Direct Request (CEACR) - adopted 2020, published 109th ILC session (2021)

Abolition of Forced Labour Convention, 1957 (No. 105) - South Africa (Ratification: 1997)

Article 1(a) of the Convention. Sanctions involving compulsory labour as a punishment for holding or expressing political views or views ideologically opposed to the established political, social or economic system. The Committee notes that, according to court rulings of the High Court of South Africa and the Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa, the offence of public violence consists in the unlawful and intentional commission, together with a number of people, of an act or acts which assume serious dimensions and which are intended forcibly to disturb public peace and tranquillity or to invade the rights of others (for instance, in case no. SH187/2018 and case no. 444/08). It further notes that, in the case no. SH187/2018 of the High Court of South Africa, the accused was sentenced to one year of imprisonment (during which prison labour may be imposed, according to section 37(1)(b) of the Correctional Services Act, 1998), suspended for a period of three years, for acts of unlawful assembly causing the road to be blocked. The Committee requests the Government to provide information on the manner in which the concept of public violence is interpreted by the courts, and to specify the legal provisions on which the courts have based their interpretation. It also requests the Government to provide examples of the acts that have given rise to penalties for public violence and to specify the nature of the penalties imposed.