Not all conspiracy theories involving courts and lawyers are false. Here, in the grimy halls of justice, the banks are daily flouting the law in ways that most people do not realise. But the tide is turning in favour of customers. A relatively small change to High Court Rule 46 means banks may no longer sell a property without a reserve price. It means properties must be sold at market prices. That in itself will go a long way to halting evictions and dousing the banks’ enthusiasm for foreclosure.
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South Africa needs formal rules for class action suits. One of the problems class action litigants face is first being recognised by the court as a class. In this article written in The Conversation, Theo Broodryk of Stellenbosch University lays out a few ground rules for class action suits that would advance the cause of justice.
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The late Mario Oriani-Ambrosini, formerly Inkatha Freedom Party’s justice spokesman, was a Constitutional expert and an advocate for sweeping reform of our justice system. In this article he argued that the comraderie between competing lawyers prevents them from properly representing their clients. He also called for an end to the practice of using advocates as sit-in judges on exactly the same grounds - they are likely to go soft on their legal collegaues at the expense of justice. Sadly, Oriani-Ambrosini passed away in 2014 from a self-inflicted gun wound, his body wracked with cancer. He made an indelible impression on SA's Constitution and legal landscape. He called for an end to the split bar system of senior and junior counsel, one of the reasons why SA lawyers are among the most expensive in the world.
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The Protection of Personal Information (POPI) Act changes the way people and organisations are required to handle personal data. Drawing on legislation in force in Germany and the UK, the new Act imposes heavy penalties for abuses. This, says Sage South Africa, gives SA some of the strictest data protection laws in the world.
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Billionaire entrepreneur Magdalena Wierzycka has won a defamation suit against ANN7 owner Mzwanele Manyi, who acused her of economic terrorism. Manyi argued that this was robust discourse and any attempt to stifle debate would have a chilling effect on free speech.
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Michael Komape died in a toilet at school. Now James and Rosina Komape are going to court to compel the state to provide decent sanitation to schools across Limpopo.
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Ernest Mashaba and his family were evicted from their home four times after Nedbank repossessed the property at auction for R10. By Nedbank's version, the family was R1,105 in arrears. But independent legal and financial expert Leonard Benjamin looked into the case and believes the Mashabas were in credit on their account soon after the bank started legal proceedings.
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Professor Normal Finkelstein is a renowned US academic and champion of human rights. So it came as something of a surprise when earlier this month he was arrested in New York, apparently for his defence of a former student, Dr Rudolph Baldeo, who Finkelstein was assisting in a rather messy divorce. Here is a case where the plaintiffs' attorneys perjured themselves and intimidated Dr Baldeo under threat of losing his medical license to hand over his life's work and savings. When Finkelstein promised (and did) expose the corruption in the case, he suddenly received a visit from the police. Incidentally, Dr Baldeo had been to South Africa as a volunteer doctor, just as he had been in half a dozen other countries. Mary Serumaga details the story, and what it says about men's rights, and how easily these are traduced in the rush to defend women - even if their testimony is fake.
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Sometimes you come across a story where one man, standing alone, fights a lone battle against the bank and prevails. This is the story of Joel Makubalo versus Nedbank, which has just been slapped down by the North West High Court for refusing to stop the sale in execution of Joel Makubalo's house after he paid his arrears on auction day. The judge awarded a punitive costs order against the bank.
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Sean Naidoo‚ a business from Marburg near Port Shepstone‚ has accused the Department of Public Works of orchestrating the "first land grab in the new South Africa". This relates to a lease agreement in a building, occupied by the SA Police Services, owned by Naidoo. He locked the Department out of the building, claiming he has been under-paid in terms of the lease agreement.
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Durban's King Shaka International is an airport in desperate search of passengers. Like most public sector projects of the last 10 years in SA, it ended up costing between two and three times the original estimates. But this one was a corker: it was foisted on Airports Company of SA (ACSA) by then minister of transport, Jeff Radebe, and has lumbered the organisation with crippling debt since then. This crass decision explains some of the other bizarre goings-on at ACSA in recent months. Minority shareholders in ACSA - who have been trying to sell their shares back to government (without success) at something approaching fair value - say the company has abandoned its commercial mandate and now operates as a development arm of government.
