The Community Law Centre has featured in two separate panel discussions during the on- going 17th International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA). The Conference with the theme Now More than Ever: Targeting Zero, holds from 7-11 December 2013 at the Convention Centre, Cape Town.
The staff of the Community Law Centre mourns the loss of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela and extends its deepest sympathies to his wife and his family.
In this ESR Review, Courts, capacity and engagement: Lessons from Hlophe v City of Johannesburg, A Social Protection Floor for all: Indispensable for eradicating extreme poverty by 2030
Yesterday the Community Law Centre hosted a dinner for the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC) in Cape Town. This meet and greet session followed a two day workshop on the with the aim of discussing country reports on actions taken in follow-up to the 2012 Day of the African Child.
In March this year, South African Local Government Association (Salga) announced that at least R81-billion is owed to municipalities for services. In line with this yesterday it convened the Anti-Corruption Summit and National Members Assembly at the Cape Town International Convention Centre.
The Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality (WEGE) Bill has been introduced in parliament. At this point we are unsure of when parliament will hold public hearings on the Bill. It may be this year or in the first months of next year.
Many serious questions are being raised about the state of democracy and politics in South Africa at this time. Over the course of 2013, there have been a number of initiatives to discuss and engage with questions of civil society’s role and place in South Africa’s democracy nearly 20 years down the line.
The Community Law Centre also received a critical mention in Albie Sachs' keynote address, who is the former Community Law Centre associate and former Constitutional Court judge in South Africa. The event kicked off on 18 November and it concludes on 22 November in Washington DC in the United States of America.
Two post-doctoral researchers for the Children’s Rights Project at the Community Law Centre contributed a chapter to the first edition of the African Disability Rights Yearbook.
On the November 2, 2013 Thulaganyo Selokela, a doctoral researcher for the Multi-level Government Initiative, recently attended the South African Local Government Association Women’s Commission meeting in Worscester Western Cape.
The Community Law Centre has a Memorandum of Understanding with the Centre for Federal Studies (CFS) at Addis Ababa University. In terms of that MOU, staff of the Community Law Centre regularly teaches at the CFS, particularly in its PhD programme.
The director of the Community Law Centre, Prof Jaap de Visser lectured a group of honours and LLM students on the place of local government in the South African system of multilevel government at the Ethiopian Civil Service College in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia yesterday (7 November 2013).
The Community Law Centre hosted a seminar that looked at challenges faced by institutions in South Africa in ensuring that growth leads to better living standards.
The Director of the Community Law Centre, Prof Jaap de Visser, presented a statement at the Opening Ceremony of the 22nd Session of the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC).
On 21 October 2013, during the 54th Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights holding in Banjul, The Gambia, the Community Law Centre at the University of the Western Cape and the Office of the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights organised a side event on Penalisation of Poverty as a Human Rights Challenge in Africa.
The former director of the Community Law Centre, Prof Nico Steytler was appointed by President Jacob Zuma as member of the Financial and Fiscal Commission with effect from 01 September 2013, for a period of five years, as a part time commissioner. Prof Steytler is currently the South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI) Chair.
A doctoral researcher at the Multi-level Initiative of the Community Law Centre, Thulaganyo Selokela, presented a paper on “Gender Representation in Local Government’. She presented this at a conference organised by the Institute for law in Action based at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University together with the Institute on Municipal Administration For Southern Africa.
21 October 2013 - This past weekend, the Community Law Centre in partnership with the University of Western Cape Law Faculty hosted the sixth doctoral colloquium at the Atlantic Beach Hotel in Cape Town.
Today the NCOP Select Committee on Justice and Constitutional Development in parliament met to consider the negotiating mandates from the provinces on the Traditional Courts Bill. It was a short meeting, it seems that the actual work took place behind closed doors prior to the meeting session.
This is the second issue of the ESR Review in 2013, which recognises and applauds the important role that the youth and women play in our country.
The Community Law Centre’s Socio-Economic Rights project released its “Compendium of documents and cases on the right to health under the African Human Rights System (September 2013)”.
Today the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Justice and Constitutional Development met to deliberate on the proposed law that will see courts being set up to deal exclusively with sexual offences matters like rape and child sexual abuse. Members of the Shukumisa campaign were sceptical about its potential to make a difference in rape prosecutions.
Constitutional adjudication in Ethiopia is primarily the responsibility of the House of Federation, Ethiopia’s upper house. In line with this, the Community Law Centre’s Multi-Level Government Initiative (MLGI) and the South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI) Chair in Multilevel Government, Law and Policy hosted a discussion on "Constitutional adjudication in Ethiopia" on the Tuesday 2 September.
Without strong civil society across sectors and interrogation of broader socio-economic policies, the promise of our constitution will remain outside of the grasp of most people.
On 29 August 2013 the Community Law Centre (CLC), based at the University of the Western Cape, and the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa (SERI) officially launched a research report entitled ‘Jumping the Queue’, Waiting Lists and other Myths: Perceptions and Practice around Housing Demand and Allocation in South Africa.
“It is not a secret that much of our Bill of Rights was drafted at the Community Law Centre,” this were the words by Minister Trevor Manuel, Minister in the Presidency-National Planning Commission, when delivering his speech at the University of the Western Cape Yesterday afternoon.
An exciting panel of high profile speakers is expected to spark a conversation on the process of constitution making and implementation, during an International Conference on Constitution-Building in Africa on 6 September 2013.
Community Law Centre's Civil Society Prison Reform Initiative presented two papers which seek to understand gross human rights violations by prison warders on inmates in prisons and how different sub-sets in the South African population experiences law enforcement.
The project seeks to evaluate and identify lessons that both Kenya and South Africa can share in the implementation of the devolved system of government, and especially from South Africa which has 17 years of experience with implementing devolution.
Call for expression of interest to draft the Concept Note for the celebration of the 2014 Day of the African Child on the theme, ‘A child-friendly quality free and compulsory education for all children in Africa’.
