It was like a scene from the apartheid era’s liquor and pass raids. Government officials swooped down on Hillbrow in Johannesburg, sending many a grown man running into the night, as street vendors hastily packed up their wares and fled the scene. Most of those arrested were illegal immigrants.

The future of land restitution could hang on the definition of the term ”dispossession”, rather than on the date a community was separated from the land in question, as the present law requires. That much became clear on Thursday at the hearing involving the Richtersveld community and a gold mine.

”Trial by media!” is a frequent, self-defensive cry of those in the media spotlight, as Deputy President Jacob Zuma was this week. The cry is often a red herring, say media analysts, though there are instances where it reflects a real concern.

Bulelani Ngcuka has finally fulfilled his detractors’ greatest fears — or so some legal minds believe. He, they say, has put politics before the law. Durban attorney Saber Ahmed Jazbhay said businessman Schabir Shaik may have a constitutional case against the Scorpions in terms of the right to equality before the law.

Outspoken Rastafarian paralegal Gareth Prince wants the African Human Rights Commission to tamper with a South African Constitutional Court judgement that decrees the use of dagga to be a criminal act, even for ardent Rastafarians.

Police are investigating how three sentenced prisoners at the Vereeniging prison in the Vaal Triangle acquired a firearm they used in an abortive attempt to escape on Thursday last week.

Activist Ruth Smith assists women who are abused. But she will have to wait till daybreak if she needs police assistance when a victim of gender violence calls on her for help after 4pm.