There is a perception among victims of crime, and people in general, in South Africa that the country’s laws favour and protect offenders. These people believe that offenders have more rights than victims which are derived from the Constitution of the country, and other legislative Acts of parliament. This view may sometimes lead to vigilantism and a total disregard of the law. The study will show that victims do have rights in the country’s legislations. The study briefly explains the sources of such laws, like the Constitution, the Victims Charter and selected provisions of some Acts of parliament. It is a fact that the section 35 of the Constitution provides in detail, the rights of the arrested, detained and accused. It is also submitted persons that there is no specific provision that talks about the rights of the victims of crime. However, that does not mean that such victims do not have rights in terms of the constitution. The rights of victims of crime are seen during the courts’ interpretation and application of rights mentioned in the Bill of Rights. The use of words like “everyone” and “any person” in the Bill of Rights also refers to victims of crime. Therefore, the Constitution is not victim-biased and offender-friendly. The Constitution protects everybody because it seeks to uphold the values of human dignity, equality, freedom and the African concept of ubuntu. The study discusses briefly the rights of victims as adopted by the Victims’ Charter. The Charter lists these rights, but does not explain how such rights are to be achieved. South Africa also developed a document called the Minimum Standards for Services for Victims of Crime which indicates how each right is to be achieved. The study also shows that South Africa had developed some Acts of parliament even before the adoption of the Victims Charter. South Africa claims that the Victims’ Charter is compliant with the Constitution and the United Nations Declaration of Basic Principles of Justice Abuse of Power of 1985. It is submitted that this statement is not entirely correct, especially with regards to the provision that deals with compensation. South Africa did not define compensation as defined by the United Nations Declaration. This can be seen as a dismal failure by South Africa to abide by the United Nations Declaration and this has resulted in more harm suffered by victims of crime. The study also discusses how rape victims benefit through the use of Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Act of 2007. This begins with the changing of the definition of rape. The Act also deals with how rape victims can access antiretroviral drugs to prevent HIV/Aids infection. It explains limitations on the right to privacy of the accused, especially to compel him or her to undergo an HIV test. The HIV positive status of the accused can be used as an aggravating factor during sentencing in terms of UNAIDS policies. S v Nyalungu 2005 (JOL) 13254 (T) is a leading case in South Africa showing compliance with UNAIDS policies. Restorative justice mechanisms have been discussed to show positive movement by South Africa from a retributive justice system to a restorative justice system. The advantages of such mechanisms for victims have been discussed. The study also describes briefly some selected provisions of the Criminal Procedure Act of 1977 and how these provisions benefit victims of crime. These include sections 153, 170A, 297, 299A, 300 and 301. The study highlights some challenges that still exist and what innovations can be made. This includes recommendations which can be made to benefit victims of crime further. For example, an apology can be used as one of the important principles in the restorative justice system. It is submitted and recommended that truth and apology go hand in glove and the basic elements of forgiveness. South Africa can pride itself with regards to this approach especially during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which was established in post-apartheid South Africa. The study concludes by saying that South Africa should set up a victim-compensation scheme. It is submitted that South Africa can afford such a scheme despite the problems identified.

