging Themes ◽  
The Right ◽  
State Responses

Frequent protests, arising from a diversity of motivations, are a feature of the South African landscape. Despite the right to protest being entrenched in section 17 of the Constitution, it is under threat, and communities seeking to protest increasingly risk criminalisation. This article identifies some of the emerging themes in the protest landscape and the way the right to protest is being suppressed. Four dominant themes are highlighted through the lens of the experiences of the public interest legal sector: the conflation of notification and permission; heavy-handed state responses to protests; the abuse of bail procedures; and the use of interdicts. Law has become at least one of the sites of contestation in the protest arena. The political space held open by the existence of the right to protest is thus closing as a result of violations of this right. It is therefore both useful and necessary to interrogate the role of lawyers in such contestation. This article also examines the context and nature of the public interest legal sector’s response to these emerging themes.

scholarly journals Enabling the enabler: Using access to information to ensure the right to peaceful protest

2017 ◽  
pp. 51-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tsangadzaome Alexander Mukumba ◽  
Imraan Abdullah
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Access To Information ◽  
The South ◽  
South African Police Service ◽  
South African Police ◽  
The Right ◽  
Right Of Access ◽  
Responsible Person

The Regulation of Gatherings Act (RGA) places strict guidelines on how to exercise the right to protest, with particular emphasis on the submission of a notice of gathering to the responsible person within a municipality in terms of sections 2(4) and 3 of the Act. However, municipalities do not proactively make the notice of gathering templates available for public use (or may not have these at all), and often do not publicise the details of the designated responsible person. To test municipalities’ compliance with the RGA, the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) enlisted the help of the South African History Archive (SAHA) to submit a series of Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) requests to every municipality in South Africa. PAIA requests were also submitted to the South African Police Service (SAPS) for records relating to public order policing. The initiative aimed to provide these templates and related documents to interested parties as an open source resource on the protestinfo.org.za website. The results of these efforts show that compliance with the RGA is uneven. This article explores the flaws in the regulatory environment that have led to this level of apathy within government, despite the crucial role of the right to protest and the right of access to information as enabling rights in our constitutional democracy. An analysis of the full PAIA request dataset shows the extent of government’s resistance to facilitating these enabling rights, and provides insights into remedial interventions. The article concludes with a series of recommendations, which centre on statutory reforms to the RGA and PAIA to ensure appropriate sanction for non-compliance by government, proactive disclosure of relevant information, and emergency provisions allowing curtailed procedural requirements. The intention of the proposed amendments is to minimise the possibility that these fundamental, enabling rights might be frustrated.

scholarly journals Public Interest Considerations In The South African Anti-Dumping And Competition Law, Policy, And Practice

2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (5) ◽  
pp. 735 ◽  
Author(s):  
Omphemetse S. Sibanda Sr.
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Competition Law ◽  
Economic Empowerment ◽  
The South ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Competition Analysis ◽  
The Public ◽  
Black Economic ◽  
Black Economic Empowerment

The paper addresses the delicate issue of public interest considerations when determining anti-dumping, competition, and investment measures to balance it with the interest of other interested parties in South Africa. It is particularly argued that the South African anti-dumping legislation must be amended as to clearly mandate the consideration of public interest when imposing an anti-dumping (or safeguard measure). Also, it is argued that the foreign direct investment regime must take into account policy considerations such as black economic empowerment in the public interest. The South Africas competition legislation will be used as an example of the level of convergence that may be achieved having regard to the non-competition factors incorporated in the legislation and potential or perceived difficulties in reconciling a competition analysis with a public interest analysis.

St. John Brodrick and Army Reform, 1901–1903

1976 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lowell J. Satre
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
The Political ◽  
The South ◽  
General Staff ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
The Public ◽  
South African War ◽  
The Government

Edwardian England has become an increasingly significant period for scholarly research. One of the more carefully examined subjects is the interrelationship between politics and army reform. The debacles of the South African War forced the governments to examine England's army, and reforms emerged after 1901. Historians have concentrated on the efforts of Balfour's administration of 1902-05 and Haldane's sojourn at the War Office from 1906 to 1912; these periods witnessed the emergence of the Committee of Imperial Defence and the reorganization of the War Office, the shaping of the General Staff and the development of the British Expeditionary Force. All of these have been subjected to detailed examination — notably, the C. I. D. in recent works by Peter Fraser and Nicholas d'Ombrain, and the War Office by W. S. Hamer.There is, however, at least one gap in the historical literature on politics and army reform: St. John Brodrick's term as Secretary of State for War, 1901-03. An understanding of Brodrick's activities is necessary, since he was, of course, the first War Secretary to attempt reforms as a response to the obvious shortcomings of the army in the South African War. A careful examination will explain why he failed in many of his programs, the political consequences of these failures, and some of his more positive contributions.The breakdown of the British army in the first few months of the South African War, which began in October 1899 and ended in May 1902, shocked and dismayed both the public and the Government.

