The Judicial Service Commission (JSC) on Wednesday appointed a three-member subcommittee to investigate if there is enough evidence to proceed with a full hearing into the dispute between Western Cape Judge President John Hlophe and Constitutional Court judges.
”The JSC decided today [Wednesday] to appoint a subcommittee to further investigate the matter and to report back to the fuller commission on August 15,” JSC spokesperson Marumo Moerane told reporters.
The subcommittee will be made up of Moerane, Judge Ishmael Semenya and Judge President Bernard Ngoepe, who will chair the group.
It will hear evidence from Hlophe and Constitutional Court judges Bess Nkabinde and Chris Jafta, who accused Hlophe, in May last year, of trying to improperly influence them regarding pending judgments relating to the now-abandoned corruption case against President Jacob Zuma.
The hearings will take in private, Moerane said.
”It will assess the evidence” and make a recommendation on whether to pursue the matter. If the matter went to a full hearing, Hlophe risked impeachment, said a Justice Ministry source, who did not want to be named.
Wednesday’s six-hour meeting came after the JSC cancelled its planned closed preliminary hearing into the matter earlier this week.
That decision was taken at the first JSC meeting on the matter to include Zuma’s four new appointments to the JSC. The four include advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza, who at one point represented Hlophe, but was fired by the judge president. They sit on the JSC’s complaints committee, which is wrestling with the case.
Hlophe would have been questioned in that preliminary process. As is the case now, there was uncertainty whether his testimony would ever have been made public.
Moerane had said the outcome of the preliminary investigation would be disclosed, but not necessarily the full record of proceedings.
Hlophe was briefly seen at The Bay Hotel in Camps Bay on Wednesday while the meeting was under way there. He was accompanied by his lawyer, Barnabas Xulu, but justice spokesperson Tlali Tlali confirmed they did not attend any part of the JSC meeting.
Hlophe has aspirations to become a judge on the Constitutional Court, and has said he hoped the matter would be resolved before nominations for vacancies on that bench close in spring.
He has been on forced leave for months, but has signalled his intention to return to work on Monday.
Tlali said Justice Minister Jeff Radebe would ”communicate his views on that to the judge president before Monday”. — Sapa