Hate speech in South Africa creates a tension between the right to freedom of expression and the rights to human dignity and equality. The challenge is to achieve a balance between these competing rights in the context of the divisive past and the transformative constitutional ideal, in which reconciliation and respect for group difference are promoted. Freedom of expression, an individual right, must be construed in light of its underlying values, but regard must also be given to communitarian interests. The constitutional standard draws the initial line. The advocacy of hatred on four grounds and which constitutes incitement to cause harm is not constitutionally protected speech. Such speech undermines nation building, causes acrimony, and is not tolerated in the egalitarian society envisaged by the Constitution. The thesis formulates a principled legislative hate speech framework for South Africa at both human rights and criminal levels within the parameters of the constitutional mandate, as guided by the standard for hate speech restrictions in international law, and the Canadian regulatory model. An essential premise is that regulation requires a multi-faceted balancing enquiry. A holistic approach is proposed where factors such as respect for the dignity of the victims, autonomy for speakers, listeners and the wider community; the causal link between hate speech and hatred in a community; and the desire to achieve a diverse and harmonious society; amongst others, are considered. Failure to regulate hate speech constructively endorses hatemongers and promotes damaging speech at the expense of vulnerable groups. Regulation ensures that law sets the normative benchmark, affirms the protection of vulnerable groups within the social fabric and upholds social cohesion, inclusiveness and the equal citizenship of all individuals in society. The thesis contains a proposal for the enactment of legislation creating a self-standing hate speech crime for the advocacy of extreme hatred, shaped in accordance with international requirements and comparative foreign law, and structured in light of the distinction between hate crime and hate speech. The existing legal framework is unable to provide consistent and fitting redress for the severe harm caused by such speech, namely the fostering of an environment in which the stigmatisation of groups is promoted, their exclusion from society justified and intervention is needed to remedy the escalated levels of hatred and violence between different groups in society. PEPUDA, a remedial statute aimed at promoting transformation and substantive equality, is valuable, but its speech prohibitions are broad and imprecise. Consequently, their effectiveness is compromised and their constitutionality questioned. The thesis proposes recommendations for amendments to sections 7(a), 10(1) and 12 of PEPUDA. The aim is to ensure compliance with the international standard and to foster the optimal regulation of hate speech and other forms of damaging speech, including derogatory racial epithets, which undermine human dignity and equality and threaten national unity. It is intended for the two systems to complement one another and to create a legal framework aimed at addressing hate speech constructively and in context, promoting tolerance, respect for difference, reconciliation and transformation.

This dissertation is a study of the ambit of the right to food as it is contained in the South African Bill of Rights and the steps needed to realise the right. Existing and potential food insecurity, hunger and malnutrition provide the social context for this research. The rationale for conducting the research is primarily two-fold. Firstly, the access to sufficient food is an indispensable right for everyone living in this country. Secondly, the right to food in South Africa has not been subject to extensive academic study to date. Socio-economic rights are fully justiciable rights in this country, equally worthy of protection as civil and political rights. Furthermore, socio-economic rights (like the right to food) are interdependent with civil and political rights: neither category can meaningful exist without realisation of the other. The right to sufficient food is found in section 27(1)(b) of the South African Constitution. Children have the additional right to basic nutrition in terms of section 28(1)(c). The right to sufficient food is subject to the internal limitation of section 27(2) that the state must take reasonable measures, within its available resources, to achieve the progressive realisation of the right. Furthermore, as with all rights in the Bill of Rights, both these rights are subject to the general limitations clause found in section 36. There is international law authority in various human rights instruments for the protection of the right to food and what the right entails. In accordance with section 39 of the Constitution, such international law must be considered when interpreting the right to food. It is argued that a generous and broad interpretation of food rights in the Constitution is called for. Existing legislation, state policies and programmes are analysed in order to gauge whether the state is adequately meeting its right to food obligations. Furthermore, the state’s food programmes must meet the just administrative action requirements of lawfulness, reasonableness and procedural fairness of section 33 of the Constitution and comply with the Promotion of Just Administrative Justice Act. The dissertation analyses the disparate and unco-ordinated food and law policies in existence, albeit that the National Food Security Draft Bill offers the hope of some improvement. Particular inadequacies highlighted in the state’s response to the country’s food challenges are a lack of any feeding schemes in high schools and insufficient food provision in emergency situations. Social assistance grants available in terms of the Social Assistance Act are considered due to their potential to make food available to grant recipients. On the one hand there is shown to be a lack of social assistance for unemployed people who do not qualify for any form of social grant. On the other hand, whilst presently underutilised and not always properly administered, social relief of distress grants are shown to have the potential to improve access to sufficient food for limited periods of time. Other suggested means of improving access to sufficient food are income generation strategies, the introduction of a basic income grant and the creation of food framework legislation. When people are denied their food rights, this research calls for creative judicial remedies as well as effective enforcement of such court orders. However, it is argued that education on what the right to food entails is a precondition for people to seek legal recourse to protect their right to food. Due to a lack of case authority on food itself, guidance is sought from the findings of South Africa’s Constitutional Court in analogous socio-economic rights challenges. Through this analysis this dissertation considers the way forward, either in terms of direct court action or via improved access to other rights which will improve food access.

