Special Hearings — Legal Hearings — 1997-10-27

YASMINE SOOKA: Thank you, Professor. Ms Loots?

CHERYL EILEEN LOOTS: Thanks, Madam Chair. I would just like to add that when I joined the Society of Law Teachers in 1983, it was very much dominated by the Afrikaans law faculties and there was very much an attitude of we are an apolitical organisation don't raise anything political at meetings or anything which might be labelled political was always immediately subdued by that attitude.
 That did change over the years. I became active in the Society from about 1987, which coincidentally, and it wasn't that I had anything to do with it, was the year in which as David explained some - more pro-active resolutions did start coming out of the Society, but I do think that we could have done a lot more during those years, during the late 80's, during the early 90's. We could have reached out much more than we did to our Black colleagues. It was only in 1994 that Black academics started joining the Society in considerable numbers and I would say that it's only this year when we held our congress at the University of the North that they finally felt at home in the Society and felt as though they belonged.
 I think we really could have done a lot more during those years. Thank you.

YASMINE SOOKA: Thank you very much. Professor, do you want to add anything?

UNKNOWN: No, that's fine. We're ready for questions.

YASMINE SOOKA: Hanif?

MR VALLY: Thank you, Madam Chair. Professors, I'm looking through the lengthy submissions being made by the various law faculties and having just heard Prof Loots now talking about the Society didn't want to get involved in politics, I can understand the predicament of the attorneys as the hen and chicken argument comes in. We're talking human rights and not politics and law professors also have that same misconception. It's very interesting to hear all the anecdotal stuff and I'm sure it's very true, but the question is this, and this is a quote from one of the submissions.
"The vast majority of South African law teachers made little or no attempt to prevent the gross human rights violations which were built into the legal system. To protest against them or at least to point them out to Government, the students or the community."
This is from one of the submissions. What is your response to that?

UNKNOWN: I think that's perfectly true. It's a pity some of those - I know we haven't got time - some of those submissions you might want to read into the record as well, particularly from some of the Afrikaans Universities, because some of them are acts of contrition now that might be worth looking - I don't know what your mechanism is later, but I think that's true. I don't have any disagreement with that.

MR VALLY: Secondly, and this is an ongoing issue. It's a question we've already asked Prof Lewis. In terms of the constituency of your faculties, in terms of both representivity as well as hanging onto training for dear life; there isn't a kind of diversity which will make a break from the past like is required of most institutions in South Africa. What's your comment regarding that?

UNKNOWN: Yes, I can't speak for all the universities. I can tell you what it was happening at our university now; that the university has an affirmative action programme and if you can't get people who are representative, you can only make contract appointments. In other words you can't have tenure. But you're quite right. Our particular university -we now have got a law school where 82 percent of the students are Black, but something like only 20 percent of the staff are Black. So it's not representative and 50 percent are women now. That would at least help us a bit, but it certainly, in terms of race, it's not nearly representative.

MR VALLY: Yes, do you want to comment?

CHERYL EILEEN LOOTS: If I can comment that Wits has long had an affirmative action policy, but it's been just the same yes. Our faculty, as far as the staff is concerned, is almost as unrepresentative as it's ever been. We've certainly had a lot more success with the student body and there we have over 50 percent Black. We haven't done as well as them, but certainly again I think the faculties could have been a lot more proactive than they have been.

MR VALLY: Just looking at some of the submissions being made especially by the Afrikaans Universities, you have a document here from the Potchefstroom Universiteit vir Christelike Hoer Onderwys, Potchefstroom University for Higher Christian Education and it's entitled - Luthuli for president or the profession - the Professors Rebellion of 1959 a PUK, so there clearly was some debate going on on what the level was and now the question or the issues were - was another question.
 What I want to know, is how do you envisage training this next generation of law students to be critical and not fall into the trap that was so lucidly set out by the Association of Law Societies, where they can stand up for human rights and not get confused by deciding that it's political?

UNKNOWN: That was one of the challenges that we had to meet during our efforts to bring into being the new four year LLB. One of the things, there were a whole lot of criticisms of the current system, the one was this whole thing of positivism and the way we're looking at dealing with that as apart from having diversity courses, which is going to make people genre sensitive and all the rest as part of the courses, but also focusing on clinical teaching in the sense of experiential learning as well. Clinical teaching involves you critically looking at everything, not just accepting this is what the law is. So, part of the idea of the new LLB is to completely transform the teaching methods. Now, that is a major challenge to us, because we've now got to retrain the teachers. So the Society is looking at mounting and we hope we'll get some assistance from justice for this with a programme to try and expose teachers to new teaching methods to cope with the new LLB.

MR VALLY: My final question is the one that we've asked other people. One of the methods which has failed thus far of checking or testing the decisions and judgments of the judges has been academic writing. Now, in addition to academic writing, do you have any suggestions of how the judiciary can interact with the common persons? Because one of the greatest fears is interacting with people who are not judges.

UNKNOWN: Yes, I've mentioned that at street law example. I think we could take it further and do what they do in British Columbia where they actually used the courtrooms as a sort of venue for a seminar. If at lunch time magistrates or judges would be available, you could come and run a little seminar there, do a little introductory lecture or something and then let the judge sit there in the court room and get members of the public share ideas and things. It's a question of trying to give the judges and magistrates I think an opportunity to interface with the public. That's apart from judicial training seminars, all those sort of things. But I think there is a way of dealing with that. We should be making our courts user-friendly. Open them up, use them not as places where you're just dispensing justice and where people very often think it's injustice, but let's use them as a place people want to come to, because we can sit today and talk to judges, magistrates; try and humanise the face of the judiciary.

MR VALLY: Thanks, I'm through.

YASMINE SOOKA: Thank you. Ilan?