Photo: Hercules Du Preez Wessels, Chloe Kilgour, Katherine Woodhouse, Kelly-Ann Rock, Nikki Baguley, Christina Pitt, Grantham Williams
Saving individuals from a private hell, helping farm dwellers access their rights and providing special assistance to the disabled are just some of the cases that the Stellenbosch University (SU) Law Clinic takes on each year.
Thanks to a recent grant of R1 million from the Claude Leon Foundation, staff and students can focus on what they do best: passionately defending the often defenceless of society.
“We truly value the significant contribution that this foundation continues to make to the Law Clinic and the community we serve,” said Dr Theo Broodryk of SU’s Faculty of Law. “The cases we take on involve extensive investment in time, energy and resources. We would be unable to do this work without our partners,” he adds.
The Claude Leon Foundation supports projects that tie in with its five strategic themes: building research capacity in higher education, supporting innovation in schooling, early childhood development, defending democracy, and building opportunities for post-school youth.
“As we regard their work to be of considerable importance, we are delighted to continue our close association with the Legal Aid Clinic,” said Mr William (Bill) Frankel (OBE), chairperson of the foundation.
This South African charitable trust has been a valuable partner of SU for more than 30 years and has contributed more than R45 million towards postdoctoral fellowships, merit awards for lecturers, honours bursaries and the expansion and operations of the Law Clinic, among others.
“We appreciate the continued investment of the Claude Leon Foundation in what we do,” says Broodryk. “They have supported the Law Clinic since 2007 and the continuation of this aid with a grant of R1 million will be spread over two years starting from 2018.”
Gender rights case study
A recent case taken up by the Law Clinic was a request from a social welfare organisation to assist a 17 year old, whose parents had found out that she identified as a lesbian. Her parents had taken her out of school and arranged a cleansing ritual to take place in a rural area in the Eastern Cape, where she would be forcibly married to a local man.
The cleansing ritual involved ‘corrective rape’ by the man who would marry her.
Members of the Law Clinic arranged that she be housed in a place of safety and obtained the necessary interdicts against various members of her family. She was busy with her matric exam at the time and the school she was enrolled at was not willing to adhere to the interdicts. They worked with the Department of Education in the Western Cape and arranged that she could write her final exams at another school. She passed her exams and is currently living somewhere safe.
Special needs client
A client was referred to the Law Clinic by another attorney who was no longer willing to assist on a pro bono basis. The client, who is deaf, had been handed off from one attorney to another at least five times before ending up at our office. They arranged for an interpreter with the Language Centre on campus to consult with the client and go to court with them.
The client had faced extreme difficulties in communicating her needs, especially those pertaining to the children. They were able to resolve some of the issues she faced and the Law Clinic continues to use alternative dispute resolution mechanisms in an attempt to resolve the remaining issues.
There are the kinds of cases that students at the Law Clinic are working with, providing invaluable real world experience while bringing much needed relief to the maligned of society.
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