SA legal wizkids Motshweni, Botha shine bright for Africa

Two University of Pretoria (UP) students, Simon Motshweni, and Simon Botha, have won the Moot Court Competition of the International Institute of Space Law (IISL) on the sidelines of the International Austronautical Congress (IAC) 2018 in Bremen, Germany.

They beat students from India’s Symbiosis International University to walk away with the first prize of more than R10,000 in a competition where they excelled themselves before the International Court of Justice judges in a mock case on the internal outer space law.

Nomfuneko Majaja, Africa regional coordinator for the competition, praised the duo for flying the African and South African flags high in the highly-competitive international contest.

She added that more still needed to be done to bring in more African countries in the competition for capacity-building purposes in space regulations.

The competition is internationally arranged by the IISL on an annual basis in four regions of the world, namely Africa, North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. It presents an opportunity for university students in the areas of law and science fields to engage on legal policy and regulatory aspects in the highly specialised area of space law and related fields such as aerospace and telecommunications.