Conflicts over ‘family houses’ in townships houses have reached epidemic proportions. At the root of this crisis is the gap between African customary norms of social tenure brought into urban areas and a rigid, unaffordable, deeds registration and conveyancing system.…
I’ve rented a two-room building in Mashaeng Township in the eastern Free State since early 2009. It’s an unconventional holiday home, but also a living classroom in which I’ve learned much about life in a rural South African township. I…
Justice must be more than rights on paper. The Detail of Justice Justice must be more than rights on paper. Public interest law organisations, or PILOs, such as Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR), seek to enforce the rights contained in…
In South Africa, there are two ways of dying. With or without a will. A will gives instructions on distributing your worldly possessions. Dying without a will, or intestate, means your possessions are inherited by relatives in line with the…
Inquiries are supposed to be the final word. However, the Section 59 Medical Aid Fraud Inquiry’s long-awaited final report has settled little. The investigation followed complaints to the Council for Medical Schemes (CMS) by health care providers that they were…
The Expropriation Act has triggered shrill protest and threats. This cacophony of criticism is diverting us from a key question we should be asking: Will the Act achieve its purpose? There is a fundamental difference between the old and new…
Public attention to housing in South Africa’s largely focuses on the inadequate delivery of state-built RDP houses, and the mushrooming of informal settlements. Less attention is paid to the myriad problems arising from the transfer of township houses converted from…
Popularism – the providing of wild promises attractive to the economically and socially marginalised – is on the rise globally and in South Africa. The fuel that drives popularism is not hard to identity. Globally, inequality is on the…
Moses ‘Moss’ Sekobane, a community activist and advice office volunteer on the West Rand, died following kidney failure at Leratong Hospital on the 17th of December 2023, aged 56. I met Ntate Moss in 2022, while based with Lawyers for…
Labour-hiring firms still use exploitive labour broking — and the bargaining councils, CCMA and labour court are complicit in this The 2015 amendments to the Labour Relations Act (LRA) regulating temporary employment services, better known as labour broking, have proved…