We were sorry to lose our intern Lehlogonolo Marota at the end of 2015. He left the organisation to pursue articles of clerkship at Legal Aid South Africa (LASA) in Pretoria where he now works in the civil department. He made a significant contribution to our office and we continue to keep in contact with him as our point person for case referrals at LASA.
We welcomed Refilwe Mmusi to our Pretoria team on 1 February 2016 as a legal intern. In addition to her work at the office, she is in charge of the Community Advice Office Support Project for the Pretoria area. Refilwe has aspirations to become a human rights lawyer and sees herself growing within the civil society space.
Our Pretoria office has entered into a partnership arrangement with the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) since the beginning of 2016. We held an Access to Justice Imbizo (outreach) for the community of Mabopane on 20 February with the CCMA and the Department of Labour. The presenters were commissioners of the CCMA, Joseph Maaga and Mohau Ntaopane, Elsie Joubert from the Department of Labour
and Neo Chokoe from the Pretoria ProBono.Org office. The presentations focused on labour law, employees’ rights in terms of labour legislation and how employees can enforce their rights with the assistance of lawyers, the work of ProBono.Org and its projects.
On 31 March our office was invited to attend a Labour Law Amendments workshop convened by the CCMA. The workshop focused on the new amendments to the Labour Relations Act, the Basic Conditions of Employment Act and the Employment Equity Act, the enforcement of arbitration awards and how to stay execution pending review proceedings. The aim of these workshops is to equip and capacitate lawyers with skills to handle labour law cases.
