Eight years ago debt counsellor Fanie Grové started looking at vehicle loan statements from his clients and was staggered by what he saw: in every one of more than 80 cases he examined where the borrower had fallen into arrears, he says the bank was unlawfully overcharging interest. In some cases, the overcharge was 40-50% more than the interest allowable in terms of the National Credit Act (NCA).

In a moment of anger, ANC member Velaphi Khumalo let rip on Facebook that SA needed to be cleansed of whites, who needed to be treated as Hitler did to the Jews. He was responding to an earlier racist comment from Penny Sparrow who referred to blacks “as monkeys”. Both, no doubt, have come to rue their incautious remarks. Both recanted. But Judge Roland Sutherland of the Gauteng Equality Court was not happy with Khumalo’s apparent recantation, especially as he more recently decided it wasn’t hate speech after all. Khumalo's remarks have been declared hate speech by the Equality Court.

Banks seeking judgment against borrowers should use the magistrates’ courts, the Pretoria High Court has ruled. By bringing trifling matters before the high courts, banks are clogging up the justice system.

The Pretoria High Court struck another blow on behalf of distressed debtors last week. A full bench of three judges ruled that magistrate’s courts should be the first port of call for financial institutions seeking judgment against their clients, where matters fall within the lower courts’ monetary jurisdiction. This makes it cheaper for people to defend matters against the banks.

As we mark the 10th anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, economist Michael Hudson looks back over what we have learned in the last decade. Criminally, the major banks were bailed out but not the mortgage bond holders. Banks are bigger and more profitable than ever, but we have now entered an era of debt deflation - meaning more and more of our money is going to pay back bank debts. There is less disposable income available to purchase goods. Don't be fooled by the apparent calm of the financial system - the only way out of this is for banks to fail, or the grisly alternative - a Greece-style austerity programme, with depopulation, job losses and massive economic shrinkage.

Last week’s Joburg court case forcing judges to impose reserve prices on all auction sales resulting from bank repossession has several important ramifications, not least of which it paves the way for a class action suit against the banks for decades of stealing people's home equity in violation of the Constitution.

A full bench of the South Gauteng High Court ruled on Wednesday that repossessed homes may no longer be sold at auction without reserve prices, except in exceptional circumstances.

A full bench of the Johannesburg High Court sat last week to deliberate on how and when reserve prices should be applied before repossessed homes are sold at sheriffs’ auctions. The three judges berated the banks for arriving in court without proper paperwork and expecting to be given judgments against clients.                        

Three black Limpopo landowners have forced Police Minister Bheki Cele and Soshanguve station commander Brigadier Samuel Thine to take action against people who invaded their land in Onderstepoort‚ north of Pretoria. They turned to AfriForum to defend against the land invasion. It has also been reported that Cape Town has experienced a 53% increase in land invasions last year. As several observers have pointed out, these are the inevitable consequences of reckless talk surrounding expropriation with compensation. 

Court papers filed in the South Gauteng by two of the major mortgage banks – Standard and Absa – provide a fascinating insight into the health of SA’s property sector. There are about 8 million properties in SA, of which 82% are residential. This amounts to 6,5 million residential properties, of which 33,5% are bonded. The bonded properties were worth R2,6 trillion in 2017, amounting to 52,4% of the total value of all residential properties in SA, and 56,5% of GDP.

Agricultural industry association AgriSA said on Tuesday that it welcomed the African National Congress’s (ANC’s) policy commitments regarding agrarian reform and agricultural property with respect to the ongoing debate on the expropriation of land without compensation.

Ordinary bank clients are seldom legally successful against the giant banks to which they entrust their money, even when the banks make terrible mistakes. That’s why the Namibian case of Faida Trading has intrigued legal writer Carmel Rickard. In her A Matter of Justice column on the Legalbrief site, she wonders what caused Nedbank to resort to what looks to her like bullying tactics rather than owning up to an awful and unexplained error by their staff. In the end the judge slammed the bank for being ‘unreasonable’, ‘obdurate’ and ‘brazingly negligent’ – but the customer was put through the wringer in getting there.

