- Cape Town's legal practitioners have continued to offer free services to vulnerable groups during the Covid-19 pandemic.
- ProBono.Org's Cape Town office participated in a Covid-19 Legal Support Hotline.
- It also partnered with legal firms to produce community focused videos on topics such as retrenchments and public transportation under lockdown restrictions.
The Covid-19 pandemic did not stop the wheels of social justice from turning for the vulnerable in Cape Town.
"The current pandemic has undoubtedly affected the operations of the Cape Town office and resulted in an abrupt halt of all planned activities and collaborative efforts," said Uzair Adams, founding director of ProBono.Org's Cape Town office.
ProBono.Org, which also has offices in Johannesburg and Durban, describes itself as an organisation that aims to improve policy, legislation and administrative practice by identifying impact or strategic litigation cases for private sector legal professionals and creating special projects to address the needs of vulnerable groups.
Adams said during the nations hard lockdown, ProBono.Org participated in a Covid-19 Legal Support Hotline, while the Cape Town office specifically had a dedicated WhatsApp number for telephonic legal advice and assistance.
"While we may have experienced a great decline in the number of clients contacting us for assistance, we have however started seeing a slow and steady increase in our client numbers since the office reopened earlier this year. Though, in order to abide by the regulations and to mitigate any risk, we have decided to limit our number of client consultations to 7 per day, Mondays to Thursdays."
Help at hand for those in need of legal services
Making access to justice more easily realisable to the poor, Adams said part of the work of ProBono.Org's Cape Town office has been to establish several legal clinics and help desks in collaboration with private law firms and community partners within marginalised communities.
In a bid to promote the rights of the poor, and the rule of law, Adams has been recruiting a panel of private legal practitioners to avail themselves to assist those in need of legal services on a consistent basis and who promote pro bono giving.
Drawing on this vast network of contacts, his office created a special project to address the needs of vulnerable groups, whilst still providing a measure of public legal education on rights and legal services during the initial stages of the country's lockdown.
"In light of the Covid-19 pandemic and the regulations pertaining to social distancing, we were unable to plan and arrange legal education community workshops and rights awareness interventions since ProBono.Org staff and private legal practitioners could not go out into communities," said Adams.
"The topics for these videos were relevant to the Covid-19 regulations and our current context, for the benefit of members from key populations and underprivileged communities, since the need to understand how to navigate these trying times is greater on the ground where accessibility remains a challenge, more so now than ever before."
Some of these videos were dubbed in vernacular and also repurposed into educational fact sheets.
Adams said his office also partnered with 10 private law firms during the Annual National Wills Week that ran from 26-30 October.
Since ProBono.Org also aimed to assist with facilitating transformation of the legal profession, Adams said the Cape Town office worked with the HCI Foundation to appoint previously disadvantaged graduates as legal interns.
"This provides them with an opportunity to gain practical experience and through continued mentorship to ensure that they are article-ready candidate attorneys who would plough back into social justice initiatives upon their departure," he said, adding that this initiative had since been rolled out nationally.
Adams said his office would be hosting its inaugural legal practitioners awards ceremony, virtually, on Friday 11 December to honour those legal professionals who have been committed to supporting the work of ProBono.Org. The key note address would be delivered by Judge Chantel Fortuin.
Prospective clients can contact ProBono.Org's Cape Town offices at 087 806 6070 or infocpt@probono.org.za.
- Compiled by Adiel Ismail