Facts of the matter
E was born on 25 August 2014. On 5 October 2018, in contravention of two orders by the courts of Luxembourg, the mother abducted E from Luxembourg, which was her habitual residence, and settled in South Africa.[1]
It was an amazing glitch: though a majority of Malawi’s highest court was seen to have declared the death penalty unconstitutional in a decision delivered late April, the court now says this isn’t so. According to a ‘perfected’ version of the judgment, published this week, the lead writer of the April decision was expressing his own views on the death penalty, not those of his colleagues.
In a week that saw South Africa’s highest court order the country’s former President, Jacob Zuma, to serve a prison sentence for contempt of court, the second-highest court also had to deal with a litigant who expressed contempt, using language that must be unheard of in contemporary law reports. The five judges who heard this second matter said the litigant’s contempt would be referred to the national director of public prosecutions for action.
Read judgment
During the early days of South Africa’s lockdown and associated government regulations, a then little-known organisation, the Liberty Fighters Network (LFN), took the government to court, challenging the constitutionality of the regulations.
