UWC Law Faculty’s Community Engagement Coordinator Cherith Sanger

The University of the Western Cape’s Law Faculty has launched a new community outreach campaign aimed at delivering legal advice and information to vulnerable communities through multimedia platforms.

Welcoming participants, which included the Human Rights Commission and NGOs like Ilitha Labantu and the Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce (Sweat) to the launch, Prof Benyam Mezmur - Deputy Dean for Research at the Faculty of Law - said that much of the work of the faculty is rooted in the community.  

“I don’t believe that UWC’s Faculty of Law would be UWC without Mitchells Plain, without Belhar, without Gugulethu, without a whole range of other communities that actually surround us and the ones that we actually serve,” said Prof Mezmur.

“We just don’t want to do teaching that is just going to remain in the four corners of the classroom. We want to be able to do research; we want to be able to do teaching that actually impacts the lived reality of people. Not just only within our neighbourhoods.”

The media series consists of videos featuring faculty members speaking about specific topics of importance to affected communities. UWC-based researcher, filmmaker and entrepreneur, Dr Jacob Cloete, filmed the interviews, which are available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@uwcfacultyoflaw/videos

The videos cover:

• Sex work and human rights
• Domestic violence
• Unfair dismissals
• Cyber bullying
• Unlawful arrest/search and seizure
• Muslim marriages (rights upon dissolution of marriages by divorce or death)
• Domestic partnerships (rights upon dissolution of these relationships)
• Undocumented migrants and human rights
• Evictions

Prof Muneer Abduroaf

“These topics were identified based on the needs of indigent communities. We identified them from experience in working with communities and in checking frequently asked legal questions on the internet. We are planning the second part of the series, in which we will cover more topics. Community engagement for the Law Faculty at UWC always complemented our focus on human rights and social justice,” said UWC Law Faculty’s Community Engagement Coordinator, Cherith Sanger.

“As lawyers we are in a very good place to use our legal knowledge, our skills, and our experience to help give indigent groups access to justice because of the major barriers to justice that are part of the lived realities for many people on  the community level…there’s a real struggle to access justice.” 

The decision to embark on a media community engagement project was based on the findings of the 2023 General Household Survey, which said that about 96% of South African households owned at least one cellphone and 72.6% of these households had access to the internet. Using the media as a platform for making the episodes accessible to communities thus made sense.

Dr Kim-Leigh Loedolf

Dr Kim-Leigh Loedolf gave insights on the legal quagmire in which undocumented migrants often find themselves and the legal recourse they have. Asked by one of her colleagues whether undocumented migrants could show up at the Department of Home Affairs to regularise their status, she answered that this posed a risk because there have been incidents where they have been arrested there in the past. 

“There have been many undocumented migrants as well, who have been kept in police cells for over a month, no trial. They haven’t been brought to a bail hearing at all; they will be denied access to their families, complete denial of basic rights and then they are just released on one day, without reason, without any legal processes being followed,” said Dr Loedolf. 

She strongly advises all undocumented migrants to seek assistance from various institutions, such as Scalabrini or Lawyers for Human Rights, first, where there has been any violation or threat to human rights.

Dr Sagwadi Mabunda

Dr Sagwadi Mabunda, a senior lecturer in the law faculty and a researcher on cybercrime, said the video series is very important, reaching those who need the information the most, and it is a small way in which the faculty can contribute to educating communities.

“Having something like this (video series) which puts all these minds together allows us to make such an impact, I think it's a good opportunity,” said Dr Mabunda.