Activists berate Traditional Courts Bill in South Africa

However, it has come under heavy criticism from civil society movements and legal experts, who suggest that it might not be constitutional, and that it takes the country back to the era when amakhosi were let loose on traditional communities.

….Sindiso Mnisi, of UCT’s Law, Race and Gender Unit, has strong reservations about the fact that the bill makes a traditional leader the sole presiding officer of a traditional court. “It centralises power in a single individual who may have a conflict of interest in the matter being decided,” he said.

Gender activists fear that, given the patriarchal set-up in traditional and rural communities, the bill might discriminate against women and their participation in these courts.

However, the bill has been defended by traditional leaders in KZN and elsewhere in the country. Bonga Mdletshe, an IFP MPL and its spokesman on traditional affairs, rejected critics of the bill as people seeking to impose “western values” on traditional communities.

Read the whole article.