Academic Achievements
- Professor Govender is presently a level 6 professor at the University of Kwazulu-Natal.
- He started employment with the University of Natal as a temporary lecturer in August 1988.
- In January 1989 he was appointed as a senior lecturer and promoted to associate professor in 1994.
- In January 2002, he was promoted to his present rank of full professor.
- He has published in the fields of administrative and constitutional law and has lectured on five continents.
Constitutional law teaching experience
Professor Govender:
- teaches Constitutional and Administrative law both to undergraduate and post-graduate students.
- initiated a masters’ course in Advance Constitutional law in 1992 (now called Constitutional and Human Rights Litigation) and has taught it since.
- co-taught a course on Human Rights Litigation to final year LLB students.
- Is one of the presiding officers in our professional training programme. and is chairperson of the Moot Committees.
- taught Constitutional law at the University of Michigan in the USA.
- Has during his tenure at the University of Natal, taught Family law, the law of Evidence, Criminal Procedure, Civil Procedure, parts of Jurisprudence and the Introduction to law.
- has published in the field of Administrative and Constitutional law and have co-authored textbooks on Administrative law and Constitutional Law.
Professor Govender:
- Together with other members of staff, organised and conducted a number of certificate courses on Constitutional Litigation for practitioners in the Durban and Pietermaritzburg area when the Interim Constitution was promulgated.
- Taught Constitutional litigation to legal practitioners in Durban and Cape Town for SALDEF.
- Has since 1994, presented courses on a continuous basis on Constitution Litigation and Human Rights Practice to candidate attorneys on behalf of the Law Society of South Africa.
- Has delivered seminars on the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act 2000 and the Promotion of Access to Information Act 2000 for various departments of the KZN Provincial Government.
- Assisted in the training of the judges and magistrates on the Promotion of Equality Act and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act 2000.
- Has been engaged on an ongoing basis by organs of state such as the Legal Aid Board to train their staff in Durban, Port Elizabeth and Cape Town and Gauteng on various constitutional issues, including litigating on the Equality Act.
ADMINISTRATIVE RESPONSIBILITIES
- For about five years, he acted as Head of Department of Public Law at the University of Natal.
- He was member of the Senate of the University of Natal.
- He chaired both the LLB selection committee and the Management Committee of the Faculty of Law.
- After the restructuring of the Law School, he was the co-ordinator of the LLM Committee, chairperson of the Finance and Budgets Committee and chairperson of the Student Selections Committee.
- He is presently chair of the Moot committee and is a member of the Board of the Law Faculty.
Reported Judgments.
Freedom Front v South African Human Rights Commission. 2003 (11) BCLR
Forum for Black journalists against Katopodis [2009] JOL 23145 (SAHRC)
Goodman Gallery against Film and Publication Board [2012] JOL 29569 (FPBT)
Books
The Educator and the Constitution published by the South African Human Rights Commission and the Department of Education – KZN.( 2004)
Chapters in Books
- "Race and Social Rights" Race and the Law in South Africa ed A. Rycroft (Juta 1987).
- "The People shall Govern" The Freedom Charter and Beyond -Founding Principles for a Democratic South African Legal Order. ed N Steytler (Wyvern 1992)
- Democracy For All ( Street Law Manual) (Juta 1994) co-author
- Democracy For All Instructor's Manual (Juta 1994) co-author
- Controlling Executive Power: Accessibility and Alternative Means of Control - Administrative Justice in Southern Africa (1997) Department of Public Law, University of Cape Town.
- Administrative Law and Justice in South Africa (2001) a textbook co-authored with Professor George Devenish and Mr. David Hulme. I contributed to the first chapter, wrote Chapter 6 and 18 and contributed significantly to chapter.
- The New Constitutional and Administrative Law (2001) a textbook co-authored with a number of other writers which was published by Juta. I contributed to chapters 1,2,6,7,and 8.
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The South African Human Rights Commission in The Post-Apartheid Constitutions ( WUP and OHIO) 2001
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Foundations of South African Law – Critical Issues for Law Students. (Butterworth) 2002
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The Development of the Right to Administrative Justice in SA in Constitutional Democracy in South Africa 1994-2004 (2004 Lexis Nexis)
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Assessing the Constitutional Protection of Human Rights in South Africa during the First Decade of Democracy in State of the Nation 2005-2006. (HSRC )
Peer Reviewed Articles
SAPSE accredited
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Administrative Appeal Tribunals - Acta Juridica 1993. (Juta)
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Administrative Law and Democracy in South Africa Obiter (14) 1993. ...................................................................................................................
- Access to Information - a focus on enforcement mechanisms 1995 (2) Public Law 346.
- An analysis of the Federal Features of the Interim Constitution- 1996 (3) Review of Constitutional Studies (University of Alberta) 76.
- Determining the Constitutionality of Presumptions - S v Zuma 1995 SAJCJ (8) 205.
- The Operational Provisions of the Bill of Right 1997 (2) Obiter 159
- The Impact of the Equality Provisions of the Constitution 1997 (2) Obiter 258
- Administrative Justice (1999) 14 SAPR/PL 62
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Horses for Courses - Understanding the Constitutional Mandate 1999 (3) QMW Law Journal 40. An expanded and updated version of this article has been published in 2000 (21) 1 Obiter 144.
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An Assessment of Section 4 of the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act 2000 as a means of Advancing Participatory Democracy in SA. (2003) 18 SAPR/L 409.
Non-SAPSE Journals.
- "A Comparative Overview of the New Deal Constitutional Crisis in the United States of America and the Coloured Voters' Crisis in South Africa: "Implications for a Post-Apartheid Constitution" NatalUniversity Law and Society Review (2) 155 to 1799.
- "The Right to Democracy and Political Life" Human Rights for South Africans ed M. Robertson (OUP 1990)
- "Separate Amenities in 1989" South African Human Rights and Labour Law Yearbook 1990 ed M Robertson (OUP 1990).
- "Separate Amenities in 1990" -South African Human Rights and Labour Law Yearbook 1991. ed M Robertson (OUP 1991)
- Constitutional developments in 1991 -South African Human Rights and Labour Law Yearbook. ed N Boister and K Ferguson-Brown.
- Commentary on S v Makwanyane 1995 The South African Constitutional Law
- Reports (4) 250.
- Horizontality revisited in the light of Du Plessis v De Klerk and clause 8 of the Republic of South Africa Constitutional Bill 1996. 1996 (3) Human Rights and Constitutional Law Journal of Southern Africa 20.
- Editorials and case notes in above journal.
- Editor of the third issue of the Human Rights and Constitutional law Journal of Southern Africa for 1996.
- The Freedom of Speech Human Rights and Constitutional Law Journal of Southern Africa Vol 1 (6) 1997
- Editor of the sixth issue of Human Rights and Constitutional law Journal of Southern Africa of 1997. Editorial entitled `The Virtues of Balancing= was written for the above-mentioned issue.
- Editor of the first issue of Democracy Watch of 1997, a publication of the Democracy for All Programme.
- The Equality Provision, Unfairness and Affirmative Action: Indicator South Africa 1998 (15) 79 to 84.
- Summaries of the selected Constitutional Court Judgments (1999) - co-authored with Jody Kollapen as part of the Human Rights Commission’s initiative to make the Constitution more accessible.