This treatise discusses the increasing of the procedural and substantive limitations on the employees’ right to strike. The Constitution permits the right to strike to be limited in terms of the laws of general application. The Labour Relations Act (LRA) is a good example. Such limitation must be reasonable and justifiable in an open and democratic society, based on human dignity, equality and freedom. The study sought to investigate whether further increasing the existing limitations on the right to strike unduly breaches employees’ Constitutional right to strike and the purpose of the LRA. Further, the study sought to find out whether the additional content requirements in the strike notice amount to importing into the LRA additional limitations on the fundamental right to strike that enjoys no textual support. Through an extensive literature review, the findings arguably show that indeed further increasing the limitations on the employees’ right to strike may unduly infringe their right to strike. Moreover, the increase of the content requirements in a strike notice creates an unnecessary hurdle to employees wishing to strike. One of the most important finding made is that instead further increasing the limitations on the right to strike, going back to the basics of negotiation to alleviate strikes, particularly wage-related strikes is vital. To achieve this, it is important for employers to re-establish social and individual relationships with their employees, whereby they become aware of the issues that employees face on a daily basis. Also, establishing proper workplace dialogue and forums would assist employers in becoming aware of employees concerns. This would thereby prevent strikes, as problems can be dealt with beforehand. The findings above informed in the recommendations at the end of the study.

The Criminal Law Amendment Act introduced a scheme where minimum sentences are prescribed for serious offences into the South African Criminal Law. The limitations put on the courts’ sentencing discretion were not received with unanimous approval from all quarters. The Constitutional Court declared the general working of the Act to be constitutional soon after its inception. Specific provisions pertaining to certain offences remained unpopular. The hefty sentence of 15 years imprisonment prescribed for the possession of a semi-automatic firearm is put forward as an example in this regard. High Courts avoid the minimum sentence prescribed for this offence by using different interpretational methods. Despite the sense of animosity towards the unfair contents of this provision, no ruling is made on the constitutionality thereof. An apparent deference towards the legislature could be detected on the part of the judiciary. South African jurisprudence discourages our courts to rule on the constitutionality of a law. It is only done when the defect could not be remedied by any other available means. The reluctance of our courts to make a ruling on the constitutionality of the semi-automatic provision does not promote legal certainty. High Courts attach different interpretations to the “true intention” of the legislature in order to bypass this provision. Logic dictates that inexperienced presiding officers with inferior interpretational skills would continue to hand down the minimum sentence while it remains on the law books. A sentence of fifteen years is also prescribed for robbery with aggravating circumstances. The existing common law on the interpretation of the definition of this offence provides for a wide range of human conduct to be included. Case law could be expected where the courts deviate from the prescribed sentence on a regular basis. This unscientific approach should be discouraged and a rethinking of the boundaries of this offence is suggested. The Act is doing more harm than good to our Criminal Law. The legislature could still provide other visible measures against serious crime without invading the sentencing discretion of the judiciary.

This treatise begins with a discussion of different clauses of the Bill of Rights in the South African Constitution and the land reform policies of the South African government. The inequality and injustice caused by decades of apartheid land law forms the background of the land reform programme. The treatise addresses the consequences of this legacy on the implementation of the South African Constitution including the right to property. The discussion includes the three key elements of the land reform programme namely restitution, redistribution and tenure reform. The content of this treatise ranges over these three elements of land reform, applying constitutional issues to the relevant case law, The balancing and the reconciliation of rights and interest between the individual and the public in a just manner will be the barometer. The conclusion shows that the Constitution both protects existing rights and authorises the promotion of land reform within the framework of Section 25 of the Constitution, and that every aspect of the property clause has to be regarded as part of a constitional effort in balancing individual interest and public interest in terms of a constitutional order. It is my sincere hope that this treatise will contribute toward the achievement of equity, stability and by the values of an open and democratic society based on human dignity, freedom and human rights.

