A committee has been appointed to investigate allegations of racism in the Cape High Court, Chief Justice Arthur Chaskalson said on Monday.
He said he had requested the committee to give urgent attention to the matter and report back to the heads of the court as soon as possible.
Cape Provincial Division Judge President John Hlophe earlier compiled a report alleging racism and handed it to Justice Minister Brigitte Mabandla.
The City Press newspaper reported on Sunday that the 43-page document contained several allegations of racism, including an incident where a white judge apparently told his black colleagues that black people had corruption in their genes.
Other allegations were that there was a strong opposition to the appointment of black judges, and black judges who had made mistakes were ridiculed and some of their judgements were marked with red pen and circulated amongst members of the Bar.
Black judges were allegedly told to stop speaking isiZulu to each other in the chambers of a white judge, whites held lunches which blacks were not invited to, and a black lawyer was taken to task by some white judges because they said he did not understand Afrikaans.
The Cape Bar Council, in a joint statement with the General Council of the Bar (GCB), has denied the allegations.
They said although neither of them had received a copy of the report, if the newspaper article was correctly based on the document, the allegations could not go unanswered.
They said there was no truth to allegations that there was strong opposition by the Cape Bar to the appointment of black judges and that in the past 10 years the Cape Bar had never supported a black candidate.
Among the black judges whose appointments had been positively supported by the Cape Bar were those of J Motala, J Msimang, Advocate DO Potgieter SC, and J Waglay.
”Moreover, the Judge President may have forgotten that the Cape Bar supported his own appointment to the position of Judge President in March 2000,” they said.
”The Cape Bar is most certainly not opposed to the appointment of black judges. Not only have we supported suitable black candidates in the past, we have also urged black seniors at our bar to make themselves available for judicial appointment.”
The Cape Bar said it had never received any reports that its members had demonstrated a lack of support to black candidates once they had been appointed as judges.
The councils said only one incident of an postponement on allegedly racial grounds had been referred by Hlophe to the Bar Council for investigation last year.
”The Bar Council investigated the matter promptly and fully. Our finding was that there was absolutely no justification for the suggestion that the postponement was racially motivated.
”The Cape Bar’s report, co-signed by Owen Rogers SC and Ashton Schippers SC, was delivered to the Judge President on 20 January 2005. He has not suggested that our finding was incorrect.”
The Cape Bar Council said it was not aware of black judges being ridiculed by its members.
Responding to the allegation of the whites-only lunch, the council said that if they did occur, it had not been a lunch organised by the Cape Bar.
The council said it was ”unfortunate” that Hlophe, over the years, had kept a growing catalogue of perceived complaints concerning members of the Cape Bar rather than raising them with the council when they occurred.
”The collective aim of members of the legal fraternity in the Western Cape should be to transform our institutions for the better, not to build up dossiers against each other.
”We would prefer the Judge President to engage constructively with us in our endeavours to transform. We have kept him regularly informed of our transformation initiatives,” they said.
”We have also done everything we can to assist the administration of justice in the CPD. Among other things, many advocates at our bar [including white advocates] regularly sit as acting judges in criminal appeals without remuneration in order to help clear backlogs.”
”Despite the discouragement represented by a report such as that which the Judge President has apparently delivered to the minister, we will persist in our commitment to transformation and to justice. These goals are more important than the personalities involved.”
”Since September 2001 constitutionally-entrenched co-governance has existed at the Cape Bar. Its 14-person council comprises an equal number of black and white members.”
They also said the GCB and the Cape Bar had shown their commitment to transformation in a number of ways.
At the Cape Bar specifically, briefing initiatives had been adopted to encourage the increasing use of black advocates as junior counsel.
These initiatives included an arrangement whereby a senior and junior advocate sacrificed a portion of their fees to enable a third previously disadvantaged advocate to be engaged.
They also said the Cape Bar had a permanent transformation committee.
The councils said that once they had received the report, they would respond to it fully. – Sapa