Poor
communities take South Africa's sanitation crisis to the courts
- 26 July
As the country’s sanitation and clean water crisis escalates
poor communities are taking their protests over deficient
municipal service delivery to the courts with the support of civil
organisations, academics, legal centres and NGO's. In a paper
entitled the Legal Obligations of Municipalities in Maintaining
Levels of Sanitation presented to delegates at a recent Sanitation
Forum in Sandton, Selvan Subroyen of Shepstone & Wylie
Attorneys Environmental Law Department, said : "Whilst
society has become used to a culture of protests and
demonstrations there has been a surprising shift in tactic, as
residents of informal settlements take their issues to the courts
in a bid to force municipalities to adhere to the law". - Shepstone
& Wylie website
Phiri
: lawfare rather than warfare
- 27 July
Mike Muller's article in last week's Mail & Guardian
("A 'Phiric' victory for the poor", July 17) reflects a
confused understanding of the Mazibuko water rights case and an
alarming ignorance of the political reality of grassroots
struggles. - Article by Jackie Dugard, a senior researcher at Wits
University's Centre for Applied Legal Studies and part of the
applicants' legal team in the Phiri water rights case (Mazibuko
and others versus City of Johannesburg and others) on the Mail
& Guardian website