Letter to the National Forum For The Legal Practise Act

Dated: 14 September 2016
TO: THE NATIONAL FORUM FOR THE LEGAL PRACTICE ACT
TO: SOCIAL JUSTICE AND CONSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT STAKEHOLDERS
RE: RECOGNITION AND SUPPORT FOR THE SOCIAL JUSTICE SECTOR
“The Purpose of law is the pursuit of Justice.” Late Dullah Omar.
This urgent communication arises out of interactions with fellow social justice activists and law prac-tioners; events including the Women In Law dialogue held recently; and experiences of our law unit Bambanani Social Justice [BSJ] in fulfilling our roles and responsibilities to our people, inter alia.
It is shockingly clear that not nearly enough has been done to recognize and support initiatives; groups and organizations who work tirelessly to defend, promote and preserve the values enshrined via the Bill of Rights in South Africa. One of the ways this is evident is that this sector is often left out of decision making processes. In addition, glaring lacunae in the law, in violation of the Bill of Rights; makes the recognition of this sector as valuable partners difficult. Funding is often difficult to obtain, with our own BSJ fighting to campaign for our children, students, homeless, miners killed at Lily Mine Barberton in February this year and numerous other causes—cases needing more solidarity.
We must also analyse the rules of existing law societies [and related entities], and implementation:
“The Business Development Manager and Practice Management Officer conduct practice support visits to all new firms and visit any other firms at any time upon request.” “Council must: "provide financial support to organisations or institutions providing legal education and training, including legal education and training for purposes of compulsory post-qualification professional de-velopment, with the object of enhancing the standards of legal services and increasing access to justice;
(xii) provide financial support to legal practitioners, organisations or institutions for the purposes of providing work-place training opportunities for candidate legal practitioners;
(xiii) provide financial support to non-profit organisations and institutions promoting
access to justice for poor people; and
(xiv) pay for services rendered at the request of the Council"
Without support, the social justice sector is often forced to close doors, to turn people away, or to accept funding from [international] sources that they are uncomfortable with, especially where alle-gations of political agendas are involved. Surely this is not what we want as members of civil society when the NPO, NGO, PBO, CBO and related sectors do at least 30% of all the necessary work.
We have to ask ourselves why the situation is as it is - given the various socio-economic crisis our country is suffering over the last 22 years at very least; and,
who benefits from the tragic state of affairs. We also have to ask the National Forum on the Legal Practice Act what solutions it will offer to the public and to parliament regarding the strengthening of the social justice sector. To this effect, we propose to make a presentation with other committed stakeholders to the National Forum ASAP.
“The Legal Practice Act, 2014 (Act 28 of 2014) was signed by the President into law last year 2014. The Legal Practice Act in simple terms aims to transform the legal profession in South Africa. Some of the main challenges clearly evident are the need to make the legal profession representative of the diver-sity of South African society and the need to make the legal profession more accessible to the public.
 See more at: http://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/factsheet-LegalPracticeAct.htm#sthash.zBcoirL6.dpuf
 http://www.lssa.org.za/legal-practitioners/advisories
 http://www.derebus.org.za/legal-practice-act-and-human-rights-at-the-core-of-issues-discussed-at-lssa-agm/
 http://www.polity.org.za/article/the-legal-practice-act-28-of-2014-in-force-but-not-effect-2014-10-21
 http://mg.co.za/article/2013-11-28-legal-practice-bill-fusion-in-disguise

We look forward to your responses, feedback, input, ideas, questions, recommendations.
Justice For All,
Shabnam Palesa Mohamed