Mungo Soggot
THE Minister of Mineral and Energy Affairs, Penuell Maduna, flouted basic legal rights in axing a top state official, Judge Edwin Cameron has ruled.
Overturning Maduna’s decision to fire Gerhard Bindeman, chief executive of the Diamond Board since 1989, Judge Cameron found the minister had violated the Constitution and Bindeman’s employment conditions.
Maduna has applied for leave to appeal the judgment. Bindeman is at home awaiting the outcome of this application.
Bindeman, a board employee for 17 years, was dismissed, with three months’ pay, in a letter left on his desk one lunchtime last November.
Maduna installed his own personal adviser, Linda Makatini, as acting chief executive, while Bindeman’s challenge for unfair dismissal rumbled into the Johannesburg High Court. Cameron ruled with costs in Bindeman’s favour. His written judgment was handed down this month.
In his ruling, Cameron said: “The lawfulness of the minister’s conduct has been challenged, and upon the contentions and the facts before me the conclusion that he acted outside the statute is unavoidable.”
After finding Maduna had not stuck to the Diamond Board’s conditions of service, Cameron homed in on the minister’s failure to consult Bindeman before leaving the letter on his desk.
“It seems to me the entire absence of a prior hearing, no matter how circumscribed, provides a further insuperable obstacle to a determination that the minister acted lawfully.”
Cameron said Maduna had admitted that Bindeman was given no prior hearing. The minister had also violated Bindeman’s constitutional rights – the Constitution says he is entitled to “lawful administrative action where any of his rights or interests are affected or threatened”.
In papers before the court, Bindeman said he did “not wish to force himself on the board, if it for some reason wishes him to leave. There would, however, have to be a negotiated parting of the ways.”
Cameron also rejected Maduna’s argument that he was entitled to oust Bindeman in the way he did as part of a restructuring of the board. Bindeman’s treatment comes amid concerns about Maduna’s strategy toward the staff he inherited when he took over the ministry from Pik Botha 12 months ago.
Maduna is currently mired in controversy over the suspension in March this year of the state’s top oil official, Kobus van Zyl. Lawyers for Van Zyl contacted Maduna’s office for an explanation for the suspension – and are still waiting for a reply.