The debt collection industry was dealt a fatal blow in March when it became illegal for companies to attempt to get someone to pay a prescribed (old) debt. But still they try, as this article by Wendy Knowler makes clear. You could be paying prescribed debt right now, even though it is unlawful for companies to collect this from you.

A recent Constitutional Court finding brings to an end the shady practice of "forum shopping" - bringing legal action in a court far from where the creditor lives so as to thwart justice - and all emolument attachment orders now issued must be subject to judicial oversight. 

Quite apart from its well publicised lapses of governance, South African Airways (SAA) has been a serial visitor to the Competition Court since 1998 over accusations that it violated fair competition rules. Recently, the national airline was ordered to pay R104m to Nationwide for infringements of competition rules. This case serves as a useful barometer for meauring damages in similar cases, says Ahmore Burger-Smidt.

Since the year 2000, SA has slipped from the 42nd freest country in the world to 105th - placing us in the bottom third. There are now 14 Africa countries rated higher than SA in terms of overall freedom. As Richard Grant explains, this creates a toxic environment ripe for corruption and graft.

The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) today laid criminal charges against Daniel Mahlangu of BnP Capital, the little-known boutique finance house that stood to gain R256m for arranging finance on behalf of SAA. And in a clear threat to SAA employees who were party to the alleged fraudulent financing scheme, OUTA says they had better come forward with information or they too may be charged.

Garnishee orders have a soggy history in SA. Stories abound of workers trying to survive on R100 a month after garnishee orders had been deducted from their monthly pay. Many of these were granted by clerks of the court in jurisdictions far away from where the victims lived. This is now a thing of the past, after a Constitutional Court decision that garnishee orders must be subject to judicial oversight (rather than issued by clerks of the court), and must be just, equitable and of an appropriate amount, according to Moneyweb.

Prescription in law means a debt or obligation is extionguished after the passage of a certain amount of time. In this review on a recent case that came before the Supreme Court of Appeal, Kirsty Simpson of ENS Africa looks at what happens when you default on a debt and the creditor elects to demand the full amount outstanding, rather than just the arrears (which is known in banking as acceleration).

The ANC is at war with itself, as the Occupy Luthuli House protests affirm. After the local government electoral disaster in which the ruling party lost most of SA's big cities to the opposition, the party of liberation should have entered a period of deep soul searching. Instead it has atomised into various factions each seeking ascendancy and retribution, as this editorial from Mail & Guardian points out.

In this article, Armand Rinier argues against going under debt review. We've had 10 years' experience with debt review and most people find themselves doling out money every month that they can ill-afford. There is a better way - manage the debt yourself, pay only your most important creditors (house and car) and start a personal savings fund to carry you through future financial shocks. As Rinier points out, many of the debts that people are paying are prescribed - meaning they are under no obligation to pay them 

The government and its satrapies obsessess continuously about income equality. This is a convenient flogging horse for those who want more state power. Of course, we will never achieve income equality, which is exactly what government wants. It wants the power to tax and direct the affairs of others. The freeloaders in government will forever declare war on poverty, war on drugs, war on income inequality... So many wars to wage, none of them winnable. Instead of obsessing about income inequality, we should welcome it as a vital ladder of opportunity that everyone is free to climb.

President Jacob Zuma is not one to back down from a fight, particularly one where he was humiliated. In this case, he was forced to appoint Pravin Gordhan as his finance minister after trying to shoe-horn a hopelessly unqualified Des van Rooyen into that post. In this article, Gumani Tshimomola, a researcher for the Economic Freedom Fighter's parliamentary caucus, explains why the decision by certain investors to stop funding SA's state corporations may save SA in the long run.

Tshwane's new Democratic Alliance mayor Solly Msimanga pulled out five forensic reports last week and told recently dethroned ANC councillors that some of them will soon be wearing orange jump suits.

In this interview, author of How Long Will South Africa Survive?, RW Johnson, sees the ANC as a party in retreat, with its more militant members seeking to make Joburg and Tshwane ungovernable, just as they did when the National Party was in control. The ANC has become the National Party version 2, with President Zuma astride a giant system of patronage and corruption. His repeated attacks on his finance minister, Pravin Gordhan, who has refused to sign off on SAA's financial statements, speaks volumes about the feud currently underway eating the heart of the ANC. The question is, can Zuma survive till the next presidential election in 2019? 

