WeeklySA_AdminOBJECTIVE: Two women form base to target transfer of skills to newcomers and ensure access to justice…
By Thuli Zungu
Injustice and unaffordable quality education in the legal profession has propelled two fierce legal minds to open doors for women lawyers. Advocate Anthea Platt and Hlaleleni Kathleen Matolo-Dlepu the co-founder Basadi Ba Molao
Education & Training Services (Pty) Ltd “BBM-ETS” saw a need to establish BBM-ETS because, among other challenges, most training programs offered by training institutions are beyond the reach of many, especially now during covid-19.
“Most institutions charge about R20 000-R40 000 per training program. It was pursuant to this urgent need for training services together with the transformational aspirations that the idea of incorporating BBM-ETS was born,” Matolo-Dlepu said.
CHALLENGES
Matolo Dlepu said women, in general, were faced with a myriad of challenges in society. The legal profession was no exception. She said there were many challenges that women had to contend with discrimination based on gender and an uneven playing field.
Initially BBM seeks to meet its objectives through hosting videos, meeting with students, assisting through pro-bono work in impoverished communities, assisting legal practitioners gain an edge in the profession.
Matolo-Dlepu said of the 27 223 attorneys practising in South Africa, only 4 849, a total of 17%, were female. Of the 537 advocates conferred with senior counsel, only 50, at total of 9%, were women. She said by July 2019, in the judiciary, only 94 out of the 244 permanent judges were women. This amounted to 30%. Of the 24 leadership positions in the judiciary, only 7 were women. This number had increased only marginally in the past three years, she said.
She said, in addition, to being under-represented, there was the pre-conception that women were ill-equipped to deal with matters outside of areas such as family law and debt collection.
“Very few women can access a diverse range of legal work. They are perceived as ‘mothers and wives,” Matolo Dlepu said. Prejudices such as not being able to work late or being able to deal with complex issues prevented women from making a greater impact in the legal field.
To address this their goal was to empower women, transfer skill and ensure that barriers to the legal profession were removed and that access to justice was attainable, she said.
Her passion to fight against injustice started at an early age, she said. At an age of three, Matolo-Dlepu witnessed one of the great injustices of the apartheid forced removals, she said.
Her family was taken from her grandfather’s home and later forced to live in tents. As a teenager she witnessed the Soweto Uprisings when her peers rebelled against the apartheid government for forcing Afrikaans as the medium of instruction in schools.
“These two incidents made me aware of injustice and determined to do something to achieve justice for those who have been disenfranchised,” she said.
Her partner Platt SC, a fierce defender and advocate of women’s rights, used her professional knowledge and experience as a woman to form Basadi Ba Molao, a non-profit organisation in 2019, she said. Platt said this organisation sought to assist women in law through mentorship, guidance and exposure to persons within the profession who were able to provide insight into the obstacles women face in the profession.
Platt said the organisation assisted communities in rural areas who were unable to access legal services. It also assisted students studying law and gave them the necessary exposure and guidance. This, she had done through a partnership with the Nelson Mandela Bay University.
She said BBM-ETS also seeks to equip the community so that they build entrepreneurs who can work and earn a living in the informal and formal sector.
“BBM-ETS also targets students in rural areas, unemployed youth up to the age of 35, pensioners and the public,” Platt said. The pair said dispute resolution is essential for legal practice no matter the area of law in which you practice.
“Through our experienced and accredited trainers, BBM-ETS offers continuing professional development programs via face-to-face and online learning engagement opportunities for busy professionals,” they said.
Their programs are designed to enable legal practitioners to fulfil their professional obligations but also provide an engaging experience with industry experts.
BBM-ETS offers practical and focused life-long education to legal practitioners to enable them to provide quality services to their clients and to the community, she said.
“We are also providing a general mediation course to assist law students from previously disadvantaged universities, unemployed youth up to the age of 35; pensioners, organisations and legal practitioners; so that they will be able to find some work opportunities while either completing their degrees or while awaiting further training or employment,” they said.
Their dream is to assist with the retention of learning, a blend of training delivery methods to best meet the needs of the participants, including lectures, presentations, role-plays, and class discussions, they said
Platt said participants with special needs would also be identified prior to the start of the programme to identify issues of accessibility and adapt delivery and/or materials wherever possible to accommodate these issues.
Covid-19 has shown us that we need to think out of the box and have more than one stream of income to cater for those times when we are un- able to find employment. BBM-ETS is designed to provide soft skills for persons once they have completed a course to be able to add to their income base, they said.
HLALELENI KATHLEEN MATOLO-DLEPU
Matolo -Dlepu is the current chairperson of the Legal Practice Council of South Africa, the Commissioner of the Judicial Services Commission of South Africa and a former Co-chairperson of the Law Society of South Africa.
In the past 26 years she trained and mentored more than 20 women attorneys to break the glass ceiling. “In the early stages of my career, I saw that there were few opportunities for women attorneys and this encouraged me to establish a woman-owned firm that focused on mentoring emerging women attorneys. This has been and continues to be my passion to this day” she said.
ANTHEA PLATT SC
She is an experienced Senior Counsel with a demonstrated history of working in the legal profession as well as in the governance of the legal profession for more than 16 years.
Currently, she is the Deputy Chair of the Legal Practice Council; a Commissioner on the South African Law Reform Commission and the Group Leader of Pitje Chambers. She also sits on various advisory panels.
For more than a decade, Platt had been in the leadership of Advocates for Transformation, a voluntary organisation which advocated for a level playing field for practitioners of colour and gender and to ensure a correction of briefing patterns.
