/ 28 October 2008

Disagree? Lodge a complaint

Carole Lewis. Photo: Lisa Skinner
Carole Lewis. Photo: Lisa Skinner

Supreme Court of Appeals Judge Carole Lewis’s comments about the state of the judiciary have unleashed a racial storm among prominent black lawyers, who are now lobbying legal professional bodies to lodge a complaint against her.

The lawyers include University of Cape Town administrator Paul Ngobeni, a prominent senior counsel from the General Council of the Bar, a leading attorney and a junior advocate.

Lewis decried the dearth of skills and experience in the judiciary and also ”launched a scathing attack on government policy”, according to a Business Day report on her address two weeks ago at the Institute of Race Relations.

Lewis is reported to have said ”the preoccupation with black economic empowerment was keeping worthy white applicants from applying for judicial positions”.

But Lewis has denied this. She told the Mail & Guardian last week that she had been misquoted by the Business Day and referred to her original speech on the Institute of Race Relations website.

”I did not mention BEE or launch a scathing attack on black judges. Nor did I say that horrifying convictions and acquittals emanated from black judges. I spoke of inexperience. And I spoke mostly about attacks on the judiciary by politicians and threats to judicial independence by proposed legislation,” Lewis said.

In so doing, she said, she was merely joining ”the many leading judges in this country, including the chief justice and deputy chief justice, in condemning ill-informed vitriol”. She urged Ngobeni to read the original sources ”and not the newspapers”.

The racial storm emanated from a letter sent two weeks ago by Ngobeni — a staunch supporter of Cape Judge President John Hlophe — to the M&G and two weekend newspapers, in which he accuses Lewis of launching ”scathing attacks” on the ANC and black judges.

His 14-page letter, titled On Race, Politics and Lies, is a passionate tirade against Lewis. ”I was aghast,” he wrote, ”and still am as indignant as hell about how a white woman who is the picture perfect beneficiary of affirmative action and transformation in the judicial appointments has the gumption to launch ‘scathing attacks’ against the very ANC-led government that has struggled under the most trying of circumstances to promote the spirit of national reconciliation [and] to promote and protect a constitutional democracy and rule of law.”

Ngobeni’s letter sparked a round of correspondence in which black lawyers developed a strategy to tackle Lewis. In the correspondence, which the M&G has seen, the senior counsel suggests that the Black Lawyers’ Association (BLA) and Advocates for Transformation should be lobbied to draft a complaint to the Judicial Service Commission.

The M&G understands that the lawyers will push for the complaint about Lewis to form part of the agenda at the BLA annual general gathering scheduled to take place in Nelspruit from Friday.

BLA president Andiswa Ndoni would not confirm whether the issue had been placed on the agenda for this weekend’s meeting. The M&G, however, understands that the Lewis complaint will be the subject of discussion at the BLA meeting.

”Lewis said she felt that the judiciary had ensured that all senior positions were held by black judges and it was time for appointments to be based solely on skills and experience,” continues Ngobeni in his letter. He also lists various foreign law authorities on why it was inappropriate for Lewis to have publicly expressed her views about the judiciary. He then goes on to mention that Lewis was one of several ”white judges” who had imposed lenient sentences in rape cases.

Responding to the M&G this week, Lewis urged Ngobeni to read case law on minimum sentencing from both the appeal court and the Constitutional Court. She said her court’s approach to the controversial issue had been ”affirmed by the Constitutional Court” in the murder case of Buzani Dodo.

Ngobeni also accused Lewis of wrongdoing in the 1990s Wits University tussle between the so-called gang of 13 and current University of KwaZulu-Natal vice-chancellor Malegapuru Makgoba.

”Lest we forget, Judge Carole Lewis was one of those Wits academics who played a disgraceful and despicable role in the ‘Makgoba affair’,” wrote Ngobeni.

Lewis dismissed this: ”Professor Makgoba resigned from Wits after acknowledging poor performance and statements that tended to mislead in the curriculum vitae on which he had relied in his job application for a position as deputy vice-chancellor at Wits.”