The South Gauteng High Court reserved judgement on Monday in a bid by Cape Judge President John Hlophe to stop a Judicial Service Commission (JSC) hearing against him.
Earlier in the day, Vuyani Ngalwana, Hlophe’s lawyer, told the court that veteran lawyer George Bizos was biased in the way he handled the hearing against Hlophe.
Ngalwana said Bizos was recorded in a transcript of Hlophe’s April hearing into alleged misconduct as saying the JSC had spent too much money on the hearing to postpone it.
”Now, if that doesn’t show unqualified bias then I suppose the applicant has to swallow his constitutional rights and present himself before the JSC.”
Bizos had been on the sidelines of Hlophe’s application to have the JSC’s proceedings against him stopped, but sat bolt upright when Ngalwana mentioned his name.
The hearing began in a Sandton hotel on April 1, but was postponed when Ngalwana submitted a sick note.
When it reconvened four days later, Hlophe asked for a postponement, but the JSC refused. It went ahead with the hearing, even though Ngalwana had withdrawn.
Bizos listened intently on Monday as Ngalwana said Bizos had suggested that the paucity of the financial resources of the JSC weighed higher than the interests of justice.
Earlier, Ngalwana said former justice minister Enver Surty was also among the people in the commission who were biased against Hlophe, but added that not all of the commission’s members were biased.
Surty’s counsel, Vas Soni, said that on the question of bias, the JSC was not a decision-making body, but a recommending body.
Ultimately the final decision on Hlophe’s fate lay with a vote in Parliament.
”That’s a brilliant point, the JSC doesn’t impeach,” said Judge Nigel Willis. ”At the end of the day, Parliament decides.”
Hlophe wants the JSC’s hearing against him stopped on the grounds of bias and that the JSC was not properly constituted when Surty recused himself.
Lawyers for the both the JSC and the Constitutional Court judges argued that Monday’s application was premature and that Hlophe should wait for the JSC’s proceedings to be concluded, and then raise objections.
The Constitutional Court judges, in particular, wanted the matter concluded as it had been dragging on for almost a year.
But Ngalwana said he wanted either a reconstituted JSC, or a panel of retired judges to form an arbitration forum.
Earlier in the case, he said Hlophe wasn’t trying to avoid being judged on whether he tried to interfere with a Constitutional Court ruling on President Jacob Zuma, but was exercising his rights. — Sapa