The Legal Status of Local Government in South Africa under the New Constitutional Dispensation

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mbuzeni Mathenjwa
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Case Law ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Republic ◽  
First Time

The history of local government in South Africa dates back to a time during the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910. With regard to the status of local government, the Union of South Africa Act placed local government under the jurisdiction of the provinces. The status of local government was not changed by the formation of the Republic of South Africa in 1961 because local government was placed under the further jurisdiction of the provinces. Local government was enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa arguably for the first time in 1993. Under the interim Constitution local government was rendered autonomous and empowered to regulate its affairs. Local government was further enshrined in the final Constitution of 1996, which commenced on 4 February 1997. The Constitution refers to local government together with the national and provincial governments as spheres of government which are distinctive, interdependent and interrelated. This article discusses the autonomy of local government under the 1996 Constitution. This it does by analysing case law on the evolution of the status of local government. The discussion on the powers and functions of local government explains the scheme by which government powers are allocated, where the 1996 Constitution distributes powers to the different spheres of government. Finally, a conclusion is drawn on the legal status of local government within the new constitutional dispensation.

scholarly journals Role of courts in interpreting local government's environmental powers in South Africa

2016 ◽  
pp. 17-35
Author(s):  
Oliver Fuo
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Environmental Rights ◽  
Environmental Objectives ◽  
Fundamental Transformation ◽  
The Republic

Local government in post-apartheid South Africa has undergone fundamental transformation. This is evident from its extensive governing powers and functions and its expanded developmental mandate. At the forefront of sustainable development, municipalities have legislative and executive powers to administer the matters listed in Schedules 4B and 5B of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996. Moreover, matters listed in Schedules 4A and 5A of the Constitution can be assigned to municipalities by national and provincial governments. Like other spheres of government, municipalities are obliged to contribute towards realising s 24 of the Constitution – guaranteeing environmental rights. However, the exact contours of their powers in promoting the objectives of s 24 of the Constitution are ill-defined and subject to ongoing definition by way of legislation, policies and case-law. This article argues that environmental litigation presents courts an opportunity to further redefine the powers of municipalities in fostering constitutional environmental objectives in South Africa. Drawing from Le Sueur and Another v eThekwini Municipality and Others [2013] ZAKZPHC 6 (30 January 2013), this article demonstrates how courts can play an important role in clarifying the environmental powers and functions of municipalities in South Africa. This article is based on a review of legal and extra-legal sources.

scholarly journals NON-RECOGNITION OF MUSLIM MARRIAGES: DISCRIMINATION AND SOCIAL INJUSTICE

Obiter ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Razaana Denson
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
South African ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Legal Reform ◽  
Social Injustice ◽  
Legal Recognition ◽  
Legal Nature ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Republic

The following issues are discussed in the article, namely the legal status of Muslim marriages, the legal nature of Muslim marriages, the reasons for non-recognition, in particular the concept of “public policy”, as well as the various approaches adopted by the South African courts when dealing with the issue whether Muslim marriages should be granted legal recognition. The effect of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 on the status and consequences of Muslim marriages as well as the proposal for legal reform in the form of a draft Muslim Marriages Bill which was released on the 22 July 2003 is also dealt with.

Victorian Pain

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Ablow
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Victorian Literature ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Harriet Martineau ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Natural Philosophers ◽  
First Time

The nineteenth century introduced developments in science and medicine that made the eradication of pain conceivable for the first time. This new understanding of pain brought with it a complex set of moral and philosophical dilemmas. If pain serves no obvious purpose, how do we reconcile its existence with a well-ordered universe? Examining how writers of the day engaged with such questions, this book offers a compelling new literary and philosophical history of modern pain. The book provides close readings of novelists Charlotte Brontë and Thomas Hardy and political and natural philosophers John Stuart Mill, Harriet Martineau, and Charles Darwin, as well as a variety of medical, scientific, and popular writers of the Victorian age. The book explores how discussions of pain served as investigations into the status of persons and the nature and parameters of social life. No longer conceivable as divine trial or punishment, pain in the nineteenth century came to seem instead like a historical accident suggesting little or nothing about the individual who suffers. A landmark study of Victorian literature and the history of pain, the book shows how these writers came to see pain as a social as well as a personal problem. Rather than simply self-evident to the sufferer and unknowable to anyone else, pain was also understood to be produced between persons—and even, perhaps, by the fictions they read.

THE ROLE OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN STRENGTHENING DEMOCRACY

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-131
Author(s):  
Mbuzeni Mathenjwa
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Local Government ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
African Union ◽  
African Countries ◽  
The Status ◽  
Administrative Units

The place and role of local government within the structure of government in Africa has attracted much public interest. Prior to and after independence, African countries used local government as the administrative units of central governments without their having any legal status, to the extent that local authorities were under the strict control of central governments. The autonomy of local government is pivotal in the democratisation of a country. The United Nations, European Union and African Union have adopted treaties to promote the recognition and protection of local government in the state parties’ constitutions. Accordingly, this article explains the status of local government in Africa and its impact on strengthening democracy in African states.

