Cape Judge President John Hlophe has been cleared of wrongdoing over his receipt of a R10 000 monthly retainer for work done for the asset management group Oasis, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported on Friday.
There was no evidence to contradict his assertion that he received oral permission to do so from the since-deceased former justice minister Dullah Omar, the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) found.
After the allegations against him became public, Hlophe said the money was for out-of-pocket expenses he incurred as a trustee of the Oasis Crescent Retirement Fund.
While he claimed Omar had given him permission to serve as a trustee, Justice and Constitutional Development Minister Brigitte Mabandla said she could find no record of this permission.
The JSC announced his exoneration in a statement released after a meeting — attended by Mabandla — at OR Tambo International Airport on Friday afternoon.
Recommending urgent legislation clarifying the circumstances under which such permission may be given, the JSC suggested that judges seek and receive any such permission in writing.
Members of the JSC include Chief Justice Pius Langa, other senior judges and members of the legal profession.
In October this year, the JSC said it had dismissed a complaint relating to a bursary received by Hlophe’s son from the law firm Smith, Tabata, Buchanan, Boyes.
It said the evidence of the judge president, as confirmed by a senior partner of the firm, showed that Hlophe had had no knowledge of the bursary payments received by his son, who had not been living at home. At the time, the son was a boarder-master at SACS Primary School in Cape Town.
There was no other evidence to contradict this, the statement read.
In July, when Hlophe returned from long leave despite persisting conflict-of-interest charges against him, the Democratic Alliance said it bode ill for public confidence in the judiciary.
The two months of Hlophe’s break should have been used to conclude a probe into the claims that he had received money from a private entity, it said at the time.
The failure to do so, the party said, meant that Hlophe could not ”properly carry out his duties”.
Mabandla said in May she was unaware of any undertaking by the government to provide a list of those judges granted permission to have ties with the business sector.
Her deputy, Johnny de Lange, said the department had ”no clue what interests various judges have, so we clearly cannot compile a list of these interests”. This was expected to be corrected with the introduction of an asset register for judges. — Sapa