The Mission  of the LAT

The Legal Assistance Trust was established in London as a registered charitable trust in 1985. The aims of the Trust are:
To  support the Legal Resources Centre’s mission to work for a democratic society in South Africa and to ensure that the rights enshrined in the Constitution are fulfilled
To  support their client based free legal services by using the law as a instrument of justice for the vulnerable and marginalised
To support their work to build respect for the rule of law thereby enabling the poor to assert and development their rights under the constitution.

And to further assist the LRC, it is also our aim is to promote research into the laws of foreign legal systems as they affect poor people and to publish the results.

The Legal Resources Centre (LRC) was established in 1978 and is South Africa’s oldest and largest non-profit public interest. law organisation.  Our aims are to support the LRC,  the chosen beneficiary of the LAT.

www.lrc.org.za

The History of the LAT and the LRC

Our two organisations formed an exclusive partnership in 1985 to work together towards the achievements of shared goals. Since then the LAT has been raising funds to give poor people in South Africa access to free legal services to secure and defend their rights and to overcome their vulnerabilities.

We have raised donations and grants in the UK from major donors with a view to addressing the central problems facing South Africa today such as poverty, discrimination, HIV /AIDS, homelessness and land restitution. 

We support the LRC’s vital work in seeking to promote stability through the growth of a civil society by increasing access to social and economic rights for South Africa’s most disadvantaged using the law, including South Africa’s constitution, as the instrument to bring this about.  In so doing not only are the rights of the poor and marginalised improved, but respect for the rule of law is greatly enhanced.

BUT THE NEED REMAINS!

The Central Problems Facing South Africa today

In 1996 South Africa celebrated the adoption of its final Constitution together with a Bill of Rights which obliges the government, in particular, to do as much as it can to secure a basic set of public services that comprise people’s social and economic rights.  These include: access to sufficient food and water, social security, basic nutrition, shelter, health care and social services for children; education, an environment that is not harmful to health or wellbeing, a health care service, adequate housing and land on an equitable basis.

Yet South Africa faces ongoing political, social and economic challenges and pervasive inequality with 22 million people living below the poverty line.  Some of the challenges include the changing political dynamic, ineffectual leadership, increases in instances of corruption and over protection of officials. There is also uneven government capability to deliver on the required transformations including delivery of municipal services, rampant unemployment, a crime statistic which compares South Africa to a country in the midst of war and a fragile donor-dependent civil society.
The fight against apartheid has been replaced with the struggle to ensure that the State achieves the realisation of the social and economic rights enshrined in the Constitution.

The LRC and the development agenda

The LRC works exclusively with those in great need and promotes their basic rights, both human rights and  constitutional rights.  It increases poor people’s access to such rights as shelter, water, medical services and women and children’s rights to be free from violence.  Local people are always involved, as clients instructing their lawyers, and the LRC works co-operatively with a large range of other organisations.  The method of working is always to support local organisations and community structures and, where relevant, make links with social movements so that people’s voices are heard and their needs and priorities addressed.

LRC ’s strategic route to accomplishing these ends includes testing cases in law – right up to the Constitutional Court, the highest court in South Africa, to establish precedents and to ensure that in future other communities’ rights will be safeguarded.

By working in this way to ensure basic needs are met, such as the need for security of shelter, and decreasing the fear of losing it, the LRC’s work establishes the base of the MASLOW HEIRARCHY OF NEEDS without which other development interventions cannot take place.  It is part of a necessary pre-condition for development and for other changes to improving people’s lives and livelihoods.

The LRC Meets the Problems

The LRC uses its legal and negotiating skills to tackle the inequalities and injustices of civil society and as those struggles progress, the nature of its work changes in line with the challenges facing society.

The focus of their work includes the following:

1.         Law reform and rural development (communal property rights, tenure security, customary rights             and their impact on women and property rights)
2.         Social services (access to State grants, workmen’s compensation, refugees, healthcare)
3.         Housing & local government (evictions, rental, low cost housing, informal sector access and local             government services)
4.         Environmental justice (air quality, pesticides, waste management and the impact of mining)
5.         Women’s rights (maintenance, shelters for abused women, gender-based violence and domestic             abuse)
6.         Children’s rights (orphans & vulnerable children, justice system failures, guardians’ fund             obligations and state support failures)
7.         HIV/AIDS (monitoring of government structures, social grants, home based care interventions,             extension of ARV treatment, victims of violence & rape, discrimination against sufferers)

The LRC finds that while most of the projects have specific focus areas, the critical issues such as the HIV/AIDS pandemic, disabilities and the problems women and children experience overlap into the above focus areas.