A Black Hole in Democracy?

2021 ◽  
pp. 117-150
Author(s):  
Antoine Vauchez ◽  
Samuel Moyn
Keyword(s):  
Black Hole ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Democratic Citizenship ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Core ◽  
Political Risks ◽  
Gray Area

This chapter offers a normative assessment of the political risks and diffuse democratic costs related to the blurring process, and considers its cumulative effects from the standpoint of democratic theory. It points at the role of the public sphere's autonomy as a critical condition for democratic citizenship. Because this gray area remains largely shielded from most forms of political and professional oversight, it has become a new democratic “black hole” in which professional intermediaries — lawyers, consultants, and so forth — thrive and prosper. When confronting this extraterritorial zone that has grown up at the core of political systems, and the corrosive effects of its expansion, democracies appear to be seriously underequipped. The blurring of the public–private divide not only weakens the capacity to produce a “public interest” that rests at bay from market asymmetries, but also the very ability to conceptually identify what such a “public interest” may be. This may be one of the biggest challenges ahead for neoliberalized democracies.

The public interest test in the South African merger control regime

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 408-424
Author(s):  
Mark Griffiths ◽  
Wiri Gumbie
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Merger Control ◽  
The South ◽  
The Public ◽  
Control Regime

uTshani BuyaKhuluma––The Grass Speaks: the political space and capacity of the South African Homeless People’s Federation

Geoforum ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 457-468 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marianne Millstein ◽  
Sophie Oldfield ◽  
Kristian Stokke
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Space ◽  
The South

scholarly journals Taking stock of the last 20 years: Responses to organised crime in a democratic South Africa

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Khalil Goga
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
African State ◽  
Organised Crime ◽  
The State ◽  
The South ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Consciousness ◽  
State Responses ◽  
Insight Into

Following the end of apartheid, the South African state has faced a number of challenges. One of these has been the growing spectre of organised crime, which has weighed heavily on the public consciousness. The narrative has been one of organised crime, which is becoming increasingly sophisticated and dangerous, pitted against a weakening and ill-equipped state. This article seeks to give insight into the legal and institutional measures taken by the South African state over the last 20 years. It focuses on direct state responses to organised crime, primarily changes to legislation and enforcement structures. It finds that although the state has been active in changing legislation to combat organised crime, it has often been its own worst enemy where enforcement is concerned, and has consequently lost some important tools in the fight against organised crime.

scholarly journals Proportionality and the limitation clauses of the South African Bill of Rights

2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. 2229
Author(s):  
IM Rautenbach
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
General Concept ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
The South ◽  
Levels Of Abstraction ◽  
Global Constitutionalism ◽  
South African Constitution ◽  
The Right

"Proportionality" is a contemporary heavy-weight concept which has been described as an element of a globalised international grammar and as a foundational element of global constitutionalism. The article firstly describes the elements of proportionality as they are generally understood in foreign systems, namely whether the limitation pursues a legitimate aim, whether the limitation is capable of achieving this aim, whether the act impairs the right as little as possible and the so-called balancing stage when it must be determined whether the achievement of the aim outweighs the limitation imposed. The German academic Alexy (Theorie der Grundrechte (1986)) developed what he called a mathematical weight formula to deal with the balancing stage. An overview is provided of how the elements of proportionality were dealt with in the text of the South African interim Constitution of 1994, the early jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court, and in the text of the final Constitution of 1996. Contemporary South African academic criticism of the use of the concept is also analysed. The article then endeavours to relate the elements of Alexy’s weight formula to both the elements of the South African general limitation clause in section 36 of the Constitution and to the appearance of such elements in the formulation of specific rights in the Bill of Rights. Although the levels of abstraction reached in the debates on the Alexy formula are so daunting that it is most unlikely that South African courts and practitioners will ever use it, certain valuable insights can be gained from it for the purposes of dealing with proportionality within the context of the limitation of rights in South Africa. Despite opposition from certain academics, proportionality is a prominent feature of the application of the limitation clauses in the South African Constitution. The elements of proportionality provides a useful tool for the application, within the context of the limitation of rights, of general and wide concepts such as "fairness", "reasonableness", "rationality", "public interest" and, somewhat surprisingly, also of the general concept "proportionality" as such. South Africa’s participation in the global recognition and application of this way of dealing with the limitation of rights is worthwhile.

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