ALEXANDRA – Residents get their own pool of human rights practitioners.
Twenty-three Alex residents graduated from legal firm ENSAfrica’s sixth session of the Constitutional Law and Human Rights course, which began in 2011.
Conducted for six months, the course consists of lectures by legal experts, research, debates and experiential learning through visits and mock sessions of legal practice activities, including at the Constitutional Court.
The firm’s Ngwako Raboshakga said participants were selected from community activists who are expected to use the knowledge gained to help promote the rights of those who can’t access them so that they, too, can be more aware and use them to hold government officials accountable. “The participants included teachers, political leaders, Joburg City Council and government officials and councillors, youth activists, trade unionists and traditional healers and leaders,” Raboshakga said.
Happy Constitutional law and human rights course graduates after their certification.
They visited the Constitutional Court for experiential learning from a court session, the infamous prison cells of the apartheid era, and were briefed by young lawyers working in communities. Also, they interacted with local schoolchildren who took part in the national moot court competitions. Raboshakga hopes the interaction with the lawyers and children will increase the pool of legal practitioners at the disposal of the community.
Participant, Sydney Mathebula who is chairperson of the Alex Traditional Healers and Indigenous Religious Leaders Association, lauded the course. He said it was an essential exposure on constitutionalism and rights for anyone serving the public. “Knowledge is power and it is imperative for traditional healers and leaders to know the law so that they don’t transgress the rights of clients, who sometimes seek redress from the courts,” he said.
Mathebula intends sharing the acquired knowledge with other association members, encourage them to also attend the course to enable them to practice within the law and defend themselves when abused.
In cases of referrals to clinics and other service providers, he said they tended to denigrate the traditional healing profession, unaware that it was also regulated and recognised by the government.
He reminded government officials and the public, that findings in a Wits University study, found that 80 per cent of the African population relied on traditional healers before they went to clinics.