Implications for the age of South African Devonian rocks in which Tropidoleptus (Brachiopoda) has been found

1983 ◽  
Vol 120 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. J. Boucot ◽  
C. H. C. Brunton ◽  
J. N. Theron
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
North America ◽  
South African ◽  
Early Carboniferous ◽  
Fossil Plants ◽  
Geological Time ◽  
Marine Sedimentation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Near Shore ◽  
First Time

SummaryThe Devonian brachiopod Tropidoleptus is recognized for the first time in South Africa. It is present in the lower part of the Witteberg Group at four widely separated localities. Data regarding the stratigraphical range of the genus elsewhere, combined with information on recently described fossil plants and vertebrates from underlying strata of the upper Bokkeveld Group, suggest that a Frasnian or even Givetian age is reasonable for the lower part of the Witteberg Group. The recognition of Tropidoleptus in a shallow water, near-shore, molluscan association, at the top of the South African marine Devonian sequence, is similar to its occurrence in Bolivia, and suggests a common Malvinokaffric Realm history of shallowing, prior to later Devonian or early Carboniferous non-marine sedimentation. It is noteworthy that Tropidoleptus is now known to occur in ecologically suitable environments around the Atlantic, but is absent from these same environments in Asia and Australia. Tropidoleptus is an excellent example of dispersal in geological time — first appearing in northern Europe and Nova Scotia, then elsewhere in eastern North America and North Africa, followed by South America and South Africa, while continuing in North America.

Institutions of Ancient Roman Law

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luigi Capogrossi Colognesi
Keyword(s):  
Western Mediterranean ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Private Institutions ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Family Wealth ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Unique Source ◽  
First Time

This chapter gives a rapid overview of the history of Roman public and private institutions, from their early beginning in the semi-legendary age of the kings to the later developments of the Imperial age. A turning point has been the passage from the kingdom to the republic and the new foundation of citizenship on family wealth, instead of the exclusiveness of clan and lineages. But still more important has been the approval of the written legislation of the XII Tables giving to all citizens a sufficient knowledge of the Roman legal body of consuetudinary laws. From that moment, Roman citizenship was identified with personal freedom and the rule of law. Following political and military success, between the end of IV and the first half of III century bce Rome was capable of imposing herself as the central power in Italy and the western Mediterranean. From that moment Roman hegemony was exercised on a growing number of cities and local populations, organized in the form of Roman of Latin colonies or as Roman municipia. Only in the last century bce were these different statutes unified with the grant of Roman citizenship to all Italians. In this same period the Roman civil law, which was applied to private litigants by the Roman praetors, had become a very complex and sophisticated system of rules. With the empire the system did not change abruptly, although the Princeps did concentrate in his hands the last power of the judiciary and became the unique source of new legislation. In that way, for the first time, the Roman legal system was founded on rational and coherent schemes, becoming a model, which Antiquity transmitted to the late medieval Europe.

scholarly journals Pozycja prawna wojewody w procesie przemian II Rzeczypospolitej

2021 ◽  
pp. 9-53
Author(s):  
Krystyna Wojtczak
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Local Administration ◽  
Head Of State ◽  
Legal Situation ◽  
State And Local Government ◽  
The Republic ◽  
State And Local ◽  
The Government

The article considers the legal status of the voivode during the interwar period, the time of the difficult restoration of the Polish identity and the creation of the Polish state in the post-Partition lands with three separate systems of territorial division and local administration. The legal situation of the office of the voivode is closely related to the establishment of the systemic foundations of the highest Polish authorities (legislative and executive) and local administration (initially, on the territory of the former Kingdom of Poland and then on the gradually annexed former Polish territories). The author refers to both spheres of legal activity of the Polish state at that time. She discusses the primary political acts, i.e. the March Constitution (1921), the April Constitution (1935) and the Constitutional Act (1926), as well as regulations concerning county administrative authorities of the first instance, situated in the then two-tier (ministries – county offices) administrative apparatus. Attention is primarily focused on the acts directly concerning the position of the voivode, i.e. the Act of 2 August 1919, the Regulation of the President of the Republic of 19 January 1928, and executive acts issued on the basis of these, and against whose background the importance of the legal institution of the voivode is presented: during the time of attempts to unify the administrative system (1918–1928), and in the period of changes leading to a uniform organisational structure of voivodship administrative authorities (1928–1939). The analysis makes it possible to state that successive legal conditions strengthened the political position of the voivode. In both periods covered by the analysis, the voivode was a representative of the government (with broader competences in 1928–1939), the executor of orders from individual ministers, the head of state and local government authorities and offices (1918–1928), the head of general administrative bodies subordinate to him, and the supervisory body over local government (1928–1939). The position of the voivode in the interwar period was unquestionably very strong.