The purpose of the study was to identify causes and consequences of early marriages in Lusikisiki. The population of this study is a convenience sample from Lusikisiki. The researcher thought that this was appropriate because these subjects would be sharing their personal experiences in the form of case studies. The ages of subjects that were interviewed were 40 years & 47 years old (both married early) and those that married late were both 50 years old. The idea that guided the study was an exploratory one aimed at understanding the phenomenon of early marriage. The aim was to explore the following ideas: Young girls are being given into marriage at their early age by their parents because of the bride price (ilobola)Women that are given into marriage early feel victimized by this process early marriage disrupts the school pattern of young girls Men are the main beneficiaries of early marriage.

This research was undertaken to investigate the challenges faced by employees at the Home Affairs Department, the transport Department and the Department of Education at King Williams Town in the Eastern Cape Province. A quantitative approach was used in this research. The sample consisted of 100 respondents of whom 98 returned completed questionnaires. The answers of the respondents were the data of this study and these were analyzed and interpreted in respect of the hypotheses of the research. The research involved the collection of detailed career, personal and structural perceptions of 98 employees. The data was used to establish the disparity among employees, from lower management to top management. It was found that even though there was a problem of discrimination in the olden days there has been a change in the sense that employment equity, affirmative action and diversity management have been introduced since 1994.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the role played by CYCCs to provide support and protection to children who have been found to be in need of care, according to the criteria given in the Children’s Act No. 38/2005 as amended. The study made use of a qualitative approach and the research design was provided by the case study. Data was gathered by means of semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions. The most important findings to emerge from the study were that the factors which affect the operation of CYCCs are either institutional, or else challenges arising from issues pertaining to infrastructure and human resources. However, it was also acknowledged that, despite the challenges which affect their ability to provide their services to young people, the CYCCs had also made progressive steps to halt the suppression of the fundamental rights of children. It has been recommended that the government should apply comprehensive funding to the objectives of the Children’s Act, which would entail increasing the subsidies to CYCCs. It has also been recommended that the Policy on Financial Rewards should call for the same benefits and salary scales to apply for professional staff working in the government and to those working in the CYCCs. The repercussions from failing to adjust to these recommendations will inevitably lead to the employment of a remedial model of care.

M.Ed. / The purpose of this study is to determine whether the question of human rights education has been attended to by schools, and particularly then the following aspects: citizens' rights and political rights. In this study the researcher endeavoured to shed some light on the uncertainty surrounding the education of human rights, in particular citizens' and political rights. The answers to the following questions had to be determined: * why is it important for children to know about these aspects of human rights I why would it seem to be a priority? * are pupils presently being informed about the above mentioned aspects of human rights? * if the answer to the above mentioned question is yes, it leads to the following: to what extend are they being informed? * if it should appear that there are indeed shortcomings in the education programmes in this regard, how severe are they? * what levels of research remains after the completion of this particular study? The literature study involves theoretical descriptions of certain concepts, such as: human rights, the development of a declaration of human rights, the importance of this issue, the legal position of a bill of rights as stipulated in the constitution of a country; the implications of the absence of a bill of rights in the constitutional law of a country. Furthermore certain facets of citizens' and political rights were prominent in this research study: the right to vote; the right to obtain a passport; the right to be allowed back in the country after overseas visits; the right not te be banned; the right not to be intimidated and the right to free participation in the activities of any political party. Validity of the empirical component of the investigation were ascertained by presenting the content thereof to experts in the field, for their approval. Multi-variate Analyses (MANOVA and HOTELLING T-SQUARE) as well as Single variate Analyses (ANOVA, Student T-test, Scheffe test) were used in the statistical analyses of the data. Hypotheses on gender, professional capacity, age, home and tutor language mediums~ religious stance, frequency of obtaining media news through television, newspaper and radio, teachers' experience, subject involvement, and pupil's dependancy position were set. THE MOST IMPORTANT FINDINGS: * at present there exists a definite gap in education programmes as far as human rights' issues are concerned; * specific respondents, grouped according to biographical data, (especially such as difference in home language, age, religion and years of experience) indicate only a slight difference in perceptions regarding pupils' knowledge of the facets of citizens' and political rights, * pupils are well informed about certain facets of the above mentioned rights, but quite poorly informed about some very important facets.