A landmark case to decide how banks should deal with home repossessions will be heard on 28 and 29 August in the South Gauteng High Court.

Court papers filed in the Western Cape High Court last week by University of Stellenbosch’s Law Clinic and Summit Financial Partners make for disturbing reading. They are asking the court to stop creditors from loading unlawful costs onto the accounts of distressed debtors, which they reckon has cost debtors R1 billion in unlawful fees. 

People Against Petrol and Paraffin Price Increases (Papppi), headed by Visvin Reddy, is calling for a 35% drop in fuel prices. Did you know that 38% of what you pay at the pump goes to levies and taxes? And that nearly R2 goes to the bankrupt and corrupted Road Accident Fund? Reddy has had enough. He put out a video stating his case for a fuel price reduction and it got 500,000 hits. Just as Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) has thrown a crowbar into e-tolls, so may Papppi bring enough social pressure on government to rein in this runaway train.  

SA is being blasted by the foreign press. The New York Times climbed into deputy president David Mabuza, former provincial leader in Mpumalanga, for the sad state in which he left the province's public services. According to current and former ANC officials, he siphoned off money from schools and other public services to buy loyalty and amass enormous power, making him impossible to ignore on the national stage and putting him in position to shape South Africa for years to come. The Times wonders how well this sits with President Cyril Ramaphosa's campaign to end corruption?

The business rescue practitioners trying to save the eight Gupta-owned companies placed under business rescue in February have had to face down 42 court cases in less than four months. That works out at more than 10 a month.

By all accounts, these were the freest elections held in Zimbabwe in more than two decades. But, as MDC representative for South Bulawayo Eddie Cross (who retained his seat) reports, there were clear irregularities. The street riots that took place in Harare last week were entirely understandable, given the historic bias of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC). This time, however, the ZEC appears to have discharged its duties with reasonable diligence. As Cross points out, there is a real chance Zimbabwe has swerved from the edge of the abyss and can now begin the arduous task of reconstruction after three decades of plunder under former President Robert Mugabe.

One of the most popular methods by which South Africans purchase immovable property is through a loan from a bank. This process involves a mortgage bond being registered over the immovable property as security by the bank to ensure that if a person fails to pay back the loan, the bank can rely on this as security in order to claim any outstanding money owed to them.

Zimbabwe's first post-Mugabe election looks like a neck-and-neck race between President Emmerson Mnangagwa's Zanu-PF and the MDC's Nelson Chamisa. MDC parliamenarian Eddie Cross looks at a numnber of potential outcomes, including the possibility of a coalition in the event there is no clear winner. We also look at Al Jazeera's coverage of the lead-up to the elections.

Cricket legend Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) won the country's recent election and promises a huge clean-up of corruption. What is also clear is that he plans a realignment with Pakistan's so-called ally, the US. He failed to win an outright majority, but will be able to secure control through a coalition with smaller regional parties.

The corruption case against former president Jacob Zuma and French arms company Thales has been postponed for a further three months to allow the defence teams to make applications for a permanent stay of prosecution.

Labour brokers have been dealt a major blow after the Constitutional Court ruled on Thursday that they were not dual employers when their clients absorb contract workers as permanent staff.

During the last few months, Cape Town Mayor Patricia de Lille has been in and out of court, facing off against her own political party, the Democratic Alliance, which has been moving heaven and earth to get rid of her. Something similar may be on the cards in Knysna and George as well, where the DA is at loggerheads with the mayors that represent it in those municipalities. The SA Catholic Bishops' Conference Parliamentary Liaison Office looks at the growing number of "lawfare" cases - which are argued through the courts rather than in the political arena - and asks whether this beneficial for our democracy.

Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa and the ruling Zanu-PF hope a credible victory in the July 30 election will legitimise the power (both party and state) they gained from the “soft coup” that toppled his predecessor Robert Mugabe last November, but a recent poll shows the opposition MDC closing the gap.