Who Are Protected by the Fundamental Guarantees under International Humanitarian Law? Part 2: Breaking with the Control Requirement in Light of the icc Case Law

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-58
Author(s):  
Raphaël van Steenberghe
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Case Law ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
General Control ◽  
Geneva Conventions ◽  
The Status ◽  
Control Requirement ◽  
Specific Paper

Abstract International humanitarian law provides for fundamental guarantees, the content of which is similar irrespective of the nature of the armed conflict and which apply to individuals even if they do not fall into the categories of specifically protected persons under the Geneva Conventions. Those guarantees, all of which derive from the general requirement of human treatment, include prohibitions of specific conduct against persons, such as murder, cruel treatment, torture, sexual violence, or against property, such as pillaging. However, it is traditionally held that the entitlement to those guarantees depends upon two requirements: the ‘status requirement’, which basically means that the concerned persons must not or no longer take a direct part in hostilities, and the ‘control requirement’, which basically means that the concerned persons or properties must be under the control of a party to the armed conflict. This study argues in favour of breaking with these two requirements in light of the existing icc case law. That study is divided into two parts, with each part devoted to one requirement and made the object of a specific paper. The two papers follow the same structure. They start with general observations on the requirement concerned, examine the relevant icc case law and put forward several arguments in favour of an extensive approach to the personal scope of the fundamental guarantees. The first paper, which was published in the previous issue of this journal, dealt with the status requirement. It especially delved into the icc decisions in the Ntaganda case with respect to the issue of protection against intra-party violence. It advocated the applicability of the fundamental guarantees in such a context by rejecting the requirement of a legal status, on the basis of several arguments. Those arguments relied on ihl provisions protecting specific persons as well as on the potential for humanizing ihl on the matter and also on the approach making the status requirement relevant only when the fundamental guarantees apply in the conduct of hostilities. The second paper, which is published here, deals with the control requirement. It examines several icc cases in detail, including the Katanga and Ntaganda cases, in relation to the issue of the applicability of the fundamental guarantees in the conduct of hostilities. It is argued that the entitlement to those guarantees is not dependent upon any general control requirement, and that, as a result, some of these guarantees may apply in the conduct of hostilities. This concerns mainly those guarantees whose application or constitutive elements do not imply any physical control over the concerned persons or properties.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

2020 ◽  
pp. 694-706
Author(s):  
Frans Viljoen
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Fair Trial ◽  
Customary International Law ◽  
Human Rights Treaties ◽  
Introductory Note ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Right ◽  
First Time ◽  
Family Code

The African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights is the newest of the three regional human rights courts. This brief analysis provides an overview of the most salient aspects of the Court’s 2018 case-law with respect to jurisdiction, provisional measures, admissibility, merits decisions, and reparations orders. Continuing its trajectory of increasing productivity, the Court in 2018 handed down the highest number of merits decisions in its brief history. As in previous years, most of these were fair-trial-related cases against Tanzania. The Court’s 2018 case-law contains a number of firsts. In Gombert v. Côte d’Ivoire, the Court for the first time ruled as inadmissible a case previously settled by an African subregional court, the Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States. In Anudo v. Tanzania, dealing with the right to nationality, the Court for the first time found a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, on the basis that the Declaration has attained the status of customary international law. In Makungu v. Tanzania, it for the first time ordered the applicant’s release as an appropriate remedy for serious fair trial violations. The Court’s most significant decision of 2018 is the Mali Marriage case, in which it held aspects of the 2011 Malian Family Code to be in violation not only of human rights treaties emanating from the African Union, but also the UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women.

scholarly journals First records of five species of Insectivorous Bats from the Kruger National Park

Koedoe ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
I.L. Rautenbach ◽  
M.B. Fenton ◽  
L.E.O. Braack
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Species Richness ◽  
New Record ◽  
National Park ◽  
Kruger National Park ◽  
Insectivorous Bats ◽  
The Republic ◽  
First Time

Five species of insectivorous bats are reported for the first time from the Kruger National Park. One of these, Pipistrellus anchietai, represents a new record for the southern African Subregion, and two species, Laephotis botswanae and Nycteris woodi are recorded for the first time for the Republic of South Africa. The remaining two species, Eptesicus melckorum and Tadarida ansorgei are first records of ' occurrence for the Transvaal. The species richness of the bat fauna of the Kruger National Park, and particularly of the Pafuri area, is reviewed.

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