Professor Pierre de Vos | |
---|---|
Born | Pierre Francois de Vos 29 June 1963 |
Nationality | South African |
Alma mater | Stellenbosch University Columbia University University of the Western Cape |
Occupation | Law professor |
Employer | University of Cape Town |
Relatives | Anna-Marie de Vos SC (sister) [1] [2] |
Website | constitutionallyspeaking |
Pierre Francois de Vos (born 29 June 1963) is a South African constitutional law scholar.
De Vos was born in Messina, Transvaal, (now Musina, Limpopo) and matriculated from Pietersburg High School in Pietersburg (now known as Polokwane). [3] His sister, Anne-Marie, is a well-known advocate. [3]
He obtained a BComm (Law), an LLB and an LLM (cum laude) from Stellenbosch University, an LLM from Columbia University and an LLD from the University of the Western Cape. [4]
De Vos taught law at the University of the Western Cape from January 1993 to July 2009, when he was appointed the Claude Leon Foundation Chair in Constitutional Governance at the University of Cape Town. [5] He was appointed Deputy Dean of the UCT Law Faculty in January 2011. [6]
He has published articles on sexual orientation discrimination and same-sex marriage, [7] the enforcement of social and economic rights, HIV/AIDS, the construction of race, racism and racial discrimination and other human rights issues.
Since September 2006, de Vos has written a blog, Constitutionally Speaking, which deals with South African social and political issues from a constitutional law perspective. He is also a contributor to Thought Leader , a news and opinion website owned by the South African newspaper Mail & Guardian . His blog posts are simultaneously published on the Daily Maverick website. [8] He is a regular media commentator on political and legal events in South Africa and has appeared on SABC and e.tv programmes, various South African radio stations, and on the BBC World Service and CNN International. [9] [10]
He is the chairperson of the Board of the Aids Legal Network, a non-governmental human rights organisation, and also served as a board member of the Triangle Project, a non-profit LGBT advocacy organisation. [4] [11] [12] He is also a member of the advisory council of the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution. [13]
In February 2004, in the first case considered by the Equality Court set up in terms of the Constitution of South Africa, de Vos and his partner won a case against the owners of a gay bar in Cape Town after the owners admitted that they had discriminated against de Vos's partner because of his race. As part of a settlement, which was made an order of court, the bar was ordered to pay R10,000 to Siyazenzela, a non-profit organisation nominated by de Vos's partner. [14]
In 2008 de Vos became embroiled in a spat with Helen Zille, the leader of the official opposition in South Africa, after Zille had criticised Judge Nathan Erasmus for chairing a Commission of Inquiry set up to investigate wrongdoing by her party. [15] Zille had said that "some judges allow themselves to be abused and I am afraid Nathan Erasmus is one of them". [16] Writing on Thought Leader, de Vos took issue with Helen Zille, saying her party, the Democratic Alliance, was being "hypocritical" in trying to shut down the commission and that her comment about Justice Erasmus was "politically stupid" and served to undermine the independence of the judiciary. [17] The Western Cape High Court eventually declared the Commission unconstitutional, but said its judgment should not be read to "suggest that Erasmus J was in any way a party to" the nefarious conduct of the then Premier. [18] [19]
In June 2009, after a radio debate between de Vos and Paul Ngobeni, a supporter of Judge President of the Cape, John Hlophe, de Vos was accused of being a racist who hated Hlophe. "This guy will be joining a group of gangsters who make Hlophe their do-or-die issue. Whites want to entrench themselves in the last unelected branch of government – the judiciary," said Ngobeni. De Vos denied the charge. [20]
In 2009, de Vos was critical of the government's attempt to evict residents of Joe Slovo Informal Settlement in Cape Town and rulings upholding their eviction by the Western Cape High Court and the Constitutional Court of South Africa. [21] In 2010 he was similarly critical of the decision by the City of Cape Town to build open toilets for the residents of Makhaza, a township in Cape Town. [22] [23] He has published many articles in support of the social movement Abahlali baseMjondolo, including commentary on the legal aspects of their occupation of land in Macassar and the attack on the movement in Kennedy Road. [24] [25] [26] [27]
In August 2011, De Vos came out in support of a call by South African Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu's for a once-off wealth tax imposed on those who benefited from apartheid. [28] He stated that the tax would be "a small gesture towards reconciliation and redress". He criticised the FW de Klerk Foundation for rejecting the idea of a reparations tax, and for saying in a media statement that it would be unconstitutional to do so, writing on his blog: "Such measures are not 'reverse discrimination' or 'positive discrimination' but are rather 'integral to the reach of our equality protection'". [29]
In November 2015, De Vos wrote several articles arguing in favour of a change to the language policy at the University of Stellenbosch to eradicate the indirect racial discrimination imposed by the use of Afrikaans at the university. [30]
De Vos is also the author of a novel, Slegs Blankes / Whites Only, written in Afrikaans. It tells the story of a young white South African man coming to terms with his father's involvement in an apartheid-era police hit squad. [31]
Cape Coloureds are a South African ethnic classification consisted primarily of persons of mixed race African, Asian & European descent. Although Coloureds form a minority group within South Africa, they are the predominant population group in the Western Cape.
