Programme News
30 August 2013
(News)
Prospecting for one of the world's largest platinum mines has already taken farming land from a Limpopo community.
Their future is uncertain and people are getting angrier about living in limbo
In 1994, most South Africans opened the gates to freedom. In that year, Frank Mofokeng* lost his ancestral plot and his only source of income.
One morning he woke up and walked the few kilometres to...
28 January 2013
(Press release)
Stories of the daily degradation and exploitation of farm workers have burst open since the beginning of the farm worker strike in De Doorns in the Western Cape that many expect to spread to other provinces. The violation of farm workers’ rights is nothing new but the regrettable violence is a sign of growing frustration and an unwillingness to go unheard any longer.
Although farm...
9 March 2012
(News)
In a victory both moral and diplomatic, South Africa took the lead this week during the first debate at the United Nations on the rights of sexual minorities. The country positioned itself firmly as a global leader in the protection of the rights of gay, lesbian and transgender people and played a key role in preventing a walkout of other African states. South Africa was supported by...
8 March 2012
(News)
The Protection of State Information Bill: Is the ‘liberator’ crossing the floor?
By Lesirela Letsebe
The democratic South African government has aroused a huge outcry by introducing the Protection of State Information Bill (B6 of 2010), which some media have likened to the ‘draconian’ apartheid era Internal Security Act 74 of 1982 with its stated object: ‘To provide...
15 December 2011
(News)
In recent months the judiciary has come under attack for being anti-transformative. Yet the Constitutional Court’s most recent judgments reveal its true transformative credentials. They also reveal the transformative potential of the judiciary generally. The violent dispossession wrought by colonialism and apartheid left millions of people without secure access to land. We continue to...
6 December 2011
(Press release)
Today the Constitutional Court handed down a unanimous judgment in the matter of Nthabiseng Pheko and the Occupiers of Bapsfontein Informal Settlement versus the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality. The Court found that the actions of the Municipality, in forcibly removing the residents of Bapsfontein Informal Settlement and demolishing their homes without a Court order, allegedly as a...
15 November 2011
(Press release)
Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) is a leading human rights organisation with a 30 year track record of human rights activism and public interest litigation in South Africa. We offer lawyers an exciting and challenging work environment covering a wide range of human rights work, which includes refugee and migrant rights, land reform and housing, security of farm workers, child rights and...
14 September 2011
(Press release)
On Thursday, 15 September 2011 the Constitutional Court will hear the direct appeal of Nthabiseng Pheko and the Occupiers of Bapsfontein Informal Settlement and the Ekhuruleni Municipality. LHR has brought this appeal on behalf of the residents of this informal settlement who were forcibly removed in terms of disaster management legislation avoiding the protections against evictions which...
8 September 2011
(News)
BACKYARDERS who have spent winter in tents on city-owned land in Mitchell’s Plain say they would rather live on an exposed field than go to Blikkiesdorp where the city intends to move them.
The sentiment was expressed by backyarders standing outside the Cape High Court on Tuesday last week as Judge Nathan Erasmus heard their appeal brought by Lawyers for Human Rights – against an...
30 August 2011
(News)
Evictions are always a prickly issue and the case due before the Constitutional Court next month is no different.The matter comes weeks after the court reserved judg ment in another case, in which it has to decide whether the City of Johannesburg is responsible for providing temporary housing to residents who have been evicted from buildings that they had occupied illegally.
In March this...