Beleaguered Cape Judge President John Hlophe was on Sunday given an opportunity to put his side of the racism row to his peers in the judiciary.
And though he left the meeting of the country’s heads of courts immediately afterwards, thumping the door shut behind him, Chief Justice Pius Langa denied that he had stormed out.
”He did not storm out. We excused him from the meeting,” Langa told journalists on Sunday night at the end of the 10-hour meeting at a Cape Town hotel.
Questioned on whether Hlophe had been asked to go, Langa said: ”We were going to be discussing him. He realised that we were going to be discussing his issue and he felt it was only right that he should not be in the room when we do that.
”[It was] absolute decency.”
Hlophe was unwilling to talk to waiting journalists on his way out.
”Oh please could people just leave me alone,” he told reporters.
Hlophe has been under fire in recent weeks over allegations that he called a white lawyer a ”piece of white shit” and that he allocated the Mikro school case to a white judge because he believed the judge would ”fuck it up”.
He has denied the allegations and half of the judges in his division on Friday signed a statement, saying he was the target of a campaign by ”unknown forces” seeking to impede transformation of the judiciary.
Langa said Sunday’s meeting of the heads of courts, who include the senior judges in the Supreme Court of Appeal, competition andland appeal courts and the heads of the provincial divisions of the high courts had been a routine scheduled one.
”But obviously because a number of things flared up in the past few days we had to discuss those,” he said.
They had asked Hlophe about the accusations.
”The Judge President gave us a statement of his version of the events. We did not finish the inquiry because we had to get the other side.”
Apparently referring to a complaint about the ”white shit” incident, Langa said he had not received ”documents which are addressed to the Chief Justice” but expected to get them on Monday.
”And then of course there will be an opportunity to discuss these issues with the bar and with whoever is implicated in the documents. It is possible that the discussion will further include Judge Hlophe. As a result of those discussions we will decide what the next steps are going to be.”
He warned however, that the Judicial Services Commission, which chooses new judges, would be meeting from Monday morning and the judges would have other business to deal with.
Langa also said that a report by a task team of judges on racism and sexism in the judiciary had been finished and had been adopted by the heads of courts.
It was not ready for issuing yet but should be available in a weeks time ”to everybody”. – Sapa