Position, academic & professional qualifications

Gustav Muller is an Associate Professor in the Department of Private Law. He holds an LLB and LLD from Stellenbosch University. The title of his doctoral dissertation is “The impact of section 26 of the Constitution on the eviction of squatters in South African law”. He also holds a Diploma in the International Protection of Human Rights from the Institute for Human Rights at Åbo Akademi University in Turku, Finland. He is admitted as Advocate of the High Court of South Africa.

Academic & professional experience

Muller joined the Department in February 2016 after serving four years in the Faculty of Law at Rhodes University in Makhanda where he was appointed as Lecturer in 2012 and promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2015. Prior to that he was the Project Manager of the Overarching Strategic Research and Outreach Project on Combating Poverty, Homelessness and Socio-Economic Vulnerability in the Faculty of Law at Stellenbosch University. He is a visitor at the South African Research Chair in Property Law and the Socio-Economic Rights and Administrative Justice research group at Stellenbosch University.

He currently serves on the Research and Postgraduate Studies Committee in the Faculty of Law and has served on the Teaching and Learning Committee and Library Committee of the faculty. He acted as Guardian of the Pretoria Student Law Review for two years. He serves on the editorial boards of the De Jure Law Journal and the Pretoria University Law Press. He currently serves on the Senate of the University of Pretoria (2019–2022) as a representative of the academic staff. Further information about his professional experience can be viewed on his LinkedIn profile.

Teaching and Learning

Muller is the coordinator of an elective on land and related reforms (GHR420) and teaches an undergraduate module in property law (SAR310). He was the recipient of the Law Faculty’s Teaching Excellence Award in 2016 and have been included in the Teaching and Learning Review of the university on three separate occasions. He has a keen interest in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) and practices an apprenticeship approach to teaching and learning. He is the editor of a student textbook entitled General Principles of South African Property Law (LexisNexis, 2019). He intends on developing a few modules at postgraduate level for an LLM in property law.

Research

Muller is the editor of Transformative Property Law – Festschrift in honour of AJ van der Walt (Juta, 2018) and Silberberg and Schoeman’s The Law of Property 6^th edition (LexisNexis, 2019). He holds a C2 rating with the National Research Foundation in property law with sub-specialisations in eviction and housing. He is the co-author, with Prof Sue-Mari Viljoen, of Property in Housing (Juta, forthcoming) and is scheduled to update The Law of Neighbours (Juta, 2022). He has been cited approvingly by the South African judiciary in South African Human Rights Commission v City of Cape Town [2020] ZAWCHC 84 (25 August 2020), Stewart Construction (Pty) Ltd v Nagar [2020] ZAGPPHC (15 October 2020), and Nedbank Limited v Molebaloa (37780/2015) [2016] ZAGPPHC 863 (12 August 2016). His published research can be viewed under his ORCiD or ResearchGate profiles.

Community engagement and amicus curiae interventions

Muller provided research assistance to the parties in Rahube v Rahube 2019 (2) SA 54 (CC); Dladla v City of Johannesburg 2018 (2) SA 327 (CC); Daniels v Scribante 2017 (4) SA 341 (CC); Residents of Joe Slovo Community, Western Cape v Thubelisha Homes 2010 (3) SA 454 (CC); Occupiers of 51 Olivia Road, Berea Township and 197 Main Street, Johannesburg v City of Johannesburg and Others 2008 (3) SA 208 (CC). He is a mentor of the housing and eviction unit at the Centre for Applied Legal Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is a member of the Unit for Urban Governance in the Department for the Built Environment at the University of Pretoria and participates in the Informal Settlement Forum that was established for Plastic View (Woodlane Village) in Pretoria. He frequently consults with leading South African law firms on property, housing and eviction matters.

Areas of specialisation

His main area of interest is situated in the niche area of the law where property law and the right of access to adequate housing overlap.

Email:  [email protected]

Tel:  +27 (0)12 420 3746

Fax:  +27 (0)12 420 3961

[January 2021]