A Times report holds that Nummawan’s Stalingrad legal campaign may be stymied by a refusal to pay legal costs by the state. As things stand, those who act for the state tend to live dangerously when it comes to their being paid. This will be worse, as somehow one doubts that loyalty will carry the day. Acting against a state unwilling to pay the costs of suit against itself will take great commitment. This is going to be great fun to watch and, unless Ramaphosa is politically threatened, I cannot see that this will go down. Schadenfreude.
Black man: our Constitutional Court has held that calling another a black man is derogatory and racist, as the starting point of such an enquiry is that we should take into account our history.
Rustenburg Plat Mine CCT 127/17
Proxi Smart: few lawyers would not recognise this name: this company took on the Law Society in an attempt to gain the right to do, what it terms as non-reserved work, within the conveyancing process. The North Gauteng High Court gave it short shrift. Amen.
It is interesting that the distinction between reserved and non-reserved work, in South Africa, was introduced by Dr Bobbert (ex Naudes as they then were) in his thesis published in, if my memory serves, the mid-80s. He argued that attorneys did work which encompassed both reserved and non-reserved work: the latter may be seen as form filling, administrative tasks and the like whilst the former forms the core of its business such as, for instance, litigation.
The fact is that (and my statistics are no longer current but I would be surprised if it were not still so) that income from conveyancing often accounts for 60% of a practice income, rendering the services that Proxy Smart were wanting to render, highly lucrative, if it could breach the prohibition against rendering conveyancing services by non-conveyancers. Do note who acted for the applicant: Brave?
