Programme News
13 March 2012
(News)
Seepage from mines has poisoned the town’s water and government estimates it will cost R200m to fix, writes Sue Blaine
WHEN Water and Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa meets Power Mndebele, a South African Communist Party organiser in Carolina, she meets a young man who is shaking with anger. About 17000 people live in the mining and farming community of Carolina,...
16 February 2012
(Press release)
On the 14th of February 2012, Lawyers for Human Rights and the Centre for Environmental Rights, on behalf of 18 organisations linked to the Mining, Environment and Community Alliance, wrote to Mrs Edna Molewa, Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs where the Minister was urged to address the operation of mines without requisite water use licences acting with impunity exacerbating...
15 December 2011
(News)
In recent months the judiciary has come under attack for being anti-transformative. Yet the Constitutional Court’s most recent judgments reveal its true transformative credentials. They also reveal the transformative potential of the judiciary generally. The violent dispossession wrought by colonialism and apartheid left millions of people without secure access to land. We continue to...
7 December 2011
(Press release)
Today the Constitutional Court delivered two unanimous judgments in favour of the occupants of Mooiplaats and Skurweplaas, located adjacent to the Itireling informal settlement in Pretoria. Lawyers for Human Rights acted on behalf of the occupiers who were to be rendered homeless, as a result of an eviction order granted by the North Gauteng High Court. Leave to appeal the High Court judgments...
7 April 2011
(News)
Environmental and rights groups said yesterday that separate and unequal environmental rules for mines were “no longer defensible”. The organisations complained that they were being sidelined from early efforts to overhaul mining laws.
The 13 groups, including Lawyers for Human Rights, WWF South Africa and the Endangered Wildlife Trust, said the existing rules gave inadequate...
14 December 2009
(Press release)
We, being civil society organizations and individuals concerned with the advancement of the constitutionally protected right to environment that is not harmful to health or well-being and the right to have the environment protected for present and future generations, state as follows:
1. We are extremely concerned about...