The University of Cape Town (UCT) is a public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university status in 1918, making it the oldest university in South Africa and the oldest university in Sub-Saharan Africa in continuous operation.
Stellenbosch University is a public research university situated in Stellenbosch, a town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Stellenbosch is the oldest university in South Africa and the oldest extant university in Sub-Saharan Africa, together with the University of Cape Town - which received full university status on the same day in 1918. Stellenbosch University designed and manufactured Africa's first microsatellite, SUNSAT, launched in 1999.
The University of the Western Cape is a public research university in Bellville, near Cape Town, South Africa. The university was established in 1959 by the South African government as a university for Coloured people only. Other universities in Cape Town are the University of Cape Town,, Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) and the Stellenbosch University. The establishing of UWC was a direct effect of the Extension of University Education Act, 1959. This law accomplished the segregation of higher education in South Africa. Coloured students were only allowed at a few non-white universities. In this period, other "ethnical" universities, such as the University of Zululand and the University of the North, were founded as well. Since well before the end of apartheid in South Africa in 1994, it has been an integrated and multiracial institution.
Otta Helene Maree, known as Helen Zille, is a South African politician. She has served as the Chairperson of the Federal Council of the Democratic Alliance since 20 October 2019. From 2009 until 2019, she was the Premier of the Western Cape province for two five-year terms, and a member of the Western Cape Provincial Parliament. She served as Federal Leader of the Democratic Alliance from 2007 to 2015 and as Mayor of Cape Town from 2006 to 2009.
Yahya John Mandlakayise Hlophe is Judge President of the Western Cape Division of the High Court of South Africa.
Donald Barkly Molteno, known as Dilizintaba, was a South African parliamentarian, constitutional lawyer, champion of civil rights and a prominent opponent of Apartheid.
Afrikaners are a South African ethnic group descended from predominantly Dutch immigrants first arriving at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652. They traditionally dominated South Africa's politics and commercial agricultural sector prior to 1994. Afrikaans, South Africa's third most widely spoken home language, evolved as the mother tongue of Afrikaners and most Cape Coloureds. It originated from the Dutch vernacular of South Holland, incorporating words brought from the Dutch East Indies and Madagascar by slaves. Afrikaners make up approximately 5.2% of the total South African population, based upon the number of White South Africans who speak Afrikaans as a first language in the South African National Census of 2011.
Catherine "Kate" O'Regan is a former judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. From 2013 to 2014 she was a commissioner of the Khayelitsha Commission and is now the inaugural director of the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at the University of Oxford.
Joe Slovo is an informal settlement in Langa, Cape Town. Like many other informal settlements, it was named after former housing minister and anti-Apartheid activist, Joe Slovo. With over 20,000 residents, Joe Slovo is one of the largest informal settlements in South Africa.
The N2 Gateway Housing Pilot Project is a large housebuilding project under construction in Cape Town, South Africa. It has been labelled by the national government's former Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu as "the biggest housing project ever undertaken by any Government." Even though it is a joint endeavour by the National Department of Housing, the provincial government of the Western Cape and the City of Cape Town, a private company, Thubelisha, has been outsourced to find contractors, manage, and implement the entire project. Thubelisha estimates that some 25,000 units will be constructed, about 70% of which will be allocated to shack-dwellers, and 30% to backyard dwellers on the municipal housing waiting lists. Delft, 40 km outside of Cape Town, is the main site of the Project.
Roland Athol Price Trollip is a South African politician and provincial chairman of ActionSA in the Eastern Cape. He was previously a member of the Democratic Alliance (DA), serving as the Federal Chairperson of the DA from 2015 to 2019 and the Executive Mayor of the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality, serving from 2016 until he was unseated in a vote of no confidence in 2018.
Dikgang Ernest Moseneke is a South African judge and former Deputy Chief Justice of South Africa.
The KwaZulu-Natal Elimination and Prevention of Re-emergence of Slums Act, 2007 was a provincial law dealing with land tenure and evictions in the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.
Racism in South Africa can be traced back to the earliest historical accounts of interactions between African, Asian, and European peoples along the coast of Southern Africa. It has existed throughout several centuries of the history of South Africa, dating back to the Dutch colonization of Southern Africa, which started in 1652. Before universal suffrage was achieved in 1994, White South Africans, especially Afrikaners during the period of Apartheid, enjoyed various legally or socially sanctioned privileges and rights that were denied to the indigenous African peoples. Examples of systematic racism over the course of South Africa's history include forced removals, racial inequality and segregation, uneven resource distribution, and disenfranchisement. Racial controversies and politics remain major phenomena in the country.
The Judicial Service Commission is a body specially constituted by the South African Constitution to recommend persons for appointment to the judiciary of South Africa.
Christopher Nyaole Jafta is a retired judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa.
South Africa is a secular state, with freedom of religion enshrined in the Constitution.
my sister, Anna-Marie de Vos, SC, argued her case
De Vos became a household name in South Africa four years ago when she and her partner Suzanne du Toit won a Constitutional Court case to be recognised as the legal parents of their two adoptive children.See also Du Toit v Minister of Welfare and Population Development .
Law – Deputy Deans – Professor Pierre Francois de Vos (Undergraduate Studies) (01.01.2011 to 31.12.2013)