Hanri Mostert

Hanri Mostert is a professor of private law at the University of Cape Town and a visiting professor in the Department of Private and Notary Law (Centre for Law and Governance) at Groningen University. Her teaching and research interests are in Property Law and her specialisation in Land Law and Mineral Law. In these fields, she contributed to several authoritative sources on South African Law, addressing issues of constitutional property protection, landlessness, tenure security, restitution, nationalisation, land governance and mineral resource regulation.

In her monograph, Mineral Law – Principles and Policies in Perspective (Juta, 2012), she comments on statutory and judicial positions on Mineral Law, addressing issues of interest to policy makers and the judiciary, such as nationalisation of mineral resources and the expropriation of existing property interests. The book has been cited with approval by the Supreme Court of Appeal and the Constitutional Court.

One of Prof Mostert’s current projects is investigating the mineral laws and policies of various African jurisdictions. The study will result in a series of books dealing with mineral law in Africa. She is also working with Juta Law Publishing to launch a series of opinion pieces on law. Further, she runs an NRF-rated project on the origins and modern impact of the principles of landownership, and is the series editor of the recently established series entitled Contemporary Studies on Law and Applied Research, an initiative driven by the UCT Law Faculty.

The National Research Foundation rates Prof Mostert as a researcher who, in the eyes of her peers, enjoys considerable international recognition. She held fellowships of both the Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Programme and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and was the runner-up in the Distinguished Young Women Scientists category of the Department of Science and Technology’s Women in Science Awards of 2012.