Can banks legally deduct from SASSA grants?
… Expert explains the legal hurdles agency faces in case against bank and why parliament might be the best placed to give solution Almost 17 million South Africans rely on social grants. That’s about 30 percent of the country’s population. So what might first appear to be a small news item is actually an important legal issue: the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA), which administers social grants, has laid criminal charges against Grindrod Bank. The charges come after grantees complained that debit orders and bank charges were being deducted from grant funds deposited into their accounts. South Africa spends roughly four…
Read More
Hopes,fears about hate crime law
The threat of violence against people because of their sexual orientation is not uncommon in South Africa, but will new laws help? On the evening of 22 March 2014, David Olyne was raped and tied up with wire. His head was then beaten with a brick, and he was set alight. Christo Oncke, who was later found guilty of the murder, invited a group of young people drinking nearby to come and see “how to kill a moffie”. (Moffie is a commonly used pejorative term for homosexual in South Africa.) These witnesses informed no one of the murder. They returned…
Read More
Violence threatens a battered democracy
… An emancipatory programme is urgent, putting peace and nonviolence at its centre as conditions that make democratic debate and contestation possible While seeking to ensure peace, Nelson Mandela and the government he led after 1994 did not devote much attention to establishing the principle of non-violence. They did little to ensure that it was recognised as a necessary condition for social well-being. Nor was it prominent in people’s consciousness in the period after 1990, even though it ought, constitutionally, to be one of the foundations of our lives. We must banish the romanticism that continues to attach to violence…
Read More
