An Analysis of the Role of Pension Funds Adjudicator in South Africa
This article examines the adjudication of complaints at the Office of the Pension Funds Adjudicator. The article looks at the appointment, powers and functions of the Adjudicator. Members are often not aware of what constitutes a complaint in terms of the Act and accordingly refer frivolous complaints to the Office of the Pension Funds Adjudicator causing unnecessary backlog. The article argued that the insertion of chapter VA has been successful in disposing complaints in procedurally fair, economical and expeditious manners. There are however, disputes that appear to fall within the jurisdiction of the Pension Funds Adjudicator and the Commission, Mediation and Arbitration, in order to evade confusion, this article shall determine which matters are out of the Jurisdiction of the Pension Funds Adjudicator so that members can lodge complaints with the appropriate and relevant forum. The article highlights the time-barring provisions and the implications thereof on the resolution of complaints in terms of the Act. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n13p817
Tribunal Reform: Proportionate Dispute Resolution and the Pursuit of Administrative Justice
The article considers some unresolved policy choices associated with the implementation of proportionate dispute resolution, one of the most interesting ideas in the Department of Constitutional Affairs' White Paper Transforming Public Services: Complaints, Redress and Tribunals, published in 2004. It attempts to put the White Paper into context by tracing the Government's concern with tribunal reform over the last 50 years. It briefly compares the Franks Report, published in 1957, with the Leggatt Report, published in 2001, and outlines the steps that led to the publication, three years later, of the White Paper. It then analyses the similarities and differences in the approaches to reform taken by the Leggatt Report and the White Paper. The article focuses on the principle of 'proportionate dispute resolution', the idea that the ways in which cases are dealt with should reflect the nature of the dispute and what the person in dispute with a public body wishes to achieve. Seven policy options are considered, all of which hold out the prospect of enhancing administrative justice, either by reducing the incidence of disputes or by handling them more effectively. They are then assessed in terms of how well they are likely to do so.
Police and Political Violence in the 1960s and 1970s: Germany and Italy in a Comparative Perspective
Notwithstanding the significant differences between the German and Italian police models (federal and civil vs. centralised and militarised), in both countries the confrontation with the protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s had a profound impact on police conceptions and public order strategies. Police forces in some German federal states (West Berlin) followed a hard line until the late 1960s, while in others (Munich, Hamburg) reforms to the Weimar-centred police intervention tactics took place beginning in the early to mid-1960s. In Italy, traditional police conceptions and strategies remained largely unchanged and re-emerged in 1968. Here, a movement from within the police led to the demilitarisation and unionisation of the state police in 1981. In both countries, fighting left-wing terrorism in the 1970s stimulated technical modernisation and enhanced the centralisation of the police. In critical response to police tactics, in the late 1970s Germany police matters were increasingly perceived as a concern not only of the state but of civil society—even if policing remained a highly contested terrain. In Italy, such matters largely remained state concerns in which only politicians and internal security specialists were entitled to intervene.