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Solomon Nhlapo appeared in the Soweto Magistrates Court this week charged with trespassing in his own home. This bizarre case is by no means unique. Nhlapo has lived in this house since 1965, but when a sherriff arrived with an eviction order in 2014, he realised his house had been sold behind his back for R100 by Nedbank, which claimed a R22,000 loan taken out by Nhlapo's late mother Mary was in default. Yet Nhlapo has written confirmation from the bank itself showing the loan is paid up.
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The Democratic Alliance is contemplating laying charges against President Zuma for lying under oath, and accuses him of a transparent attempt to delay and frustrate the release of the Public Protector's report into state capture.
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Government's decision to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC) is being challenged by the Democratic Alliance. Burundi has also given notice that it intends pulling out of the Court, as Africans realise they - and only they - are subject to prosecution by the ICC. Perhaps President Zuma and some of his cohorts fear they may some day find themselves in front of the ICC, so what better time to plan their escape than now.
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Solomon Nhlapo is squatting in the Soweto house his late mother first acquired in 1965. Police have told him he in tresspassing in his own home, and this week he has been ordered to appear to the Protea, Soweto, magistrates court on charges of tresspassing. His house was sold behind his back for R100 by Nedbank, all over a R22,000 loan his mother took out with the SA Perm in 1986. What makes this case all the more disturbing is Solomon has written confirmation that his mother's loan is fully paid up.
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Here's a case with shades of Kenneth Makate's claim that Vodacom ripped off his intellectual property, adn for which he has rewarded earlier this year with R10,5bn in the Constitutional Court. In this case, Johan Reynders of software company ADS says Standard Bank pilfered his intellectual property when it introduced an anti-hacking solution for its online clients in the 2000s. The difference here is Reynders is claiming $10bn from the bank.
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French economist and philosopher Frederic Bastiat wrote The Law in 1850. It should be required reading for law makers, judges and legal practitioners. Bastiat argues that the law exists in a very narrow sense to protect the individual's body, liberty and property. Beyond that, tyranny beckons.
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The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) has threatened legal action against SAA should it proceed with a R15 billion refinancing of the airline using a boutique finance house, BnP Capital, which has no track record in a deal of this size or nature, and in fact had its Financial Services Board licence revoked. The board of SAA chose BnP over more credible financial institutions, and agreed to pay three times what other bidders were offering - all in the name of "transformation". Then SAA fired Cynthia Stimpel, the group treasurer, for objecting to this outrageous deal.
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In this article, Rex van Schalkwyk, a former Supreme Court judge, points out several instances where senior politicians and government officials stomped all over the Constitution, not to mention common law standards of fraud, and got away with it. Instead of being held to the same standard as the rest of us, they abusers were sheltered by their political bretheren.
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A young Joburg couple ended up losing two houses after falling R17,500 in arrears on a copier machine they were renting. The Kromers knew nothing of the law when all this was going down, but now they are angry - and fighting back. Had they known at the time what they know now, they would have immediately defended the matter and leaned on the Constitutional prohibition on arbitrary deprivation of property. They would also have invoked the Conventional Penalties Act, which prevents a creditor making a claim such as this out of all proportion to the prejudice suffered.
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Judge Dolamo took just 45 seconds to dismiss a case brought by the Democratic Alliance calling for a commission of inquiry into the National Director of Public Prosecutions, Mongcobo Jiba, who has a long and storied history of going to bat for President Zuma in his own troubles with the law.
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The Credit Ombud reports a drop in complaints related to emolument attachment orders (EAO) after the so-called Stellenbosch case, which is now before the Constitutional Court. But the Credit Ombud's annual report for 2015 also shows how dodgy law firms are creating fictitious debts and some unregistered credit providers are refusing to furnish statements of account when asked to do so by customers.
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As Acts Online has previosuly reported, SA is in the Stone Age when it comes to home repossessions. The good news is that the courts are considering changing its rules to prevent houses being sold at auction without reserve prices.
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Nkosana Makate has waged a 16 year battle to get what he argues is his rightful reward for inventing the Please Call Me service while an employee at Vodacom, which has a different view of how the servuce came about. Now the case is about to be decided by the Constitutional Court.
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