John Pilger makes a case for indicting journalists on war crimes. From the Guardian to the New York Times, anti-Russian propaganda is at fever pitch. Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton calls Russian president Vladimir Putin the "new Hitler" and she surrounds herself with cold war warriors baying for a confrontation with Russia. Twenty years after the Yugoslav bombing authorised during Bill Clinton's presidency, egged on with cartoonish propaganda from the Western media, a stunning revelation made barely a mention in the esteemed journals that so shrilly called for blood. A report issued this year exonerated former Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, who died in 2006, of the war crimes of which he was charged. Most likely, you will not have heard of this. All the more reason to hold accountable the journalists who promote and justify wars now raging from Iraq to Syria.

In a recent article in De Rebus, Advocate Douglas Shaw welcomes some recent changes to rules that allow courts to set reserve prices (but do not compel them). This means properties sold in execution may be sold at closer to market price. Shaw also bemoans the fact that SA's repossession regime is among the most backward in the world. More than 100,000 South Africans have had their lives ruined since the Constitution was enacted some 20 years ago.

The Brexit vote, leading to Britain's exit from the European Union, is likely to trigger similar calls from France, Netherlands and other European countries tethered to a sinking economic union and a dodgy Euro. Bank stocks are already seriously under pressure from weak corporate earnings and economic uncertainty. According to this report from CNBC, banks are now preparing for the worst.

It's now become clear that the Hawks' investigation into Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan's allegedly unlawful behaviour while at SA Revenue Services is part of an internal war being waged within the ANC. Gordhan last week refused to attend a meeting with the Hawks, apparently on the advice of his lawyers who told him the investigation has no basis in law. Gordhan is fighting back, saying over the weekend that he would die to save SA from thieves. Just who the thieves are, Gordhan is not saying - for now.

The mainstream media has thrown its weight behind Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party nominee in the upcoming US presidential election. The "prestitutes" as Paul Craig Roberts calls them are willing to overlook her history of warmongering in Syria and Libya, her crooked dealings in the White House, and her willingness to rent American foreign policy to the highest bidder. How else would the once broke Clintons end up with a personal fortune of $120m? Instead, the media rail against Donald Trump, the Republican nominee who, whatever faults he has, is determined to pull the world back from the brink of nuclear war. 

US academic Walter Williams tells us what is happening on college campuses, and it isn't pretty: safe spaces for every perceived victim, segregation according to race and gender identity in the name of "diversity", and the leeching of political prejudice into biology, physics and history. With this, of course, comes a shut down in free debate and the death of academic discourse. God help the employers who have to deal with this wounded lot when and if they finally graduate. 

You give a piece of legislation a name like the Financial Services Regulation Bill and you know people will yawn and turn the page. Yet buried in this proposed law are some whoppers. We are going to get not one, but two, giant bureaucracies that will cost between R4bn and R6bn a year, paid for of course by the consumer. We are adding layer upon layer of regulation in a fruitless attempt to prevent future financial crises. Nobel laureate George Stigler investigated the economic costs of regulation and came to the conclusion that bureaucracies often end up performing no discernible public good, or what he called regulatory capture.

French economist and philosopher Frederic Bastiat wrote The Law in 1850. It should be required reading for law makers, judges and legal practitioners. Bastiat argues that the law exists in a very narrow sense to protect the individual's body, liberty and property. Beyond that, tyranny beckons. 

The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) has become a major thorn in the side of State-Owned Enterprises. It started out by launching SA's most effective consumer boycott of e-tolls in 2013, and has since put SAA and now Eskom in its sights. OUTA is doing the work that public watchdogs and regulators are supposed to do - but don't.

The Democratic Alliance (DA), with the support of smaller parties, is set to appoint mayors for Johannesburg and Pretoria. The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party will not join a formal alliance with the DA, but will vote with it on specific issues.

More blacks voted for the Democratic Alliance than did whites, and in a city with just a 15% white population - Nelson Mandela Bay - a white mayor in the form of Athol Trollip is about to take office. The ANC's attempt at racial mobilisation has failed, just as the National Party of old attempted to scare white voters with the "black threat". The ANC's troubles from here will likely multiply, showing how far of course the party of liberation has strayed.

The Constitutional Court declared that the Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Act was invalid on Thursday last week, citing lack of public participation prior to its promulgation.