Insights into Law: Articles, Analysis, and Legal Perspectives

In June 2017, a Walter Sisulu University student was due to receive her monthly NSFAS food allowance of R1 400. Instead, more than R14 million appeared in her student account. Over the weeks that followed, she spent about R818 000 of it. In 2022 the East London Regional Court convicted her of theft. On appeal, the Eastern Cape High Court confirmed that conviction, although it replaced her prison term with a wholly suspended sentence. Most of us will never wake up to R14 milli

Introduction It is usually one page. It arrives tucked into a credit application, a lease or a supplier account. Someone says "it's just standard", and you sign. That page may be a deed of suretyship. With one signature, you have promised to pay another person's or company's debt out of your own pocket if they do not. Your house, your savings and your car can all be on the line for a debt you never personally incurred. Suretyships are among the most common documents in South

There is a particular kind of fear that comes with not knowing where someone you love is. The unanswered calls. The hours that stretch past when they said they would be home. The question that will not let you rest: are they safe? If you are living through that right now, you are not alone, and you are not powerless. There are clear, practical steps you can take immediately, and legal protections designed to help you take them. Recent events in Ekurhuleni have once again plac

Most people sign a gym membership without reading it, and only look at it when they want out. By then the conversation has usually moved to a cancellation fee. The law is more helpful than most members realise. Section 14 of the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 governs fixed-term contracts, and it overrides what your membership agreement says. But it is not a free pass, and much of what circulates online about cancelling "for free" is wrong. Here is what the Act actually gi

On 21 March 1960, Sharpeville became one of the defining symbols of apartheid-era state violence. Police opened fire on a crowd protesting the pass laws, killing and injuring scores of people. 66 years later, the events of that day are back before the courts. On 3 September 2026, survivors of the Sharpeville massacre and family members of those killed launched a proposed class action against the South African government. They seek compensation and are challenging the aparthei

In 2021, South Africa became the only country in the world to grant a patent listing an artificial intelligence system, not a person, as the inventor. Every other patent office and court that has looked at the same invention has said no. Here's what actually happened, and why it matters more now than it did then. On 28 July 2021, South Africa's Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) granted patent number 2021/03242. Nothing about that is unusual, as thousands o

Who are you? Not what degree hangs on your wall. Not how much money sits in your bank account. Not the title on your business card. Not the car you drive, the house you own, or the possessions you have accumulated. Who are you when none of those things matter? The recent tragic event involving two brilliant young people has left many South Africans heartbroken. As a society, we naturally search for answers when faced with such loss. We ask what happened, why it happened, and

Something has shifted. You can feel it in the way people drive, the way they queue, the way they approach a negotiation. The default assumption has quietly changed: people are not trusted until proven trustworthy. Kindness is met with suspicion. Generosity is read as weakness. We have become, in many respects, a society that expects the worst from one another — and then wonders why it so often gets it. This is not a new observation. But it is an increasingly urgent one. Ubunt

For close to two years the profession has been having the same uncomfortable conversation about artificial intelligence, and it has always had the same shape in that a practitioner under deadline pressure asks an AI tool for authority; the tool obligingly invents a case; the fiction survives into heads of argument; a judge notices. Mavundla and Northbound Processing are the known examples. In each, the court was the party that caught the error. A full court of the Gauteng

On 28 July 2026, an earthquake measuring magnitude 7.1 struck Kumamoto Prefecture in southern Japan. The tremor, which the Japan Meteorological Agency has officially named the 2026 Kumamoto earthquake, forced roughly 300 000 residents to evacuate to shelters. A shopping mall partially collapsed, reportedly followed by an explosion believed to be caused by a gas leak, and rescue teams worked through the night searching for survivors. By the following morning, Japanese authorit

Picture this: your HR team uses AI to shortlist candidates, your accounts team leans on it to review financial information, and the person at the next desk uses it to draft a contract clause or pull together research for a report, without noticing the mistake buried inside or a client chats to your AI-powered support bot, gets the wrong advice and acts on it. Who carries the blame? It's a question more South African professionals and businesses are being forced to ask in 2026

If you are reading this over breakfast, you are probably less than an hour from your first robot. It is worth knowing, before you pull out of the driveway, that the law waiting at that intersection changed more this month than it has in a generation - and that the part everyone fears, the demerit points, is the one part that has not started yet. What happened on 1 July After a quarter-century of false starts, the national rollout of the Administrative Adjudication of Road Tra

A guide to the August 2026 board exams The board exams are set for 5 and 6 August 2026, and with them comes the familiar mix of pressure, preparation, and not nearly enough hours in the day. Having written boards myself, I wanted to share some of what I've learned — what worked, what didn't, and what I'd do differently. This follows on from the pieces I wrote last year on lessons learned as a candidate attorney, but this time the focus is squarely on exam strategy. Here's a p

Bafana gave us our best World Cup in 16 years. It also gave criminals their best season in years. While the country was glued to Bafana Bafana's historic run - a first knockout appearance since 2010, ended by a cruel 92nd-minute Canada winner in the round of 32, two quieter contests were playing out behind the football: a global fight against illegal streaming, and a local one against illegal, unregulated betting. Both carry real legal consequences. And increasingly, not jus

The contract has always been law's most practical instrument. For centuries its architecture has remained unchanged: offer, acceptance, the intention to be bound. What is changing rapidly is the medium. Smart contracts are already active in South African financial markets, insurance products, and trade finance. They perform without intermediaries, settle without delay, and, critically, execute whether or not the parties are ready for the legal consequences. Our law has not ke

Imagine sitting around the dinner table on a Sunday afternoon when the conversation shifts from casual catch-ups to a pressing worry. A cousin’s small business is facing an unfair contractual dispute, a sibling is struggling with a landlord over a lease agreement, or a parent is feeling overwhelmed by an administrative hurdle. When the stress in the room rises, all eyes inevitably turn to one person: the relative who happens to be a lawyer. It is an incredibly natural instinc

I am not an attorney. I do not argue in court, interpret legislation, or draft pleadings, and I am certainly not in a position to comment on or write about legal principles, governance, or regulatory matters. Having spent a lifetime working within a law firm, I have observed a reality that most people only come to recognize when it’s already too late. Most legal matters do not begin as legal matters. They begin as everyday decisions - small, ordinary moments that do not feel

A significant legal challenge is currently before the Gauteng Division of the High Court, Pretoria, concerning the validity and implementation of South Africa’s Legal Sector Code introduced under the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (“B-BBEE”) framework. The matter was brought by several of South Africa’s largest commercial law firms — including Deneys (formerly Norton Rose Fulbright South Africa), Bowmans, Werksmans and Webber Wentzel — against the Minister of Trade, I

If you have ever opened a bank account, instructed an attorney, or signed up with an estate agent and been asked for copies of your ID, proof of address, or details about the source of your funds — you may have wondered whether that business is entitled to ask for all of that. The short answer is yes. But there are rules about how much they can ask for, what they can do with it, and how long they can keep it. Two laws working side by side South Africa has two major pieces of

A judgment handed down in the Gauteng High Court last week has sent ripples through the South African legal profession. In a ruling that many newly admitted attorneys have long awaited, Judge Norman Davis declared unconstitutional the three-year waiting period that prevented attorneys from appearing in the country’s superior courts immediately upon admission. It is a landmark moment for the profession — and a case that reveals important truths about equality, rationality