Mootness and the Approach to Costs Awards in Constitutional Litigation: A Review of Christian Roberts V Minister of Social Development Case No 32838/05 (2010) (TPD)

Abstract

After nearly three years of waiting, the North Gauteng High Court (then the Pretoria High Court) finally handed down judgment in March 2010 in the case of Christian Roberts v Minister of Social Development.^[1] The case was a constitutional challenge to section 10 of the Social Assistance Act 13 of 2004 and the relevant Regulations, which set the age for accessing an old age grant at 60 for women and 65 for men. After the hearing the High Court had reserved judgment. Pending judgment the government had amended the legislation in dispute so that the pensionable age for the purposes of accessing a social grant would be equalised over time. Despite the change in legislation, the High Court found against the applicants and punished them with a costs order.   

*      Siyambonga Heleba. LLB (UWC), LLM (UU), Adv Cert (AAU) Dip (UJ). Lecturer, Faculty of Law, University of Johannesburg. Email: scheleba@uj.ac.za. This case note is based on a the paper presented at the Law Teachers Conference on 18 January 2011, at the University of Stellenbosch. The author is indebted to the two anonymous referees for their valuable comments on an earlier draft of this note. All mistakes are mine.

[1]     Christian Roberts v Minister of Social Development Unreported Case No 32838/05 (2010) (TPD). The author attended the two-day hearing of the case in September 2007, in his capacity as a researcher at the Community Law Centre, of the University of the Western Cape, and an amicus in the case.