Analysing legal mobilisation’s potential to secure equal access to socioeconomic justice in South Africa

Abstract

From the moment South Africa became a liberal democracy, the Government promised to deliver on social security for the poor. However, South African NGOs have reported that several barriers prevent poor South Africans, and black women in particular, from accessing the country's social assistance system. Government inaction has compelled NGOs to approach the Courts. As reflected in a series of court judgements, many problems faced by the system relate to the administration of payments by South African and multinational corporations. But is this the complete story? Applying a critical, analytical lens of legal mobilisation to explain the potential of legal mobilisation to secure progressive structural change, this article will assess the extent to which civic-based, legal advocacy aimed at securing access to social grants, and challenging the manner in which these grants have been administered, has the potential to more strategically advance socioeconomic justice and inequality for South Africa's poor.

Inequality and the Human Right to Tuition-Free Higher Education: Mobilizing Human Rights Law in the German Movement against Tuition Fees

“…By employing this sort of analysis, we can begin to understand why certain frames are adopted as well as how they fit into a broader cultural context. This article adopts the insights of vernacularization scholars, thinking specifically about how international human rights are "localized" to make sense in a domestic context, and how this translation process contributes to changes both in the demands made by a movement and in that movement's understanding of human rights (Merry 2006;Chua 2015;Kahraman 2018;Handmaker and Matthews 2019). When activists invoke discursive frames, they change the context of their struggle and perhaps even how they envision what they are doing.…”

'Tiptoeing on eggshells...' - between the student-migrant-worker and the law

“…The portrait was less linear and more systemic. Although economically underprivileged actors made less recourse to law and legal institutions, racial and ethnic minorities groups(Handmaker & Matthews 2019), for instance, were more likely to be underprivileged and thus generally less inclined to mobilise the law(Mayhew 1975; Mayhew and Reiss 1969; and Silbey 2005). Thus, generalities such as disadvantaged actors being especially inhibited in their legal mobilisation efforts are largely unhelpful as there are myriad factors at play including objective, psychological and historical…”