Comment on Judge Hlophe
26 January 2020
For over 12 years now Freedom Under Law (FUL) – an NGO established to protect and advance the rule of law across Southern Africa – has pressed for a decisive outcome in complaint after complaint relating to Mr Justice Hlophe, Judge President of the Western Cape.
The decade since has vindicated that assessment. The judge it described as ‘this highly talented man [who] carried the hopes of all who are passionate about transformation of the judiciary’, having been recruited at the age of 35 from the University of Transkei direct to the Cape Bench, has gone on to plunge the judiciary in more sordid scandal and public disrepute than any judge in its history.
It is nothing short of a disgrace that nearly 12 years on, the complaint laid by all 10 Constitutional Court judges against Judge Hlophe for his attempt to interfere in their independent consideration of matters relating to then-President Zuma remains unresolved. FUL was obliged to institute legal proceedings against the JSC to compel it to do its duty. Its conduct was, embarrassingly, characterised by the Supreme Court of Appeal as nothing less than ‘irrational’.
Now, with that complaint still not resolved, a fresh scandal has broken. It is hardly a year since the Supreme Court of Appeal found, in the most direct terms, in a case appealed to it, that he was guilty of bias. This not of a junior judge, but a judge entrusted to lead over 30 other judges.