Mail & Guardian Reporter
IN the wake of Desmond Tutu’s call for apartheid judges to come clean, the search for dubious judgments has unearthed an extraordinary case involving a clerk articled to Nelson Mandela and the late Oliver Tambo.
The clerk was charged with contempt of court after sitting in the white lawyers’ seats in court and refusing to move. Unfortunately for Tutu, the case took place in 1960.
Boris Kaplan, of Krugersdorp attorneys’ firm Van der Merwe Cronje & Kaplan, this week alerted the M&G to Rex v Pitje, heard by former chief justice Steyn and four other judges of the Appellate Division. The court rejected the clerk’s appeal after he was fined 5, or five days’ imprisonment.
The court held that his handling of the case would not have been hampered by being forced to sit in another seat, and that as lord of his courtroom, the magistrate was entitled to make the order.
Tambo had previously withdrawn from the same case after the magistrate told him he would not be heard unless he moved to the “European table”.