In this week’s post, African Law Matters features an interview with Professor David Vital on his book, Trust Courts and Social Rights: A Trust-Based Framework for Social Rights Enforcement. The book proposes a compelling framework for the judicial enforcement of socio-economic rights grounded in the concept of political trust. Given its potential value for the enforcement of socio-economic rights on the African continent and its rich engagement with South Africa’s socio-economic rights jurisprudence, this conversation is particularly timely and valuable.

Ahead of her upcoming publication in CCR XIV, Dr Rishika Sahgal analyses and critiques two cases decided by the apex courts in India and South Africa in 2022, Janhit Abhiyan and Social Justice Coalition. These cases reveal that even when poverty is recognised as a ground within equality law, several tensions or barriers to achieving substantive equality for the impoverished may arise.

In this week’s post, the author examines the Constitutional Court’s decision in Thubakgale v Ekhurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality and highlights five analytical reasoning defects in the judgment.

United Nations Special Rapporteur, Olivier De Schutter calls for an end to ‘povertyism’ - the discrimination & negative attitudes that bar people in poverty from fully accessing their rights and for states to include socio-economic status as a suspect ground in national anti-discrimination frameworks.